Target Field

I know you've all been waiting to hear what I think of the new Twins stadium. So here you go.

As far as the stadium goes, it's really nice. It's a significant improvement over the Dome in its newness and the fact that it's shaped like a baseball field, not a football field. It incorporates a lot of Twins history, both in design and, cleverly enough, in concessions (Killebrew Rootbeer, Hrbek's Restaurant, Tony Oliva's Cuban sandwich stand). Our hot dogs are still better than Kansas City's (not that that takes much). The scoreboard is nice and big, and you can actually understand what is said over the loudspeakers. It also has closed-captioning on screens along both base lines.

That being said, the complaints I thought I would have ring true. It's expensive (both the tickets and the concessions). Parking is a bear. It was windy and fairly cold and a tad rainy. (Thankfully I was under a bit of an overhang and the wind was gusting in the other direction. Others were not so lucky. And Enrique and the girls got drenched and froze to death a couple nights later.) Also, I couldn't find onions for my hot dog, or napkins. Why those weren't next to the other condiments, I don't know.

But on the other hand, baseball is meant to be played outside. We had some sun, and there was a double rainbow. Happily, you can't actually smell the incinerator that's next door. Sadly we don't get fireworks for homeruns, but I s'pose who cares, as long as we get the homeruns.

As for the game, I couldn't have chosen a much better one. We were leading until the 9th inning (thanks to an amazing pitching performance by Nick Blackburn) when a bad guy hit a rocket to right field tying it up. They let Handsome finish the inning, though, and Pretty Boy Hardy hit a triple and scored in the bottom of the inning to get Handsome a complete game win, and to give Target Field its first walk-off victory. It was great.