Marlins Park, where one need not watch baseball at all

Marlins Park, new home of the Miami Marlins, will feature, among many other oddities, a nightclub beyond the center-field wall.

As though the novelty putt-putt course known as Marlins Park didn't already have enough in the way of distractions, there's this: a nightclub beyond the center-field wall (pictured above, courtesy of UrbanDaddy).

The Clevelander, which the Internet tells me is a South Beach club of some renown, has opened a satellite venue in the Marlins' freshly minted, vaguely baseball-related complex. The aforementioned UrbanDaddy has the dirty:

Here’s how it works: you’ll buy a ticket for the Cleve on your game day of choice, make your way to the center-field entrance and head into what is basically a big slice of the bar you’d find on Ocean Drive, only located a mere 12 inches from the Marlins’ playing field. That means there's a pool, DJs, live body painting and the Clevelander dance team (baseball always needed cheerleaders).

MLB long ago surrendered to the notion that baseball on the merits will not adequately swell the bottom line. So we get things like dot races, bobblehead giveaways, kiss cams, t-shirt cannons, impossibly loud rock-and-or-roll smothering even the rumor of silence, Jumbotronned instructions on precisely when and how to cheer, and other frivolities designed to appeal to those who would rather not bother with watching the game on the field.

It follows, then, that we've now entered the era of DJs and table service. It also follows that, at Marlins Park, you need not go to the game at all in order to enjoy the spoils of the Clevelander.

While at the Clevelander, one assumes the players on the field recede into the background and become merely part of the atmospherics, not unlike ... fish in an aquarium.