Dolphins or Land Sharks?

I flew down to Florida yesterday to check off another ballpark. Depending on who you believe, the Florida Marlins play either in Dolphin Stadium or Land Shark Stadium. The really odd thing is that the signs within the stadium themselves are unclear on this. The outside signs all say "Dolphin," but the electronic signs inside say "Land Shark." Very weird.

The game wasn't until the evening and my flight into Fort Lauderdale (easier and cheaper than Miami International) arrived in the early afternoon, so I went over to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino for a bit. I looked around the shops and played a little video poker. My theory that Indian casinos have worse odds than, say, Vegas was reinforced.

I should also note a few things about the travel itself:

1) US Air did okay, though I still hate 737s.

2) On the way down, there was a policeman with a police dog on the plane. It was only just before takeoff that they realized the dog couldn't be in the exit row. The poor dog decidedly did not have adequate room under the seat in front of his master. The person sitting next to them was remarkably tolerant.

3) Payless had the cheapest rental car price I could find and their service was perfectly adequate. They gave me a Toyota Corolla and I am again reminded that Toyota has really declined with respect to ergonomics in the past 25 or so years.

4) I stayed at the Hampton Inn in Hollywood, which was convenient enough. Chain motels are chain motels, so there's not much to say there.

As for the ballpark, it wasn't as bad as I expected. The lack of public transportation is annoying, but the parking was easy. (Admittedly, I'd gotten there fairly early since I was concerned about potential traffic.) As a multi-sport stadium, it's not really well designed for baseball and that is reflected in the large number of seats which they don't even bother to try to sell. Still, I had an excellent seat (on the first base line) at a reasonable price. The concessions make some attempt to have local flavor (e.g. the empanada stand, though the cheese empanada I had wasn't great). There are, alas, mascots - Billy the Marlin and Little Billy - and, even worse, cheerleaders. What bugs me the most is that the female cheerleaders, the Mermaids, are skinny young girls dressed in skimpy clothes, while the male cheerleaders, the Manatees, are fat older men. Yes, this reflects something about our culture, but it is still annoying.

The game was against the Source of All Evil in the Universe and there were plenty of obnoxious Yankees fans (oh, wait, that's redundant) there. The Marlins do seem to have a following and there were also other people like me whose second favorite team is whoever is playing against the Yankees. What was particularly fun was the group of youngish Red Sox fans sitting on my right, who were reasonably creative hecklers. So when the Yankees fans would cheer on Posada by chanting "hip hip Jorge," these guys would holler out "hip hip double play." My favorite bit from them was when one of them shouted out to the pitcher, "throw him a chair" and another of them said, "what's a chair?" The answer was, of course, "make him sit down." I'll also note that it is particularly fun to jeer at the traitorous Johnny Damn Demon Damon.

And, oh, yeah, the Marlins won, which topped off a fine evening. There were fireworks and a concert by salsa star Tito Nieves afterwards, but it was late enough that I decided to head out right after the game. That may have been a minor error since the traffic getting out of the ballpark was pretty bad.

I flew back this morning, took a long nap when I got home, and am now in the midst of household stuff (laundry, household paperwork, etc.)