What’s Marlins Park like? Garish but good

Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster had a quick reply the other night when somebody mentioned that the Miami Marlins drew only about 25,000 fans to play the Cubs.

“That’s about 20,000 more than they used to get,” said Dempster, a former Florida Marlin. “Tat’s what they’re looking for. I’m happy for the Marlin fans for having a nice baseball park to come to.”

I had a chance to visit brand-new Marlins Park this week. Here is the long and the short of it:

Ÿ The place is big.

Ÿ It’s loud. Way too loud.

Ÿ It’s garish.

Ÿ There’s even a touch of South Beach bawdiness to it.

And you know what? The darn thing works.

Having covered a good number of baseball games at the football stadium where the Marlins played, the contrast is startling, and most welcome.

There were few more depressing places to go for baseball than Dolphin Stadium or Joe Robbie Stadium or Pro Player Stadium or whatever they called it.

First, it’s a great football stadium, and that’s about it. Baseball didn’t work there and never would. Second, it was in the middle of nowhere.

Third, unless the Marlins were contending, and many times even when they were, thousands upon thousands of empty seats were the norm.

Dempster says he remembers playing before a grand total of 103 fans in the first game of a doubleheader. He also remembers being able to hear everything.

“One day, I was pitching, and I hear this guy yell, ‘Throw the changeup,’” he said.

Rather than shake the guy off and risk losing a much-needed customer, Dempster recalls he threw the changeup.

The new park sits on the site of the famed Orange Bowl, in the heart of Little Havana. At last, you feel like you’re in Miami, and the glass panels beyond the outfield allow you to see the city’s skyline.

“Yeah, I don’t know what the right word is, ‘coziness,’ I guess,” said Cubs pitcher Chris Volstad, a Marlin until last season. “The other stadium was just so big and open. You could hear all the echoes. This is more of a baseball park, and for the fans, too. Just walking around and getting a better angle. The other one was more rectangular.”

Several Cubs front office people, including business president Crane Kenney and marketing chief Wally Hayward, were in Miami this week to gather more ideas for the upcoming renovations at Wrigley Field.

There’s not a lot that will transfer from Marlins Park. (I don’t think the Cubs will build a cabaret-type lounge — with its scantily clad dancers — that Marlins Park features beyond the left-field wall.)

The pastel green outfield wall is jarring, but it’s Miami. The outlandish home run “sculpture” in left-center field makes Bill Veeck’s exploding scoreboard at old Comiskey Park look positively tame, and that scoreboard was considered outlandish back then.

But somehow, the shooting water, jumping mechanical fish and dancing flamingos work in this part of the world.

“There’s definitely a lot of ‘Miami’ down here, which is another big thing, which is good for the area,” said Volstad, a native of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

And the retractable roof makes all the difference in the world, especially when you can set your watch by the daily rain showers.

“It’s pretty cool,” Volstad said. “It’s a huge change. It was obviously needed. Everybody knows that. It’s nice.”

Epstein preaches patience:

Cubs baseball president Theo Epstein met with reporters Thursday at Marlins Park. The Cubs later fell 5-3, getting swept in the three-game series and falling to 3-10 on the season.

Epstein preached patience, even though this is about as lackluster a looking club as there is in baseball.

“You never want to start off poorly,” Epstein told reporters. “There are a lot of things we can improve upon, and we will, but you also don’t want to read too much into one homestand and one road trip. Certainly, it crystallized some areas that we need to ascribe to be better.”

With center fielder Marlon Byrd (. 075) off to a poor start, fans soon will be wondering when prospects such as Brett Jackson will be called up. Epstein repeatedly has said he won’t rush Jackson or first-base prospect Anthony Rizzo. Current first baseman Bryan LaHair is performing well.

“Those guys are continuing their development at Triple-A, and there are things they’re working on to continue to improve,” Epstein told writers. “We’re also not giving up on guys after a homestand and a road trip. Guys need time to get into a rhythm of the season and show what they can do.

“Baseball is best understood from bigger samples and from a distance sometimes. No one wants to get off to this kind of start, and the lineup isn’t performing well, but it’s a little early to be thinking about those kind of moves, specifically with your better prospects.”