The Toronto Star’s Doug Smith calls his first visit to Miami’s new (and somewhat empty) Marlin Park, “one of the weirdest experiences of my life.” I’m tempted to say he oughta get out of the house more often, but perhaps I have to idea what sort of atavistic things Smith gets up to in his spare time. Here’s an excerpt from Smith’s Yelp-worthy diss of Marlin Park’s adaptation of The Clevelander.
There was a DJ spinning THE ENTIRE GAME and since you know how I feel about loud, incomprehensible music pounding during the playing of the game, you can imagine how I felt about that.
The women, and I said “plants” rather than “implants” but I probably could have used either word, were there to, um, spice up the night and since they seemed to attract almost everyone’s attention all night, I guess they did their job.
It was, frankly, as far removed from baseball as you can imagine and I am old and a bit cranky and a bit of a traditionalist so if this is the new wave of the baseball stadium “experience” in order to attract fans, you can have it. Baseball is not a game to be viewed through the prism of some faux South Beach party bar; it is a game to sit and ponder, to try and predict strategy, to tell stories. It is not, and never will be, a raucous event with bikinis and shooters and blaring music and swimming pools filled with young ladies who are only there as eye-candy.