In his column in the Herald today, Greg Cote asks: "Is there anything lonelier than a lone demonstrator?"
He was at the Marlins game last night, with a crowd of 25,000. For only the fifth regular season game in the $515 million stadium's history, 12,000 seats sat empty. And that on a beautiful spring night when they opened the roof.
Before the season started, people predicted that games would be sold out for the first month or two, and then fans would lose interest. By July we may discover what's lonelier than a lone demonstrator.
Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to bring out for the ceremonial first pitch a man who can't throw.
I liked the white home uniforms, though, with baseball's superstitions, they may now be considered a curse, and brought out sparingly. (No matter the team, dark shirts and white pants make major leaguers look like softball players.) And I liked the open roof, though I've already read that that's going to be a rarity. (Am I the only person in South Florida who likes watching baseball outdoors?)
It would have been nice to christen the new stadium with a win, but if the Marlins make it to the World Series, no one will care about last night's game. And the jumbo screen in the west plaza will be more popular than the wallcasts on the Beach.
But for that to happen the team needs to start hitting. I'm hoping that last night the players were still too disconcerted after having walked on the field arm-in-arm with Brazilian carnival dancers. There is, as we all know, no plumage in baseball.
I didn't make it to Holiday Park yesterday; instead I slung my racket over my shoulder, hopped on my bike, and rode to Hardy Park, where I tested my shoulder by hitting against the wall.
A group of teens rode skateboards on the abandoned shuffleboard courts. They would glide along, jumping from one elevated panel to another. They did this over and over, never tiring of the routine. It seemed so simple and pointless until I remembered that I was repeatedly hitting a ball against a wall.
It felt strange to get up yesterday morning and not drive to Key Biscayne.
I wrote 12 stories in 12 days from there, showing more diligence than I ever did in my 20-plus years in journalism. The media center brought back fond memories of the newsroom, though one that had turned international and single-minded. (Though on the weekends some of the flat screen TVs - each work station came equipped with one - were tuned to college basketball.)
At the start of the tournament I didn't spend a lot of time in the media center, preferring to wander the grounds. That's how I got to see Roger Federer on the practice court and Glen Outlaw at the Corona bar, the oldest ball boy at 52 quenching his thirst in a way few ball boys could. Our chance meeting gave the tournament the serendipity of travel.
I also went to press conferences, though I didn't enjoy showing up for the losers. As I wrote, "I felt like I had come to a funeral to grill the widow on her inability to keep her husband alive." Wozniacki, known for her sunny smile, was drawn and prickly in defeat. Sharapova was more resigned (and more beautiful even than she is on TV). Djokovic I thought was the best, which is to say the most natural, with the press, but it's probably easier when you're constantly winning.
By Sunday I was ready for the tournament to come to a close. I watch a lot of tennis on TV, but always with a book or magazine in hand; you can't do that in the press box. (One day I did get to catch up with an old colleague from the Sun-Sentinel, until his attention drifted to his Smartphone.) And yet, after the men's final, I hung around, as did a few hundred fans, for the women's doubles. Part of me didn't really want it to end.
This afternoon I'm going to go to Holiday Park and play some tennis.
"But I, for one, think it is pathetic that my hometown of Philadelphia has a statue of Sylvester Stallone standing outside the Spectrum, but does not have a statue of Joe Frazier, a real-life Philly boxer who would have clubbed a bum like Rocky Balboa into a coma." - Joe Queenan
For baseball fans, Wednesday night was a bit like switching back and forth between cliffhanger movies. What made it even more satisfying was that all my desired outcomes - which seemed not only unlikely but utterly impossible at one point (the Red Sox playing the last-place Orioles; the Rays down 7-0 against the fat cat Yankees - eventually and dramatically came to be.
Though it wasn't until yesterday morning that I grasped the full beauty of the night, as I thought of all the devastated TV executives now deprived of a potential Yankees-Red Sox playoff.