What Made You a Fan?

[HitDaCycle]

Hey guys, this is my first actual topic so hope this topic is ok..

 

So I've been on this site now for quite some time but I'm still fairly new to it. At times we all have different opinions about the players and management, but one thing that we all do have in common is that we are Marlins fans.

 

One thing I must admit that surprised me was how many Marlins fans there were from outside Florida, especially outside the US. Since I grew up with the Marlins (well kind of, since I was about 12 years old during the Marlins' inaugural season in 1993), of course I'm a Marlins fan.

 

But what I'm curious about is how you all became Marlins fans. For those who live in FL, I'm sure that's probably the reason why you are fans but maybe you have an interesting story of how you became a fan. For those in other states or even in other countries, I'm curious as to what made you a Marlins fan.

 

If you'd like to share how you became a Marlins fan, please do so.

[mattio13]

being a Dolphins supporter i was always going to follow Marlins, makes it a whole lot easier for when im older if i go to miami

[HawkFan]

Nice topic; it would be very interesting to hear several members' reasons for becoming Marlins fans, as I know there are several on here not just outside of Florida but outside of the US!

 

My reason is pretty straightforward; after growing up liking the Dodgers (because of my dad) and the Cubs (because of Andre Dawson), once they announced Florida was getting a team, I was "hooked." I especially fell for the marketing ploy that after decades of spring training ball in the state, the MArlins belonged to all of Florida and not just Miami.

[marlin2266]

I've lived in Miami since 1958 & always followed baseball, even back to the days of "Diz & Pewee".

 

In the 60s, we used to get ChiSox on WKAT, called by Milo Hamilton & Bob Elson.

 

And the Orioles trained here - I used to go to workouts for free at old Miami Stadium (aka Bobby Maduro),

 

Before that, I went to the Cardinals camp when it was down in Homestead.

 

So, I'm a baseball lifer & was very happy when the Marlins came to town.

[Admin]

My answer is in the Logo Changes A Life section here - http://www.marlinsbaseball.com/topic/59609-todays-miami-herald-try-and-get-a-copy/

[MrMarlinPride]

Born and raised about 20 Minutes from Sun Life before moving to Weston in 1997, my parents say I went to my first game at 6 months in 1995 in which they won, apparently they passed me down the rows and I ended up getting lost?

 

Began watching games and playing in 1997 and saw them win the world series then my dad finally started taking me to games with my bother and got me my own season ticket in 1999 and I've sat in the same seat every season to this day in 2010.

 

Favorite Players All Time: 2B Luis Castillo, 3B Mike Lowell, SP Josh Beckett, SP Dontrelle Willis, SP Josh Johnson, CLAntonio Alfonseca, C C.J. Charles Johnson, OF Cliff Floyd, OF Miguel Cabrera, OF Jeff Conine, SS Hanley Ramirez.

 

Favorite Moments: Anibal Sanhcez No Hitter(At The Game), Alex Gonzalez World Series Walkoff (At the game), Conine throwing out J.T. Snow at home plate in NLDS (At Game), Bartman Game, Beckett Tag Out to win World Series, Renteria's World Series Winning hit, Mike Mordecai Walkoff Homerun (At the Game), Cody Ross' Cowbell Walkoff, Uggla Walkoff Grandslam.

[OnTopOfPhils]

June 2, 2001.

 

Flipping through the channels, I landed on and watched a marlins game. They lost 7-1 (could've sworn it was 7-2 but espn tells me 7-1...) to the mets, but I was hooked.

[MillerTime]

Baseball had always been a religion for me, as I grew up in Baltimore as a huge Orioles fan. When I met my now wife at UF, she got me "hooked" on the fish in 2002. With what Angelos has done with by beloved O's, I never looked back.

[MVETOY]

Always back the team where i live, i move to south fla 06, so the Marlins are the team here, my first year here bought season tickets but cancel this year. was very annoyed, still a marlins fan,

[I Love Me Some Fish]

Teal was my favorite color back in the day.

