Miami Marlins

MIAMI MARLINS

The Miami Marlins are a professional baseball team based in Miami, Florida and a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball (MLB's) National League. Their home park is Marlins Park.

The Miami Marlins began play in the 1993 season as the Florida Marlins. They played home games from their inaugural season to the 2011 season at Sun Life Stadium, which they shared with the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (NFL) and which was also called Joe Robbie Stadium, Pro Player Park, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphin Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, and Land Shark Stadium during their tenancy. Since the 2012 season, they have played at Marlins Park in downtown Miami, on the site of the former Orange Bowl. The new park, unlike Sun Life Stadium (which was criticized in its baseball configuration for poor sight lines in some locations), was designed foremost as a baseball park. The new park's name is a temporary one until naming rights are purchased. Per agreement with the city and Miami-Dade County (which owns the park), the Marlins officially changed their name to the "Miami Marlins" on November 11, 2011. They also adopted a new logo, color scheme, and uniforms.

The Marlins have the distinction of winning a World Series championship every year they qualified for the postseason, doing so in 1997 and 2003 — both times as the National League wild card team. They defeated the American League champion Cleveland Indians in the 1997 series, which was notable for shortstop Edgar Rentería driving in second baseman Craig Counsell for the series-clinching run in the eleventh inning of the seventh and deciding game. The 2003 season was notable for the firing of manager Jeff Torborg after thirty-eight games. The Marlins were in last place in the National League East with a 16–22 record at the time. Torborg's successor, 72-year-old Jack McKeon, led them to the National League's wild card berth in the playoffs; they defeated the New York Yankees four games to two in the 2003 World Series.

MARLINS PARK

Marlins Park is a baseball park located in Miami, Florida. It is the current home of the Miami Marlins, the city's Major League Baseball franchise. It is located on 17 acres of the former Miami Orange Bowl site in Little Havana, about 2 miles (3 km) west of Downtown. Construction was completed in March 2012, in time for the 2012 season.

The stadium is designed in a neomodern form of baseball architecture. Marlins Park was also LEED certified as the greenest MLB park in 2012. The building is the sixth MLB stadium to have a retractable roof. With a seating capacity of 37,442, it is the third-smallest stadium in Major League Baseball by official capacity, and the smallest by actual capacity.

There is wide consensus among sports fans that a retractable-roof stadium is a must for professional baseball to be viable in Miami due to its blistering summer heat. Despite this, Marlins Park has been a source of controversy in South Florida ever since it was proposed. The stadium's public-funding plan—which would eventually strap a $2.4 billion debt to Miami-Dade County alone—led to a protracted lawsuit, largely contributed to the ouster of several local politicians, and triggered an SEC investigation. As revelations of the team's finances and their handling of payroll (both before and after construction) seemed to contradict some of the premises on which the tax-funded-stadium deal were based, the ballpark controversy intensified.

The facility hosted a second-round pool of the 2013 World Baseball Classic. The park also hosts soccer matches during the winter. It will also host the newly created Miami Beach Bowl beginning in December 2014.