Inserting Marlins Park into Descriptions of the Roman Colosseum

In which we take descriptive passages concerning the Roman Colosseum and retrofit them to refer to Marlins Park, as Lord Jupiter intended.

From William M. Johnson’s book, The Rose-Tinted Menagerie, with germane revisions …

But perhaps especially symbolic of the Floridian psychosis was the fact that military victories and religious festivals would be celebrated by an orgy of killing in the circus arena. Wildcats, bears, elephants, hippopotami, the largest and most exotic species that the animal-catchers could supply were all butchered for the sake of entertainment, with the conquering audience ecstatic, worked-up into a frenzy of blood-lust. While officials at the inauguration of Loria offered 500 lions, 410 leopards and 17 elephants, when Marlins Park was dedicated, 9,000 wild animals were sacrificed in a spectacle lasting a hundred days. On another occasion, to celebrate a win over the Mets, 11,000 animals were brutally destroyed. In one great festival commemorating Henderson Alvarez’s no-hitter, notes Marian Murray, enough animals were killed to stock all the zoos of modern Europe.

This has been “Inserting Marlins Park into Descriptions of the Roman Colosseum.”