[YearOneMarlinFan]

I've lived in Miami since 1958 & always followed baseball, even back to the days of "Diz & Pewee".

 

In the 60s, we used to get ChiSox on WKAT, called by Milo Hamilton & Bob Elson.

 

And the Orioles trained here - I used to go to workouts for free at old Miami Stadium (aka Bobby Maduro),

 

Before that, I went to the Cardinals camp when it was down in Homestead.

 

So, I'm a baseball lifer & was very happy when the Marlins came to town.

 

I grew up on Long Island, NY, where every kid rooted for a basball team - the NY Yankees, the NY Giants, or the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was a Dodger fan, and even remember my uncle taking me to a game in Ebbetts Field. I never forgave the Dodgers for leaving Brooklyn and became a Mets fan during their early years. Then I spent lots of years where following a team wasn't practical, until I moved to Minnesota where I was a Twins fan for ten years. During that time they won two World Series.

 

I moved to South Florida in 1993, just in time for the Marlins first season, and I've been a diehard fan ever since. Got to go to three of the '97 World Series games, when tickets were reasonable, but only could afford the last NLCS game against the Giants in '03.

 

Nice to know there's someone here who remembers PeeWee Reese. My hero was Duke Snider.

[gizmo]

Born and raised in SoFla. I remember in 96 wanting to watch sports like all my friends did, and I got hooked on baseball and watching the Marlins. And Joe Angel of course.

[BafflingBeerman]

Being born and raised in South Florida, of course I am a big fan. But how I came to be a big fan is the following:

 

My dad is a Mets fan (he is also a Marlins fan, so don't hunt him down!) Before the Marlins came into existance I had a Mets welcome mat in my room, though to be fair, I was not yet a teen and didn't know better back then I played T-ball and Little League so I was very interested in the game. Then the Marlins arrived, my dad bought season tickets, we went to Opening Day (later, when we bought and framed the panorama of JRS for that game my dad would point out his bald head) and I became a lifelong fan.

 

I could have gone to Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, as my dad said he would look for tickets, but alas, my cousin got married on that day. However, at the ceremony and reception, you better believe I had the earphones on listening to the game. I also could have gone to a Marlins/Cubs NLCS game in 2003 (I believe it was the last game the Marlins lost in the series), but I was unwilling to trade in both my future birthday and holiday presents for trip, which would have been my parents' treat (I was at UVa at the time, in college). A fact that "boils my blood" (but not really): my sister has been to more playoff games than I (2 to 0) and she isn't even that big of a baseball fan! Also, she, my mom and my dad got to see the Marlins/Expos game that was played in Chicago due to the hurricanes.

 

The Marlins are the only team in sports I can live or die by their wins and losses. When then were in the playoffs in 2003, I think my stress level increased tenfold.

[SilverBullet]

Believe it or not... Joe Carter is the reason I became hooked.

 

I was born in New York with Yankee-blood, but I moved down here when I was 6. I wasnt a big sports kid growing up, but if I liked anything it was baseball and the Yankees just by default. Then when the Marlins were born in 1993, it just made sense to follow them some. I went to a few games in '93 because it was just a fun new thing but I wasn't hooked yet. If anything, I was already a baseball fan by family default, and when the Fish came around, it just made sense to watch them, especially cause I couldn't follow the Yankees day in and day out.

 

Then came the 1993 World Series, I just had to watch because I had the feeling it was a big thing. When Joe Carter hit that home run, I pooped myself! That was such a genuine moment that you dream about as a kid... and that suddenly injected my blood with the love of baseball. I think I've watched baseball ever since then as if I'm searching for more moments like that. That's the day I got hooked on baseball and not just the Marlins (or Yankees)...

 

So now, I'm in love with baseball, and if I've got a hometown team, theyre the ones Im gonna watch and Ive grown to love them with a passion. I think the day in and day out style of baseball helped draw me in too. I personally get bugged by a week off between football games. Watching baseball and knowing theres more tomorrow is such a big thing for me. And as a kid, that daily grind is what helped me learn about the game itself and helped me love it even more.

