Steps to revive Marlins’ popularity

I grew up with baseball as the No. 1 sport in my house. My dad watched baseball. My mom watched baseball. My grandparents watched baseball.

My entire family moved down to South Florida from New York and brought their love for baseball with them.

But when I went to school, baseball was the third most popular sport at best. The Dolphins were always the most popular team, and the Heat got plenty of attention before LeBron took his talents to South Beach.

It seemed like baseball was an afterthought to a lot of my classmates. The one exception came in 2003, when the Marlins made an improbable run to a World Series championship. I didn’t hear the end of it.

That lasted about two weeks.

Ten years later, baseball needs something to revive its popularity in South Florida. The Marlins certainly aren’t doing it. I have come up with some steps Major League Baseball and the Marlins should do to try to bring baseball to the forefront.

Step 1: Get rid of Jeff Loria. If you’re any kind of baseball fan, this should seem like the obvious first step.

Loria is inarguably the worst owner in baseball, and he is credited with making the Montreal Expos so unviable that the team needed to move to Washington, D.C.

Loria escaped the Expos’ downfall and bought the Marlins and turned the franchise into a joke. He cheated Miami out of the money for a new stadium with the promise of a competitive team, then traded away nearly all of the team’s established talent.

Two firesales in the last 10 years have left the fan base disillusioned. How can fans be expected to shell out their hard-earned money for a team with an owner who clearly doesn’t care about the product he puts out on the field?

If I was a Marlins fan, I don’t think I could bring myself to take a step near Marlins Park as long as Loria owns the team.

Step 2: Move the Marlins to the American League Eastern Division. Major League Baseball has few qualms about teams switching leagues. The Brewers did it in the 90s, and the Astros did it last year.

Moving to the AL East could bring more fans to the stadium. South Florida is full of Northern transplants who still support their Yankees and Red Sox. Playing each of those teams would bring thousands down to Miami for those games. And who knows? Maybe some start supporting their hometown team, and some of their kids start rooting for the team that’s right around the figurative corner. Kids like rebelling against their parents, right?

Also, moving to the AL East can help foster a real rivalry with Tampa Bay.

The Marlins always played the Rays as part of the whole rivalry weekend thing MLB did during interleague play. The Yankees played the Mets, the Cubs played the White Sox – those are real rivalries. Marlins-Rays never had any of that hype.

But if the two teams played each other more than a dozen times per season and competed for a division title, a little enmity might develop.

Step 3: Appeal to the suburbs. The Marlins have a much bigger market to exploit than just the Miami area.

Broward County, Palm Beach County, Martin County and St. Lucie County have a total population of nearly 3.5 million people within two hours of Marlins Park. Ft. Myers and Naples are also about two hours away.

If the Marlins gave these potential fans a reason to get in the car and drive, there’s a huge number of people who are near enough to at least occasionally go to games.

Miami tried to brand itself with a new color scheme and theme song (“We are the Marlins! Go Fish!”), and it didn’t work. The Marlins need to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible without the tackiness they brought in a few years ago.

If they follow some of these steps, then maybe Miami won’t regret financing that behemoth of a stadium.

Contact Adam Lichtenstein at alichtenstein@alligator.org.

Miami Marlins starting pitcher Jacob Turner wipes his brow during the first inning of a 6-5 loss against the New York Mets on Monday in Miami.