Cardinals 5 Marlins 0

July 30, 2002
Tuesday night
with Jamie
Miami

After driving through Florida, Miami popped out of nowhere and kind of scared Jamie who wasn’t quite ready for it. It did seem like another planet upon arrival.

The game was dull, but it was fun to go to another empty stadium. Pro Player is one of those huge stadiums made for football where they have to cover up thousands of seats in the upper deck part of the outfield. Not a baseball town, Miami. Jamie bought a scorecard, but none of the vendors had a pencil for him to keep score. Andy Benes threw brilliantly for the Cardinals. Two days earlier, we had seen Scott Rolen’s last game as a Phillie and now we were seeing his first game as a Cardinal. The Marlins fans might not keep score, but they know when and who to boo. Rolen was booed mercilessly.

Jamie noticed that the organist played fun songs with the introduction of each player loosely related to the player’s name. For Fernando Vina, he played "The Pina Colada Song." For Tino Martinez, "What’s Love Got to Do With It?" Get it, Tina Turner. Tina/Tino. Get it? For both Jim Edmonds and Edgar Renteria, "The Theme from Mr. Ed."

After the game, we headed to the dog track for the last race of the night. At the last second, I changed my mind on my five dollar bet from dog 3 to dog 4 costing me 90 dollars when dog 3 won the race.*⁴

After the track, it was South Beach time. Tacky. I kept expecting to run into Jose Canseco with entourage in tow. With Jamie at the wheel, he jumped the curb to get just the right angle for the photo of the "95 Ends" sign. Anything for a good picture.

As we entered Homestead, Florida on the way to the Keys, we happen upon a swarm of cop cars descending on a Circle K with guns blazing.*⁵ Nice.

*⁴ Jamie - Sorry to keep interrupting, but it must be pointed out that Dan changed his bet because he thought Dog #3 was too fat to win. He actually thought he could handicap the race based on a 5 second glance at the dogs, like he bred them for a living. That really cracked me up. My chosen dog, having led for the first 2 laps, faded badly and is probably tied up in someone’s back yard barking at squirrels right now.

*⁵ No shots were fired.

Dan responds- No shots were fired- that we were aware of. Oh yeah, and I forgot, on the radio leaving Miami we repeatedly heard an ad for a local "gentleman’s" club called "The Booby Trap." Their slogan for amateur night was "You’ll never know who’ll pop in… or pop out for cash prizes."