 

To this day, I've got my Yankee-pride and I love my Marlins like no other, but thanks to Joe Carter, I'm very proud of my love of baseball itself. That's the reason I keep an eye on all teams and consider myself a casual fan of like a dozen teams for various reasons, and also the reason I own caps from about 15 teams. I'm the guy that wishes most teams the best of luck, unless theyre playing my Marlins or theyre game somehow affects my Marlins... Go Marlins!

[Shaft]

I'm a native of Brazil, but I moved to South Florida in late 1996. Took a while to get used to all the ways of American culture, sports specially. Started watching baseball in 2003, with the Marlins being the local team, i followed them.

[miamimarlins27]

When I was 6 years old in 1995 I remember watching sports with my dad (who was born in Cuba and raised in Miami) and older brothers. I specifically remember watching the Dolphins and Dan Marino. After that I remember the Heat with Alonzo Mourning. Sometime in there I started watching the Hurricanes. And then the Panthers had their magical run to the Stanley Cup Final which got me to like hockey. That was '96. That year I also started playing Pitching Machine baseball. But I hadn't watched baseball up to that point. My first recollection of baseball was in 1997 when the Marlins played the Braves in the NLCS. I loved it and have been a fan ever since.

 

I can't say that I was able to follow them as closely as I wanted to though. In 1998 my parents divorced and I was sent to live with my grandparents in Florida. The only baseball that I saw was on WGN where I would watch the Cubs. I got to see a lot of Sosa and McGwire's home run chase which got me hooked even more into the game. I didn't get to watch the Marlins play much until 2000 when I was back living with my dad and we moved to California. I was able to see 6 games a year on TV against the Giants and every time they played the Braves I watched them on TBS.

 

I remember in 2001 when my dad taught me how to read box scores so I would grab the sports section out of the newspaper in the mornings and take it to school to look at box scores and standings. My favorite players around this era were Mike Lowell, Luis Castillo, Ryan Dempster, Kevin Millar, Cliff Floyd, Preston Wilson, Matt Clement, and Antonio Alfonseca. But the rise of the internet was what helped me a lot. I was able to follow pretty much everything about the team. That is what I have had to use ever since. One of these days I would like to live in Miami and be able to be around fellow fans but until then I will continue to support the team from Sacramento CA.

 

It's funny because of all the Miami teams I was hooked on the Marlins and baseball last yet it's my favorite sport and by far my favorite team.

[miamimarlinswin]

I am a Miami native, and growing up in the 1960's baseball was seen by me very rarely. By the 1970's we saw Saturday afternoon on NBC, the occasional Braves game on the old Channel 7 (WCKT days) - I think it was mostly Wednesday night games. I also was a big U of Miami baseball fan and as a family we started going to their games in the late 1970's just as I enrolled and became a Hurricane myself.

 

The seminal moment came in 1981 when we finally subscribed to cable TV and started getting the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs and NY Mets games on a regular basis. I followed the Braves 1st because of Horner & Murphy, then the Mets because of Strawberry and finally the Cubs because of the Hawk, Ryno and Mark Grace.

 

When Huizenga gave us those spring training games with Baltimore vs (??) and they drew over 60,000 for each of them, I was sure he would put in for a franchise and he did. I immediately dropped any allegiance I had to the Cubs for the Marlins. I watched that 1st game in 1993, and have probably watched at least 80% of the games the Marlins have ever played.

 

Baseball is great and Marlins baseball is the BEST !

[dim]

Obviously living in South Florida most of my life, I grew to become a Marlins fan.

 

Can't really trace something specific I became a fan.

[JDT90]

I feel like I am the lone Marlins fan that resides in New Jersey lol This is my story: My grandpa lived in DeLand, Florida so every break I had off of school I'd be down there hanging with him fishing during the day and watching Marlins baseball at night. Being born in 1990, I grew up a Marlins fan from the minute I understood baseball. I don't remember it but I know i witnessed the beginning of the team with my grandpa. Most of my family is from New York and naturally they are Yankee fans so it really meant something to me watching the Marlins win their second championship against them. Although my grandpa moved back up to New Jersey recently, I made sure to buy a condo down in Florida, which is by far my favorite place in the world. I consider Florida as a second home to me so naturally I am a Marlins fan.

