Baseball, rain and campers

Our first full day in Miami and what do I want to do?

Check out a baseball game of course!

I talked Lisa into catching an afternoon game at Landshark Stadium to watch the Florida Marlins play the Washington Nationals (the worst team in pro baseball).

We arrived early enough that there were literally a dozen cars in the parking lot. If not for the people drinking by the car next to us, we would have been the only ones in the parking lot. As we approached the stadium a kind gentlemen told us our umbrella (purchased that morning) was not allowed in the stadium. It's Florida, it rains almost every day in the summer but our umbrella was not allowed.

We walked back to the car (a short walk) lathered up our sunscreen (you can't bring in open bottles of anything either), returned to the ticket office and purchased two of the cheapest tickets we could find.

As we walked into the stadium, which was built for the Miami Dolphins pro football team, we noticed there were a lot of kids in matching T-shirts running around. We didn't think much of it.

After we found our seats we noticed the stadium was quite empty, save for the dozens upon dozens of kids in matching T-shirts.

Then the PA spoke up and we were alerted.

It was Camp Day. Every kiddie camp from South Florida was coming to the game. The attendance for the game was about 27,000 and I'm going to guess about 20,000 of them were boys and girls ages 4-14 in matching T-shirts, screaming their bloody heads off and clogging up the lines at the concession stand.

The game itself was rather drab despite some decent players on both teams. Lisa and I agreed to cut out before the 7th inning to avoid the early part of rush hour traffic. I had hoped to pop into the gift shop to purchase a specific Marlins hat (I like the logo, sue me). As we walked toward the gift shop the sky opened up and a massive storm soaked the area. We were free from the rain since we were in the concourse...but then again, in retrospect, maybe the rain would have been the best option.

Thousands of campers and their guardians flooded the concourse in an effort to stay dry. What had been the most open part of the stadium turned into a traffic nightmare. There were thousands of them. Some going one way, some going the other way and some not going any which way.

We eventually found the gift shop and they had run out of the type of hat I wanted.

The rain finally let up and we were able to return to our car but not before I snapped the above photo of bus upon bus in the parking lot waiting to take a load of wet, smelly, sugary children back home.
The Marlins won the game (or so I was told after we left).