Marlins Man

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About

Marlins Man is the nickname given to Miami Marlins fan Laurence Leavy^[2] who rose to viral fame after being repeatedly spotted in the front-row seat behind the batter's box wearing the Miami baseball team's bright-orange jersey and visor at various Major League Baseball (MLB) matches and other major sporting events in the United States.

Origin

Laurence Leavy, a 58-year-old Miami-based lawyer, has been a Marlins season-ticket holder since the team's foundation in 1993. In addition to being an avid fan of Florida's collegiate and professional sports teams, Leavy has attended hundreds of major professional sporting events in America; by his own count, Leavy has gone to 27 NFL Super Bowls, over 200 NBA playoff matches and at least 85 MLB World Series games. Leavy's obsession with the Marlins jersey was first highlighted by TV broadcast screen-capture blog 30FPS^[6] in October 2012, when his standout presence behind the home plate was captured on camera during a MLB match between St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants (shown below).

Spread

On October 24th, 2012, the sports news blog SBNation^[1] published an article titled "Who is the mystery Marlins fan at the World Series?", which identified the Marlins fan as Miami-based lawyer Laurence Leavy and noted his appearances at other baseball games. On the following day, Leavy launched the @Marlins_Man^[8] Twitter feed to highlight photographs of himself at various games.

Throughout October 2012, several news sites published articles about Leavy, including NBC Bay Area,^[3] Miami Herald^[4] and Deadspin.^[5] However, Leavy remained relatively unexposed until October 21st, 2014, when he was spotted behind the home plate during Game One of the World Series between the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants (shown below). Shortly after the broadcast of the game, the hashtag #MarlinsMan was mentioned more than 2,500 times on Twitter.

News Media Coverage

The return of the "Marlins Man" at the 2014 World Series games was promptly picked up by various local news publications, including Kansas City Star^[10] and Miami Herald^[11], as well as U.S. national news sites like CBS Sports^[12], ABC News^[13], USA Today^[14] and the Washington Post,^[15] some of which likened Leavy to "Where's Waldo" of the sports world. According to Leavy, the Royals owner had offered him a private suite in exchange for agreeing to move to another seat before the game, but he refused.^[7]