[Sirspud]

I was an 8-year old just becoming independent enough to watch and follow baseball on my own when the Marlins came out. I was too young to remember the founding of the organization or to have been aware of any of the steps leading towards them getting on the field, but seeing a team from Florida (and one so colorful, in more than just the uniforms) was such a novel concept to an 8-year old. Those original teams had some real characters on them, and I grew up following Chuck Carr, Charlie Hough, Chris Hammond, Pat Rapp, Gary Sheffield, Jeff Conine, Brett Barberie, Dave Magadan, Orestes Destrade...even Junior Felix, for those who remember the experience. My brother was just as into them as I, and we used to watch them on UHF nearly every night. When that failed, which was often in a house with only one TV, we cranked up the old AM stereo.

 

I followed all the Marlins moves up until the glorious year of 1997, where winning the World Series was absolutely surreal (my dad is a life-long Cubs fan). After 1997, things went dark though. I was completely shattered at the way Huizenga scrapped the team, denying fans like me the chance to see the Marlins take a victory lap. It seems like hardly a day went by before they were shipping out players. Also, that year the Marlins ceased to become my local team, as the Rays moved in a lot closer and the radio & TV stations that used to play the Marlins were shifted to the Rays. I was completely shuf off from the Marlins, and I didn't have reason to care enough anymore to try and find out more.

 

After a couple years though, I started really paying attention to Marlins box scores and stories in the papers. And the internet started making baseball information very easy to come by. I started reading about talented young players like Beckett, Burnett, and other guys like Lowell, Castillo, Lee, Pierre, and eventually Willis & Cabrera. I started following every Marlins box score in 2003 after they brought in Jack McKeon, but I was still shut off from TV and radio coverage. Something about the fight of that team came through even in the box scores. Some people might label me a band-wagoner for jumping back on when the team started doing well again, but for me it was more re-discovering something that I had once really cared about that had been taken from me after 1997. I didn't get to see any of these players on TV until the 2003 playoffs, but that was a special moment and overall the most exciting playoff run I could possibly imagine. The J.T. Snow play, bartman (which I heard on the radio because I was having to work at college), the Gonzalez walk-off, and then the Beckett game- which happened the same day that my sister got married, thankfully earlier in the day. My sister was the first of my generation in my family to be married, and it was surreal having all the extended family watching the Marlins win the WS at our house.

 

I've hardly missed a game since 2003, as we got Fox Sports in 2004 and I've been catching them on TV ever since. I have a relationship with the Marlins that could never be replaced by another team, because I've followed this team since its inception and I know pretty much every single aspect of its history because it happened before my eyes.

[Sirspud]

Believe it or not... Joe Carter is the reason I became hooked.

 

I was born in New York with Yankee-blood, but I moved down here when I was 6. I wasnt a big sports kid growing up, but if I liked anything it was baseball and the Yankees just by default. Then when the Marlins were born in 1993, it just made sense to follow them some. I went to a few games in '93 because it was just a fun new thing but I wasn't hooked yet. If anything, I was already a baseball fan by family default, and when the Fish came around, it just made sense to watch them, especially cause I couldn't follow the Yankees day in and day out.

 

Then came the 1993 World Series, I just had to watch because I had the feeling it was a big thing. When Joe Carter hit that home run, I pooped myself! That was such a genuine moment that you dream about as a kid... and that suddenly injected my blood with the love of baseball. I think I've watched baseball ever since then as if I'm searching for more moments like that. That's the day I got hooked on baseball and not just the Marlins (or Yankees)...

 

So now, I'm in love with baseball, and if I've got a hometown team, theyre the ones Im gonna watch and Ive grown to love them with a passion. I think the day in and day out style of baseball helped draw me in too. I personally get bugged by a week off between football games. Watching baseball and knowing theres more tomorrow is such a big thing for me. And as a kid, that daily grind is what helped me learn about the game itself and helped me love it even more.

