The Fish won't officially be seating fans in their brand new home for another year and two months, but in less than three weeks, the very first seat will be installed at the ball park. If you can pony up the cash, you'll not only be the first fan to sit in the new stadium, but you could also don a hard hat and actually install the seat yourself.
It's part of the Marlins creative effort to avoid cost overruns at the new stadium by having fans shoulder some of the labor.
"We're not sure in which location the seat will be in, but ideally we'll have the person whose season ticket that is help install that seat," Marlins president David Samson said. "They'd be the first person to actually sit in that seat."
The organization is looking to make the installation a memorable event, not only for the building, but for the fan who will have the distinction of being the first to sit in the ballpark.
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"We've got to see where they will first be installing," Samson said. "If it is at a place where no seat has currently been sold, we'll start marketing it and telling people who come to the sales headquarters that that seat is available."
The rest of the article should be of comfort to fans who, like me, have a permanent crick in the neck from season after season of awkwardly contorting their bodies in order to get a decent view of the field from the bullpen box.
To ensure that there will be no obstructed views in the building, team officials will sit in every single seat at the ballpark. In some early testing, it was detected that a railing blocked the view of home plate in the Vista Level.
To accommodate, the builders switched to a thinner -- but still sturdy -- cable railing.
"We're sticking to our promise that we will sit in every seat and make sure there are no obstructed views," Samson said.
It's actually quite a good idea to have Mr. Samson test out all 37,000 seats. Because if his line of vision is not obstructed, it's probably safe to say that no one's will be.