Baseball - Marlins To Announce A Ballpark This Seas

The Florida Marlins have been setting deadlines for themselves for the last three years to get a new ballpark agreement. However, these deadlines have come and gone and there is still no sign of an agreement.

David Samson, Marlins president, recently said that he was not giving any more deadlines but promised that the long wait would soon be over. Gov Charlie Crist recently announced that he supports using some state money for new stadiums and this may have given Samson the impetus to say that the agreement on the retractable roof stadium in Miami could be announced by October 2007.

The Marlins currently play in Dolphin Stadium which is the home of the Miami Dolphins and since 1993 they have been looking for public money to build a baseball only stadium with a roof. However, they have not been successful and it is well known that because of this frustration the founding owner of Marlins, H Wayne Huizenga, and his successor, John Henry, sold the team.

Major League Baseball is also helping the Marlins for sometime now. In fact Bob Dupuy, MLB’s chief operating officer, had said in January 2007, that getting a new ballpark for the Marlins on MLB’s top priority this offseason.

In the last six years, Marlins have failed five time to get money from Florida Legislature. A new ballpark would cost an estimated $500 million and the state money would be important to bridge the gap between the team and the city. In fact Miami-Dade County are willing to contribute to the expense of building a new ballpark.