Baseball's Cardboard Marlins-Man
Cardboard Cutout Fans Filling Empty Stadiums; How a-bout that?!
The College Baseball World Series ended the other week, and searching for other games to watch, we saw the Sunday Night Baseball game was on. The Cubs were playing the Mets on what turned out to be a night honoring the legendary Cubs second baseman — Ryne Sandberg. In a twist, there was a Florida Marlins fan sitting behind home plate. Nostalgia quickly turned into curiosity and a trip down the COVID memories’ lane.
I grew up in South Florida before there were professional baseball teams in the state. The closest professional team was the Atlanta Braves, and in the early 90s, the Braves were a dynasty team much like the New York Yankees. Some of their awards and accolades are: 7 Cy Young Awards, 4 National League MVP Awards, 1 World Series title, and 14 — yes, 14 — consecutive National League East Division titles.
Everyone I knew in South Florida was a Braves, Mets, or Yankees fan. I didn’t want to be a fan of any of those teams, and luckily for me, my Grandparents lived in Chicago. Before the inaugural season of the Florida Marlins in 1993, I was, by necessity, a Cubs fan.
Ryne Sandberg — Ryno — was my favorite player. Even today, one would struggle to find a second baseman of his caliber, and it turns out, the Cubs were honoring him and his recent fight against prostate cancer via the unveiling of a bronze statue of him outside of the iconic Wrigley Field.
Despite coaching and encouraging my children to play baseball, I must admit that I have not been too keen on watching any of the professional games since the outset of the COVID pandemic. The empty stadiums and cardboard caricatures of fans that filled the stadiums for that season were just too much. The last time I remember being utterly thrilled by a professional baseball game was in 2016. The Cubs fought back from a 3-1 game deficit to win the World Series — in extra innings — in Game 7 — for the first time in over a century! What a thrill that was!
Back in the present game, I noticed what has become a familiar sight to many fans. A man, in a sea of blue, was dressed in a bright-orange Florida Marlins jersey and visor sitting behind home plate — Marlins-Man.
For those of you who don’t know Marlins-Man, he is a superfan of the Marlins and of baseball in general. He began attending Marlins games as a full season ticket holder in their inaugural 1993 season. In 2018, he had a fall-out with the Derek Jeter owned Marlins, and now, he estimates that he spends 300 days a year traveling to various sporting events. His presence at MLB games is so ubiquitous that he is even shown in the stands in the video game MLB: The Show.
I wondered, What did this guy do during the Pandemic? First when the sports leagues were all shut down and then after they resumed games but fans were not allowed in the stadiums.
It turns out that I was not the only one with this curiosity. The local South Florida paper ran an opinion piece the day before lockdowns were announced. The tongue-in-cheek conclusion was that his law office would “freak out” and people might quit because he hadn’t been in the office for a full month straight since 2012. Lockdowns were announced the day after the piece was published.
Fast-forward to July 24, 2020, and CNN describes the scene — Dr. Fauci takes a break from fighting the pandemic to throw the first pitch of the MLB season. The Washington Nationals played the New York Yankees in what was the very first game allowed of a shortened 2020 MLB season. It is memorable both for Fauci’s utterly terrible first-pitch and the photographs of him in the empty stands. Of course, he watched the game with his mask below his chin and not distancing socially with his friends.
A few days later, the New York Post ran a story — Marlins Man is in baseball hell. At first, he wasn’t going to purchase one of the cardboard cutouts that the teams offered to their fans to fill the empty seats, but he had become such a fixture at the games that hundreds of people had reached out to him asking where he was.
Back in 2014 he had undergone something of a personal transformation. He was given a terminal liver cancer diagnosis, though it turns out that the diagnosis was mistaken. The experience led to a changed view on the importance of doing things that we enjoy.
His passion was not just for the game, but going to the packed stadiums with the fans and the electric atmosphere. He offered to pay $1,000 — significantly more than the going rate of $40 — to all of the MLB teams to have his cutout put in his preferred seat behind home plate.
Almost immediately after the season opener, the COVID testing regime claimed its first victims. The Marlins, despite the lack of fans, wearing masks, and required testing, had 20 of their players test positive for the disease. Time magazine reminded us, The Miami Marlins’ Disastrous COVID-19 Outbreak Proves That Bubbles Matter. It was a call for the MLB to take things more seriously and sequester their athletes in a singular COVID safe “bubble” like the responsible NBA, WNBA, MLS, and NHL.
Marlins Man was interviewed after this outbreak in the Marlins organization, and offers at least one perspective worth sharing as it relates to the fan experience. Unfortunately, the conclusion he draws at the end of the interview is mistaken, even if it was a widely held belief at the time.
We only have a certain amount of years to live. I don’t know how long I have to live; neither do you, but we have wasted six-months of our lives.
We have not travelled; we haven’t seen our friends; we haven’t seen our family; we haven’t been to the birthday dinners, and now we get into the sports world…
— Laurence Leavy, Marlins-Man
I remember the empty stadiums with only the cardboard caricatures of their team’s most fervent supporters as one of the more depressing aspects of the COVID hysteria. It is difficult to reconcile that memory against the opposite experience of being a young fan in the crowd and jumping for joy: It was Game 7 in the 1997 World Series, and the Marlins’ Edgar Renteria had just hit a walk-off single. Craig Counsell — now the Cubs manager — scored the winning run and leapt into the air after touching home plate. The Marlins were World Series champions only 5 years after their inauguration.
Live crowds energized by their team’s performance were sorely missing. Recall for a moment, the surrounding chatter; the aromas of hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and cold beer wafting into the stands; at times, the sounds and smells giving way to the crack of a bat and the roaring of a crowd.
Mel Allen’s voice — the Voice of the Yankees and the first host of This Week in Baseball — might have come on over the radio, TV, or excitedly in our own mind’s ear. After an outstanding play, overlooking the empty stadium full of cardboard caricatures; I wondered, Would we still hear his inquiring exclamation — “How a-bout that?!”
I'm a baseball fan, too, but almost never attend games in person. The scenes in 2020 with pro sports in fan-less venues were stupid. If I turned on a game and saw no fans in the stands, I turned off the game; I wasn't gonna watch a lousy scrimmage (which is all the games are without the pressure of the live, in-person crowd).