Ten years ago, the Marlins made a little baseball history in a place nobody had seen an MLB game before.
On July 3, 2016, Miami beat the Braves 5-2 at Fort Bragg Park on the U.S. base in North Carolina, a nationally televised Sunday Night Baseball matchup on ESPN. The Marlins became the first team to win a sporting event on an active U.S. military base, and the game also stood as the first MLB game played in the state of North Carolina.
The night belonged to Adam Conley and a Miami lineup that kept finding ways to add on. Conley and Atlanta starter Matt Wisler matched zeros through four innings before the Marlins finally cracked through in the fifth.
Adeiny Hechavarría led off with a triple on the first pitch of the inning, then scored on J.T. Realmuto’s RBI single.
Realmuto, Martín Prado and Christian Yelich followed with three straight singles to make it 2-0.
Conley kept rolling from there. He finished with six shutout innings, allowing four hits and one walk while striking out the Braves’ chances of getting back into it. His best work came in the sixth, when he set Atlanta down in order.
Miami kept stretching the lead in the later innings. Prado singled home Realmuto in the seventh, then Giancarlo Stanton opened the eighth with a triple and scored on Derek Dietrich’s sacrifice fly to make it 4-0. Realmuto put the finishing touch on his big night in the ninth, launching a solo homer to lead off the inning and complete a three-hit, three-run, two-RBI performance.
The Braves finally got on the board against AJ Ramos in the ninth after scoreless relief innings from David Phelps and Fernando Rodney. Erick Aybar doubled in a run, and A.J. Pierzynski added a sacrifice fly that scored Jeff Francoeur.
Miami piled up 13 hits in all, with Realmuto, Prado and Yelich each collecting three. Hechavarría added two. Atlanta managed five hits, with Freddie Freeman and Aybar each finishing with two.
The 5-2 win gave the Marlins the series victory, and it still stands out as one of the stranger, and most memorable, nights in franchise history.
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Morillos rise has been especially notable because of the way he has returned to form after Tommy John surgery, with his stuff drawing attention in both 2025 and 2026. Hes been missing bats at a promising rate and working with a four-pitch mix, with his sweeper standing out as the pitch that gives hitters the most trouble. For a franchise trying to prove its pipeline can produce real impact arms, Morillo is the kind of name worth watching closely. [Read more 🡒]