By Patricia Zengerle
MIAMI (Reuters) - Baseball fans carpeted downtown Miami in confetti Tuesday in honor of the World Series champion Marlins, winners of Florida's first major professional sports championship in nearly a quarter century.
The Marlins, who won the title with a 3-2 extra innings victory over the Cleveland Indians Sunday, were hailed as the team of all the Americas by a crowd waving championship banners and the flags of the United States, Cuba and Colombia, reflecting the team's Hispanic flavor.
"The Marlins have given Florida a pride that we've been seeking, a way to come together,'' Gov. Lawton Chiles said.
"There are a lot of franchises that like to claim they are America's franchise'' he said. "We know the Florida Marlins are more than America's franchise. They are The Americas franchise and The Americas champion.''
Police motorcycles with flashing lights led a convoy of convertibles carrying Marlins players, coaches and wives through downtown Miami as an avalanche of shredded paper cascaded from rooftops and windows.
Though the University of Miami Hurricanes won national football championships in the 1980s, the last time Miami had the opportunity for a similar fete of a pro sports team was 1974, after the Miami Dolphins won their second Super Bowl.
"It's great. It's something that the city needed. You see Cuban flags, Colombian flags, American flags,'' said Greg Johnson, 27, a rollerblading college student.
Crowds pressed in on the parade route with fans slapping the hands and backs of players as the vehicles moved by. Some schoolchildren skipped class to attend. "I'm really sick,'' a student said on local television from the parade route.
Miami police declined to estimate the crowd, which numbered in the tens of thousands.
"I grew up here and I've never seen anything like this,'' said Marlins catcher Charles Johnson, who played college ball at the University of Miami.
Players' wives waved pompoms and shook maracas. Cuban flags fluttered in honor of Marlins playoff hero Livan Hernandez and homegrown pitcher Alex Fernandez, and a group of fans waving Colombian flags surrounded a car carrying shortstop Edgar Renteria, the Colombia native whose single to center field scored the winning run Sunday.
"It is a great joy for Colombia. It is a country that has had a great problem with drugs,'' said Socorro Scott, a Colombian-American. "This guy Renteria has been a tremendous pride to the Colombian people.''
She said Renteria's success was typical of the American dream. "This is what the U.S. is. Opportunity for everybody that wants to do well in this country.''
Following the downtown parade, the players headed to Miami's Calle Ocho in Little Havana for a parade in the heart of the city's 600,000-strong Cuban community.
They also were scheduled to take part in a boat parade along the New River in Fort Lauderdale Tuesday afternoon, followed by a rally expected to draw 70,000 to Pro Player Stadium, where the Marlins won the title.
One group of residents used the parade to send a message to Cleveland. "Payback time. Homestead Florida,'' the sign read.
Homestead, a city of some 25,000 about 40 miles south of Miami, built a new baseball facility early in the decade as a spring training base for the Indians.
But when Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida in 1992, damaging the stadium and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to Homestead, the Indians decided to take their spring training elsewhere, dealing the struggling city an emotional setback and leaving it with an unused facility.
14:27 10-28-97