Possible roof collapse aside, Miami still rushes to play ball
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alvaro@progresoweekly.com
So you’re a Miami Marlins fan. Two years down the line imagine they are playing great baseball and are battling for the playoffs; experts say they’re favorites to win the World Series.
You share that baseball fandom with your 12-year-old boy. His coaches say he shows promise. So you’ve decided to spend more than $100 dollars to go to the ballgame at the stadium you helped pay for to catch a crucial game against the Dodgers.
On game day, as you sit under the dome in air-conditioned 70-something degrees, eating your $10 hot dogs and drinking your $7.50 sodas (not included in the $100-plus price tag, by the way), you start to hear a rumbling that appears to be coming from the heavens. It sounds like the angry sounds a thunderstorm makes just before the rain starts pelting the earth – but it’s coming from inside the stadium. The game on the field suddenly stops and even the ballplayers are now looking upwards towards the roof that was electronically rolled close before the game to shelter us from the South Florida weather. Seconds later a large, white, metal piece of ceiling comes flying down and dents the centerfield area – the contact with the outfield creating a bomb-like sound. The centerfielder has disappeared.
No, it’s not a movie. It’s what could happen if we continue on the speedy, slick road we’re on with the new Miami Marlins baseball stadium.
The season starts on April 4. Construction of the stadium has seemed to go smoothly – except if you consider that there have been major bumps on the road to completion. The most recent: worrisome allegations and concerns with the welding procedure used on the stadium’s retractable roof.
As reported by CBS Miami, Roy Fastabend, a welder for 35 years and certified inspector for the last 15, on the stadium job “to make sure the columns and beams connected to the retractable roof at the Marlins Stadium were constructed and welded correctly” said that what he found “shocked him.”
CBS reporter Jim DeFede reported that Fastabend told him “Engineering specifications were ignored.” Adding that for the sake of time and savings, contractors on the job cut corners. There was also the case of inspector Mike Garcia, fired in 2010, for falsifying welding inspection documents.
And as Fastabend told DeFede on camera, “If people knew what was going on there or how they did things … I won’t go to that stadium. I won’t take my kids to that place.”
Fastabend’s not the only one complaining. On November 2 of last year, Miami-Dade Inspector General Chris Mazzella sent a letter to the Marlins “citing concerns with the welding procedure used on the retractable roof.”
In July 23, 2010, Fastabend, who was documenting things done wrong on the welding work in the stadium, complained one too many times to persons charged with building the stadium. The next morning he was terminated, said Fastabend.
Before termination, though, a stress test on the welds had been ordered. The welds cracked and failed. The baseball team knew of the problems as early as 2010. Nothing was done until the media got hold of the problems in late 2011.
A final inspection of the stadium, I expect, is due before opening day. Final say will be the responsibility of city of Miami and Miami-Dade county mayors and commissioners who will receive final reports from city and county inspectors. With all that has transpired with this stadium, the conditions by which the financing was shoved down taxpayers’ throats, hastily written contracts that ‘surprisingly’ has taxpayers picking up the taxes on a parking lot owned and built by the city of Miami but run by the baseball team, a debt that will end up costing us over $2 billion, while the team will have invested a little over $100 million…
Our politicians must now decide what is most important, the safety of people inside the new stadium or making sure the ballpark opens on time.
I know I won’t be going to any ballgames. For two reasons: morally I can’t see myself spending money that ends up in the grubby hands of shysters profiting from our misused tax dollars. And now the fact that we are being told that the dome has the possibility of collapsing.
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if on April 4 at around one in the afternoon we hear the traditional: Play ball! inside the new Miami Marlins baseball stadium.
