Twins Say Goodbye To Metrodome Tonight (Take Two)

The Minnesota Twins have called the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome home since 1982. Maybe that's why it's so hard to say goodbye. Sunday was supposed to be the final baseball game played there, but then the Twins tied the Tigers and now a 163rd game will have to take place before the baseball carpet is put away for good. The only stadium in the world to host the World Series, MLB All_Star Gar, Super Bowl and Final Four just doesn't want to go away. Or, as Joe Posnanski says, "The place won’t die." 

But it’s probably fair to say that no park in a half century has been quite as despised as the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. I suspect the Metrodome itself would consider that a point of honor. Even people who love it, hate it. Well, how else can you feel about playing baseball in a football stadium with plastic grass, a baseball-colored roof, an echo and a giant glad trash bags just beyond the fence? How else can you feel about going to the ballpark on a beautiful July day in Minneapolis — there aren’t many seasons in America as beautiful as Minnesota summers — and then finding yourself watching something resembling baseball in this dank building with all the romance of a bank vault. It’s like playing Monopoly in your friends basement when it’s 70 degrees and sunny outside.

“What’s wrong with you kids,” our mothers would yell. “Go play outside!”

And that’s what I always wanted to yell — I sensed that’s what EVERYBODY wanted to yell — while watching games in the Metrodome. You know what Dan Quisenberry said about the place when he first saw it, right? “I don’t think there are any good uses for nuclear weapons but, then, this might be one.” He said that about the Dome back in the mid 1980s. John Schuerholz, when he was GM of the Royals, said something similar — something about nuclear weapons and blowing the place up. The Metrodome did bring out violent wishes. Billy Martin, who knew a little something about violent wishes, was direct: “This place stinks,” he said. “It’s a shame a great guy like HHH had to be named after it.”

If the Twins lose tonight, no longer will they have to worry about air condition-powered home runs, white ceilings or baggies. Just, ya know, an open-air stadium, in Minnesota, in April and September.