Orange Bowl Deux?

Further news regarding the near-completed deal for a Marlins stadium at the OB site has been reported by the Sun Sentinel. The stadium is now to be completed by 2011, and should seat 37,000. Seems like overkill, or maybe in their negotiations somebody accidentally added a zero to the capacity. Anyway, as mentioned before, the Marlins will have to put up more up front but less overall. At first glance, that irritates me, but knowing the corruption and incompetence of construction down here in Miami, the Marlins will have to fork over at least another 100 million since they are now responsible for cost overruns.

As a sidenote, there are two interesting revelations regarding the deal. First, the team is to be renamed the Miami Marlins, which is a ridiculous idea. Everyone knows they play in Miami and the alliteration just doesn't work here. No doubt they'll come up with some goofy new uniforms too when one of the few things they have going for them is their current unis. And secondly, Mayor Manny Diaz intends to build a new Orange Bowl stadium next to the new baseball stadium and use it primarily for soccer. Not sure why you would spend 50 million dollars on this idea instead of using it on renovating the old stadium and staging more soccer matches there. It would be moderately appreciated on this end if the new stadium were to have the same layout as the old, but that's wishful thinking and it's simply not the same.

Last Game at the Orange Bowl

Something I failed to touch on last night, but I want to do now: the MNW-Deerfield playoff game was the last football game to be played at the Orange Bowl before its scheduled demolition early next year. Though I like to pretend thats not really happening, the significance of last night's game should still be noted.

Jacory Harris and Co. for the most part are heading to Coral Gables to play ball next season (come on Tommy, you know you want to be part of the fun). Because of this, many of the Hurricane faithful have adopted Miami Northwestern as their own. So when our boys were down 2 at their own 1 yard line with about 2 minutes to play, the next generation of Canes gave the Orange Bowl the ending it deserved from its real football team. Harris recovered from a shaky (by his standards) game to drive his team to a winning touchdown run and a spot in the State Finals. A fitting ending indeed. One last bit of magic for the ol' girl in the Little Havana night.