Marlins – Candy Hatcher

MARLINS A HIT!; FANS RALLY AROUND HOME TEAM IN 6-3 VICTORY

Palm Beach Post (Florida) April 6, 1993

CANDY HATCHER

MIAMI

A Yankees fan was reminiscing about Joe DiMaggio, and a Giants fan was bragging about Bobby Thomson, and a Cubs fan was talking about Hank Sauer, and the Red Sox loyalists were whining, as usual. And everybody, all 46,115 who had come Monday to witness the meshing of baseball and history, was watching the hometown boy, Charlie Hough. It was 2:11 p.m., and this 45-year-old knuckle-balling favorite from Hialeah was throwing the first pitch for the Florida Marlins, and everybody hoped he’d do well but they didn’t expect him to. And then he threw a strike, and then another, and another, and he struck out two batters, just like that. Then right fielder Darryl Strawberry, the Dodger everyone loves to hate, stepped up and grounded out meekly. Three up, three down.

The crowd, those fans from New York and Chicago and Boston and Pittsburgh, were on their feet, stomping and whistling and yelling and feeling good, no, great, about this new team, about baseball, about Florida. It took them five minutes– half an inning– to find common ground, and South Florida may never be the same. “This is an opportunity to root for a home team,” said Abraham Fischler, a Brooklyn native who gave up baseball when his beloved Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. “Today,” the Hollywood retiree said, “I’m rooting for the Marlins.”

Monday, Fischler’s new team, this National League neophyte, whipped his old team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-3. The Marlins, whose total regular- season playing time stands at 2 hours and 43 minutes, posted a 1-0 record. The Dodgers, who have been around in one city or another since 1890, fell to

8,215-7,488.

The festivities began when the gates at Joe Robbie Stadium opened at 11:39 a.m.– nine minutes late. Vincent Farinato, an usher from Cooper City, took his place on the upper deck. A boys choir started the National Anthem, but about the time the boys reached the ramparts, an Air Force fly-over, and then a series of fireworks explosions, drowned them out. It didn’t seem to matter to baseball fans. Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio was up next, throwing the ceremonial first pitch, and boy did he bring back memories.

Roy Chernock, a Yankees fan from Lake Worth, remembered DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. DiMaggio a deity Farinato, who had been first in line to apply for the usher’s job on Sunday, reminisced about the 78-year-old DiMaggio being “like God when I was a kid.” He recalled his first baseball game, back when he was a boy in New York. The Red Sox were playing at Yankee Stadium, and DiMaggio came away with four hits. Baseball, he said, is for people who like statistics, who follow a particular player “because you wanna see him make it, you wanna root him on, see him on top.” Baseball, he said, is for loyal people who latch onto a team and won’t let go, even when their team loses. And loses and loses.

Baseball, he said, gives you time to relax, time to forget, time to remember. “You get so into it, everything else is secondary.” It wasn’t just opening day that brought emotion into a packed stadium. It wasn’t just that the Marlins won, although that helped.

Mostly, it was that Florida has baseball, finally.

Lorraine Holly waited 40 years for this, and now she can stop watching those blasted Cubs on the satellite dish. Holly, 68, sat in a wheelchair Monday and cheered every time the Marlins moved. She had taken a tranquilizer, but it hadn’t done much good. Hough, “that old man,” was pitching up a storm, and she was darned glad she hadn’t told her doctor about her plans to watch baseball.

Holly was in a hospital last week, bleeding internally. She had had a stroke eight months ago, but this woman, who had grown up watching Hank Sauer hit homers in Chicago’s Wrigley Field, watched Joe Robbie Stadium being built. She wasn’t about to miss this game. Or the next one. She wore her white commemorative Marlins hat, a Marlins button and teal pants. And when Hough finished a perfect first inning, she let out a yell. Part of being an American, she said.

There when it all began

All over the stadium, dads were showing their children the action through binoculars. Friends were cracking peanuts and trading stories. Tom Herrick nudged his buddy, Johnny Farese, and talked about being a part of history. Farese, who lives in Boca Raton, watched the game from a hospital bed parked in the handicapped section of the stadium. Spinal muscular dystrophy has control of his muscles, all but two fingers, but not his mind. He remembers being at Boston’s Fenway Park when he was 12, when Lou Piniella hit a two-run homer in the ninth to win the game.

And he will remember Benito Santiago scoring the Marlins’ first run in the first game of the first season. Farese was no different from any other Marlin fan Monday.

Said Sean Alveshire of Plantation: “There’s no place I’d rather be than right here. Today is going to be a day to remember.”