About Miami Marlins
The Miami Marlins are an American professional baseball team based in Miami. The Marlins compete in Major League Baseball as a member club of the National League East Division. The club's home ballpark is LoanDepot Park.
The franchise began play as an expansion team in the 1993 season as the Florida Marlins. The Marlins originally played home games at Joe Robbie Stadium, which they shared with the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League . In 2012, the team moved to LoanDepot Park , their first exclusive home and the first to be designed as a baseball park. As part of an agreement with park owner Miami-Dade County to use the stadium, the franchise also changed their name to the Miami Marlins prior to the 2012 season.
With a record of 2,241–2,609 , the Marlins have the lowest winning percentage and fewest postseason appearances among active MLB franchises. Despite this, the Marlins won the World Series during their first two playoff runs in 1997 and 2003. Only three players were on both World Series teams with the Marlins: Jeff Conine, Luis Castillo, and Rick Helling . All four of their playoff appearances came as wild card teams, making them one of two MLB franchises to have never won a division title, as well as the only franchise to have never appeared in back-to-back postseasons. The Marlins were also the first team to win the World Series as a wild card. Also noteworthy is the fact the Marlins have no retired numbers, with the exception of Jackie Robinson's universally retired #42, as done in 1997.
Wayne Huizenga, CEO of Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation, was awarded an expansion franchise in the National League for a $95 million expansion fee and the team began operations in 1993 as the Florida Marlins. MLB had announced a few months earlier that it intended to add two new teams to the National League. It was a foregone conclusion that one of them would be placed in Florida; the only question was whether Huizenga would beat out competing groups from Orlando and Tampa Bay. Orlando waged a very spirited campaign bolstered by its family-oriented tourism industry. Tampa Bay already had a baseball park—the Florida Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg, completed in 1990. However, on June 10, 1991, the National League awarded a Miami-based franchise to Huizenga. The franchise adopted the nickname "Marlins" from previous minor league teams, the Miami Marlins of the Triple-A 's International League from 1956 to 1960, and the Miami Marlins and Miami Marlins teams that played in the Florida State League.
The Marlins' first manager was Rene Lachemann, a former catcher who had previously managed the Seattle Mariners and Milwaukee Brewers, and who at the time of his hiring was a third base coach for the Oakland Athletics. The team drafted its initial lineup of players in the 1992 MLB Expansion Draft. The Marlins defeated the Houston Astros 12–8 in their inaugural spring training game. Jeff Conine hit Florida's first homer before a crowd of 6,696 at the Cocoa Expo Sports Complex. The Marlins won their first game on April 5, 1993, against the Dodgers. Charlie Hough was the starting pitcher for that game. Jeff Conine went 4-for-4 as well, making him an immediate crowd favorite. By the end of his tenure with Florida, he had earned the nickname "Mr. Marlin." Gary Sheffield and Bryan Harvey represented the Marlins as the club's first All-Star Game selections, and Sheffield homered in the Marlins' first All-Star Game at-bat. The team finished the year five games ahead of the last-place New York Mets and with an attendance of 3,064,847. In that season, the Marlins traded young set-up reliever Trevor Hoffman and two minor-league prospects to the San Diego Padres for third baseman Gary Sheffield. While Sheffield helped Florida immediately and became an all-star, Hoffman eventually emerged as the best closer in the National League. After the 1993 season, Donald A. Smiley was named the second president in club history. The Marlins finished last in their division in the strike-shortened season of 1994 and fourth in 1995. Lachemann was replaced as manager midway through the 1996 season by director of player development John Boles.
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