Hahaha! Large…and in charge. She chased it all down with a Diet Coke no less.
Thanks for the visual. LOL! So tell me…was it like riding a moped?

I could, however, condone a Scrooge McLoria bobblehead with a “Kick Me” sign taped to its ass.

Could have had something to do also with the A’s being 46 games out of first (Red Sox and their ace pitcher, some guy named Babe Ruth who led the AL with a 1.75 ERA that year).

Okay, here’s the skinny. On a bright, beautiful 79-degree afternoon in Macondo, your correspondent fired up the dilithium crystals in his Pig of Steel and motored down to Macondo Banana Massacre Field. I kept her on impulse power, since no one wants to waste propulsives at these prices on such a lazy afternoon. It’s about a twenty minute jaunt up the Palmetto, thence eastbound along the Dolphin Expressway (the name was changed a few years back from the Dolphin Expressway, after the team, to the Dolphin Expressway, after the cetacean, when it became clear that the team was going to suck bigtime for the foreseeable future). As you pass the airport, the Sauron’s Eye of the stadium’s detractable sliding dome appears in the distance under an azure sky, ranged round by downtown’s bristle of chrome and gunite phalluses. You can’t get lost looking for it. This is a mixed blessing.

First sign that the omens were gonna be bad: there was no traffic getting off on 27th Avenue, and a short line for the left turn on Seventh Street. No traffic approaching the stadium, either. I took the right turn on Scrooge McLoria Bullevard directly in front of the stadium. Lots of empty spots at the curb. Uh-oh. As I approached the front entrance, I could hear the energetic strains of a salsa band, playing on a colorful stage set up in front of the ticket windows. The front lawn featured a scattering of inflatable brat slides and the kind of mobile, set up and knock down weekend carnival rides you often hear of breaking apart and sending kids flying thirty feet to their encounters with parapalegia. There were a couple of hot dog and sausage and arepa stands, a couple of hold-harmless signs in case of choking or botulism, some souvenir tables with disclaimers about small plastic parts, that kind of thing – a festive atmosphere that didn’t quite get festive owing to the sparse crowd. The salsa band was incongruous for knowing what they were doing. Unlike the team that was gradually impending somewhere up the coast, these guys really knew how to play.

I would guess there were maybe a hundred and fifty to two hundred people out front – most of them families enjoying the rides and gustatory equivocations, buying a few souvenir jerseys, helmets, caps and so forth. There was a mix of stadium personnel and some bored cops hanging around out front. The door to the ticket lobby was closed and it didn’t look like there were more than a few dozen folks inside. There wasn’t much of a line. Most of the activity was for the carnival, such as it was, on the promenade.

Just to get a complete peecture of things, I circumnavigated the entire stadium site in the Pig of Steel. Several of the open parking garages were manned by uniformed Feesh employees who looked bored to the perimeters of catatonia, and there weren’t any cars going in or out. I could look into the garages and saw that they were overwhelmingly empty. The Clevelander side of the stadium was deserted and the outside parking lots were completely empty. And of course, the promenades of shops along Seventh Street remained totally unleased, the windows covered on the inside with plain brown paper. When the apocalypse comes, these building will be ready for it.

So that’s it. Opening day for tickets had all the excitement of a weekend church bake sale in Dacron, Ohio – and this even with the ooompf of a loud salsa band and a halcyon day to make northeasterners chew on the straps of their wind goggles.

So it goes, sayeth KV.

And, no.

However, the Marlins team record at 813.111 set in 2002 is doable.

Was there a second date?