Marlins Q&A: As team celebrates 30th anniversary, Charlie Hough reflects on first game
.JPG "Charlie Hough throws out the first pitch in Marlins history on April 5, 1993, at Joe Robbie Stadium.")
Charlie Hough will always have his place in Marlins history.
A Hialeah High alum whose MLB career spanned 25 years, Hough was the starting pitcher for the Marlins’ first game in team history on April 5, 1993, at age 45. Better yet, he threw six innings and earned the win as the Marlins defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers — the team that drafted Hough in 1966, the team with whom he made his MLB debut and played for from 1970-1980, and the team Hough works for now as a member of their player development staff — 6-3 at Joe Robbie Stadium.
Earlier this season, Hough, 75, stopped by loanDepot park for one of the Marlins’ Flashback Fridays they have held on homestands this years to commemorate the franchise’s 30th anniversary.
Below is a Q&A from that interview session with a small group of media members. Answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What is it like to be at the ballpark and seeing what the Marlins are doing to recognize the 30-year anniversary of the franchise?
“I think it’s great. It’s great for baseball. I still work for the Dodgers and basically I love baseball. I think everybody involved in [baseball] wants every team to do well. We want to beat [the Marlins] when we play them on the field, but we want them to fill this ballpark and have good fans like we do in LA. It’s a thrill for me to be back and see what they’re trying to do.”
When you see the team wearing the teal, does it bring back any nostalgia?
“Oh yeah. I love that old uniform. It made me look young.”
How much teal is in your closet?
“You know what? I have a house in Palm Springs, and that’s the one uniform I have in it.”
How much pressure did you feel before that first pitch?
“That was just plain old fun. I wasn’t thinking of anything other than, ‘Let’s win the ballgame, because it’s my old team.’ The Dodgers and [Tommy] Lasorda. That was my only thought — how much fun was this going to be. It would have been fun to lose. It ended up really being fun to win.”
Being able to say you were the first pitcher in Marlins history, what does that mean for you?
“I went to high school in Hialeah. It was about 10-12 miles to Joe Robbie Stadium. As a kid, we’d go to Miami Stadium to watch the Orioles in Spring Training, and we’d go up to Fort Lauderdale and every April, they were gone. Baseball ended. And then all of a sudden, after 20-whatever years of playing pro ball, there was going to be a team right down the street from where I grew up. I got a call to come play for them. I didn’t know I was going to pitch the first game. They announced it during the spring. I had no idea. I thought they’d give a kid a chance.”
Did you think growing up there would ever be an MLB team in Miami?
“No, I didn’t until later on. It was a football town. It was a big sports town, but a big football town. Even the media really didn’t know how to cover baseball back then. They covered spring training. ‘Hey. How you doing? You going to be ready for the year?’ And then everybody would go to Baltimore. So it was fun watching some of the media. Some of the travel that we did, the traveling secretaries didn’t know what to do. They really didn’t know how to handle a big-league team. Of course, four years later, they win a world series.”
How satisfying was it for you, even at the end of your career, to know that it finally happened and you were part of the start?
“It’s like an impossible dream. I think any kid that plays, you dream of pitching a shutout in a World Series or something like that, but never once did I think ‘Boy, I pitched the first [MLB] game in Florida.’ That never even crossed my mind, not until that winter, that I would be on this team. Like I said, I was really fortunate, really fortunate, to get a chance. Dave Dombrowski was the general manager and Rene Lachemmann was the manager. I just had a great time.”
What do you remember most from the first game?
“I was so happy for the city, because the media kind of accepted us. If you think about that ballclub, some of the guys that played in that game, Walt Weiss went on to be a manager. David [Magadan] at third base. Jeff Conine. We had a lot of really good players, and then we traded a guy they name awards for, Trevor Hoffman, for Gary Sheffield, who wasn’t bad. It was a pretty good, talented team. We didn’t have the depth to compete with the best, but we had some really good players on that team. It’s like an impossible dream. I think any kid that plays high school ball, you dream of pitching a shutout in the World Series or something. But never once did I think, ‘I’ll pitch the first game in Florida.’ Never even crossed my mind. I was really fortunate to get a chance. I just had a great time.”
Where does being the first pitcher in franchise history rank for you?
“It wasn’t the biggest game to pitch in. There was the World Series. Dodgers-Yankees World Series. But, if I think about my career, the first thing that I would think of is getting the chance to pitch that game. Not how it turned out so much but getting the opportunity. The odds are astronomical that somebody would get to pitch that kind of game — an expansion team, in your hometown at that age, 45.”
How long did it take you to perfect your knuckleball?
“Well, I haven’t done it yet. I got to the big leagues less than a year from the first time I ever threw it. I started throwing it like September of 1969 and August of 1970 I was in the big leagues as a reliever with no idea what I was doing. Now, I could throw it. They showed me how to hold it and they gave me a chance.”
This story was originally published August 20, 2023 at 8:25 AM.
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