‘Bottom Feeder’ Miami Marlins, still fighting for respect, drop opener 1-0 as fans return | Opinion
Baseball began to dig itself out from under a pandemic on Thursday and carry America with it.
This is the sport wrapped in symbolism, and there was plenty of that on Opening Day at still-Marlins Park-to-me and at ballparks around the country. There were more face coverings than ballcaps in the crowd, but there were fans watching, and cheering, wearing Marlins colors, moms, dads and kids remembering what normal used to feel like.
After a 2020 marked by somberly empty MLB stadiums as COIVD-19 raged, fans are returning this spring, though in limited numbers such as Miami’s 27 percent capacity.
There were Marlins T-shirts that read, WELCOME HOME. They marked the return of fans as the club began its 29th franchise season and 10th at what most of us still think of as “the new ballpark.”
Red, white and blue bunting hung in the stands A salsa band played in the concourse beyond left field. Not since September 2019 had this place felt this alive, this itself.
Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays players lined up on the first- and third-base baselines for pregame introductions, an Opening Day tradition, and applause met them, not the silence of one year earlier.
The defending AL champion Rays would win the game, 1-0, on an eighth-inning Austin Meadows home run off Miami reliever Yimi Garcia, though the result of this first of 162 games was less the story of this day-into-night as the return of fans and all that symbolized.
The outcome, though, did nothing to alter the season’s narrative about Miami: A team that will need to win on the strength of its starting pitching, not with a batting lineup that strikes little fear. It was only the third shutout loss in 29 Marlins season openers.
Starter Sandy Alcantara was strong in six shutout innings, allowing two hits, two walks and striking out seven, but got scant help offensively.
A crowd of 7,062 attended, only about 19 percent of capacity and below the max allowed because many fans remain wary. But it was an impressively spread-out, masked-up, happy-to-be-there throng.
“No Place Like Home,” read one hand-drawn sign.
“Baseball: The shot in the arm I need now,” read another.
The hashtag #JuntoMiami was trending locally on Twitter all day.
Together Miami.
Together America, eventually, maybe, when masks and social distancing might be retired and large crowds are once again not only not banned but encouraged.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction as far as when you get on the field [and hear] regular noise,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said before Thursday’s opener. (He’d happened to get his COVID vaccination shot earlier in the day.) “It’s what the game is all about. Fans. It kind of speaks to we’re getting closer to back to normal.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred called it “a very special Opening Day” in an open letter to fans, saying, “This spring provides a moment to celebrate hope — not just for our favorite teams, but for our society as we emerge from a difficult year of hardships and pain.”
The emergence is by degrees, and far from complete, with the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just this week warning of another surge. As if to underline all is not yet well, one season opener Thursday (Nationals-Mets) had to be postponed due to a COVID outbreak
Still, baseball and America move ahead with hope — and so do the Marlins.
The “Bottom Feeders” are back.
The Fish took on that nickname, a pejorative given by an opposing radio host last season, in surprising MLB by ending a 17-season playoff drought. It made Mattingly Manager of the Year.
That didn’t impress many folks, apparently. Neither did the team’s 14-5 record this spring.
The Marlins are Bottom Feeders once again, based on low expectations including betting odds to finish last in the rugged NL East.
The Bottom Feeders’ favorite food, then as now?
Your doubts.
“No matter how good we perform you always see some negativity out there,” as Pablo Lopez, Friday’s starting pitcher, put it on Thursday. “That feeds us. We want to show it doesn’t matter what they say on the outside, it’s what we believe inside the clubhouse. We’re going to upset a lot of people. This pitching staff has as much talent as any staff in the league, hands down.”
Said Mattingly: “I believe these guys think they’re good and can compete with anyone. We’re capable of beating anyone. I like our club. Now it’s their time. You try as coaches to get them ready, but really, you’re letting the horses out of the gate. It’s their time to go make this thing happen.”
The doubts, and the proving, continue.
We can’t know if this will be a good team. But it could be a fun, colorful one. Jazz Chisholm died his hair blue for Opening Day. Miguel Rojas wore fluorescent bright green shoes. The splendidly named Sixto Sanchez awaits his call-up. Kim Ng takes over as MLB’s first-ever female general manager.
“I’m-a just do me,” Chisholm, a 23-year-old Bahamian, explained the hair. “I’m not trying to take it any higher or lower.”
Mattingly has said Chisholm has “superstar potential,” doubting any related pressure will faze the kid.
“I don’t feel like there’s going to be butteflies,” as Chisholm said before the opener. “The baseball field takes away my butterflies.”
Said Mattingly: “It all starts [Thursday].”
He meant for the rookie Chisholm. He meant for the Marlins.
He might also have meant baseball’s fresh start, and fans in the stands again, and new hope all around.
