The Miami Marlins are a Major League Baseball team that currently plays in the city of Miami. Founded in as the Florida Marlins, the Marlins began play in in the suburb of Miami Gardens, and moved to the city in , becoming the Miami Marlins at that time. The team has played their home games at LoanDepot Park (formerly Marlins Park) since that time.
Franchise history
1990–1996: Early years
On March 7, , Wayne Huizenga, CEO of Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation, announced he had purchased 15 percent of the NFL's Miami Dolphins and 50 percent of the Dolphins' home, Joe Robbie Stadium, for an estimated $30 million. Huizenga stated his intention to aggressively pursue an expansion franchise. MLB had announced a few months earlier that it intended to add two new teams to the National League. It was a foregone conclusion that one of them would be placed in Florida; the only question was whether Huizenga would beat out competing groups from Orlando and Tampa Bay. Orlando fielded a very spirited campaign bolstered by its family-oriented tourism industry. Tampa Bay already had a baseball park — the Florida Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg, completed in 1990. However, on June 10, , the National League awarded a Miami-based franchise to Huizenga for a $95 million expansion fee (Tampa Bay, however, would get an MLB team of its own in 1998 when the [Devil] Rays started play). One name considered early on was the Florida Flamingos. The franchise adopted the nickname "Marlins" from previous minor league teams, the Miami Marlins of the International League from 1956 to 1960, and the Miami Marlins (1962–1970) and Miami Marlins (1982–1988) teams that played in the Florida State League; the new major league Marlins replaced the erstwhile FSL Marlins (which changed its nickname to the Miracle in 1989) as the city's main baseball team, and would move westward to Fort Myers in 1992.
In November 1991, the Marlins hired Fredi González as the Marlins first Minor League manager.
On December 16, 1991, they made their first signing, inking 16-year-old Dominican pitcher Clemente Núñez to a contract. In June 1992, they selected catcher Charles Johnson of the University of Miami with their first first-round draft pick. Later that year, Marlins President Carl Barger collapsed and died at the baseball winter meetings in Louisville, Kentucky. The Marlins later retired the number 5 in honor of Barger's favorite player, Joe DiMaggio, but the team would issue the number into circulation for the first time when they moved to the city of Miami in 2012 and instead honored Barger with a plaque at the new Marlins Park.
The Marlins' first manager was Rene Lachemann, a former catcher who had previously managed the Seattle Mariners and Milwaukee Brewers, and who at the time of his hiring was a third base coach for the Oakland Athletics. The team drafted its initial lineup of players in the 1992 MLB Expansion Draft. The Marlins defeated the Houston Astros 12–8 in their inaugural spring training game. Jeff Conine hit Florida's first homer before a crowd of 6,696 at the Cocoa Expo Sports Complex. The Marlins won their first game on April 5, , against the Dodgers. Charlie Hough was the starting pitcher for that game. Jeff Conine went 4-for-4 as well, making him an immediate crowd favorite. By the end of his tenure with Florida, he had earned the nickname "Mr. Marlin." Gary Sheffield and Bryan Harvey represented the Marlins as the club's first All-Star Game selections, and Sheffield homered in the Marlins' first All-Star Game at-bat. The team finished the year five games ahead of the last-place New York Mets and with an attendance of 3,064,847. In that season, the Marlins traded young set-up reliever Trevor Hoffman and two minor-league prospects to the San Diego Padres for third baseman Gary Sheffield. While Sheffield helped Florida immediately and became an all-star, Hoffman eventually emerged as the best closer in the National League. After the 1993 season, Donald A. Smiley was named the second president in club history. The Marlins finished last (51–64) in their division in the strike-shortened season of and fourth (67–76) in . Lachemann was replaced as manager midway through the by director of player development John Boles.