A Night To Remember: The 2003 Florida Marlins Shock The World

The temperature was a little chilly as I stepped out of my front door that day. Earlier, it had reached a high of around 54, but it felt as if it had dropped nearly ten degrees since then.

I didn’t mind this much, though. I’m someone who loves cold weather. Always have; likely always will. It just seems to perk me up and give me energy, just as it did that day. Closing my door and walking toward the waiting cab, I realized I’d just forgotten my Marlins cap.

Talk about absent-minded.

So, I rushed back to my door, opened it, and dashed inside to retrieve the hat. I couldn’t possibly go to a game without my Marlins hat. I’d had it since the day of Game 1 of the 1997 World Series, having purchased it from a street vendor on Canal Street in Manhattan the day my beloved team had played their first game in the World Series.

Florida won that game over the vaunted Cleveland Indians 7-4, and would go on to win the series on SS Edgar Renteria’s clutch hit in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 7.

That hat had been with me through that series, and ever since. It was worn, and sweat-stained, and rather dingy, but it was and still is, my favorite article of clothing.

I cherish that hat like some would cherish an autographed ball from their favorite sports hero. While there’s no signature of any of my favorite ballplayers on it, it holds within it uncounted memories I treasure more than money.

Grabbing it, I once again locked up and headed for the taxi. As I was getting in, the driver, in the usual gruff New York Cabbie fashion, said, “You finish’d already, bud, or shud I wait anutha five minutes while ya put on ya favorite undawear?”

Nothing he could have said would have spoiled the mood for me at that moment though, so I simply smiled at him, chuckling lightly, and said, “Nah, just take me to the ferry, my man.”

“Good,” was his only reply.

As we headed toward the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, I reflected on the past week. Joy couldn’t begin to describe the feeling I had inside me at that moment. My team, the team I’d come to love since they first entered the big leagues, was on the verge of possibly making history and defeating the heralded and hated New York Yankees.

A bit of my history seems in order at this point.

I was born in Hollywood, Florida. We were a pretty poor family, with our roots actually in Michigan (my grandfather still lived there at the time), but my grandmother had moved down to Florida in hopes of making a better life.

My grandparents had separated before I was born, and my grandmother had brought her children with her when she’d headed south.

This move on her part would determine a great deal about my life, as it would decide the place of my birth, as well as eventually govern the sports teams I would end up rooting for in my later years.

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