Fans Protest At Marlins' Home Opener, Get Ejected For No Good Reason

When a franchise is as committed to shitting on its fan base as the Miami Marlins are, receiving a little animosity from those fans is to be expected. So it's not surprising that a group of Marlins fans staged a small protest at yesterday's home opener, nor is it surprising that the Marlins organization handled the whole situation in the most tone-deaf, bumbling way possible.

According to the Palm Beach Post, Fort Lauderdale resident Dan Barton and five of his friends (that's them in the video above) were spotted by multiple reporters on the stadium's main concourse between the first and second innings of last night's game. They had signs, homemade T-shirts, and periodically shouted "Free the Marlins!" The protesters later told the Post that they were kicked out of the stadium by police officers before ever making it to their seats:

“They kicked us out. We didn’t even make it to our seats,’’ Barton said in a phone interview as they drove back to Fort Lauderdale.

He claimed that one officer told them their sign was blocking the view of other fans. “My friend offered to turn his shirt inside out and they said no,’’ Barton said.

He also said an officer asked them to wait for a Marlins representative, but no representative showed up.

“We asked police what we were doing wrong. And he said, ‘They want you to leave.’’

By ‘they,’ Barton assumed the officer was referring to the Marlins.

Huh, that seems like some pretty bogus reasoning for ejecting fans from a baseball stadium. I mean, it's pretty hard to block someone's view from the concourse, and fans bringing signs to the game is only something that has happened at every single baseball game ever. Still, maybe Barton wasn't telling the whole story. I'm sure Marlins team president David Samson can shed some light on the situation:

“We got information from the police that they’d run into a couple of fans who were walking around holding signs that were fine. That was not the issue. They were drawing some attention to themselves. Making some noise later in the game, which is not uncommon,’’ Samson said.

As per standard operating procedure, the police go up, try to tell them to calm down and they did not. Then the police said, ‘Show me ID’ and they did not. And that was it. You have to show ID when asked. So they were ejected.

[...]

They were walking around just trying to create a, there’s a police term for it that I am not familiar with. It has to do with disturbance, creating a disturbance. I don’t exactly know what it means but it is their job to make sure everything is safe for everyone.

Yeah, so those guys got ejected for absolutely no reason. There's a term I feel like I should use here. Something about how awful the Marlins are. Oh yeah, now I remember: Fuck the Marlins.

[ Palm Beach Post]