 

To this day, I've got my Yankee-pride and I love my Marlins like no other, but thanks to Joe Carter, I'm very proud of my love of baseball itself. That's the reason I keep an eye on all teams and consider myself a casual fan of like a dozen teams for various reasons, and also the reason I own caps from about 15 teams. I'm the guy that wishes most teams the best of luck, unless theyre playing my Marlins or theyre game somehow affects my Marlins... Go Marlins!

 

 

That Joe Carter home run was a special moment, and sadly the last of a seemingly innocent era of baseball. The strike ruined a great season the next year and baseball has never recovered its innocence. The HR races after that created some captivating moments, but we all know those moments were artificially created by the players using steroids and the organization's turning a blind eye to it because they were resurrecting baseball.

 

My youth was stolen after the Joe Carter HR. The way that moment has lived on in time attests to the tremendous popularity of baseball at that time.

[CyggyMarlin]

WHen I was little, I moved to Pennsylvania from New Jersey right around the time the Phillies won their first World Series, but I wasnt into baseball yet. I grrew up 5 minutes from Reading Phillies stadium and watched years of a crappy farm system thru the 80's. As a result, the big Phillies club was bringing up these bad prospects and putting out a really bad team (i.e. Juan "I swing at pitches that bounce in front of the plate" Samuel, Jeff Stone, Ricky Jordan, Don Carmen, Bruce Ruffin...)... It may have also been a teenage non-conformity issue, because during high school, I didnt wanna be like everyone else wearing Phillies merchandise. AFter high school, I said that if baseball expands again, I am picking a new team and I will follow them from Day 1 and be there for everything that happens. I hated the name Rockies for a team so I picked Marlins

[Cincyfishfan]

I was born and raised in western KY, nowhere near any pro sports teams. In 1984, when I was 7, my cousin died and his mother gave me his Dolphin trash can...which is all it took to make me a Dolphins fan for life. Always a much bigger baseball fan, I never claimed a team and instead followed individual players. When they announced the creation of the Marlins and Rockies I knew I would pick one to be my team. I became a Marlins fan out of my allegiance to the Dolphins. I guess I can thank my cousin Eric for both...well for the Marlins at least.

[Something_Fishy]

My dad was really big into baseball and he was a huge Red Sox fan after he came over from Cuba (He really loved El Tiante). I was 4 years old when I went to the opening day game, and I really don't remember much of it. I used to sit with my mom, dad and younger brothers every once in a while over the teal monster between inauguration and the '97 world series season. I remember thinking Gary Sheffield was the coolest player ever as well as thinking Greg Zaun was a total badass. One game during that period, I remember this one guy just railing on Deion Sanders by chanting "DEE-ONNN" over and over...I think it was when Deion was with the Reds. I remember when Renteria knocked in the original CC to win game 7 and just how excited I was for the game of baseball. After the famed fire-sale though, my dad stopped taking us to games and I just lost interest for a few years. Then halfway through the 2003 season, after Miggy and Dontrelle were called up, I went with a summer camp to a marlins game when Dontrelle was starting and I remembered why I fell in love with the team in the first place. I then started watching the games again every night while doing my homework. I remember going to one of the NLCS games against the cubs, and I remember the whipping we got from them. When the '03 series started, I was on a Cruise and I made it a point to convince my family to go to the "sports" section of the boat to watch the games every night, which turned out to be a great idea because on that ship we had a contingency of fish fans who gathered for those games and shunned any Yankee fan that came near us. After that, I just made it a point to watch all the games.

 

I still remember when Hermida hit that grand slam against the cards and thinking "this kid's going to be awesome". Too bad I was way off. I even remember that game against the Mets near the end of '05 when Delgado had an issue with Shea Stadium's lights and play was halted for a little to rectify it. I really love this team.

[enterthemadness]

1st time I dunno. 2nd time...a few years after teamed moved to DC...I became fan again in 2008. I do remember the run 2006 team made and cody's HR streak in 2007.