Farewell Metrodome, and Good Riddance

The Minnesota Twins will open the 2010 baseball campaign at Target Field, and no one could be happier, other than the Detroit Tigers, than me to say farewell to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

If the Twins were to play 162 games within the confines of the Metrodome, I’m convinced they’d set a new record for regular season wins. Playing on the road, the Twins are just another ballclub; but at home they are nearly invincible. In football, the home crowd is considered the twelfth man. For the Twins, the Metrodome surely is the tenth man.

How else can you figure that the Twins lost the first two games of a weekend series against the Yankees at the new Yankee Stadium, scoring only eight runs, after sweeping the Tigers, at home, while surrendering seventeen runs over three games? The week before, the Twins split a two-game series in Detroit, losing the second game 9-0.

The players come and go, but over the last twenty years the Twins at home have been a bane to most visiting teams. Playing under a roof on an artificial surface makes for a different brand of baseball and the Twins build their teams on defense and speed. On most nights they’ll beat you with small ball. But with the M & M boys (Mauer and Morneau), they can beat you with power, too.

Yet their pitching, too, is good enough on most nights to keep it close, until the offense gets it going.

Low-scoring affairs are a rarity at the Metrodome, and no lead, no matter how large, is safe. The Twins can win 1-0 the result of good pitching; yet when they don’t get pitching, they’re as likely to win 14-10, as they did last Wednesday against Detroit.

It’s true that playing under a dome and on artificial turf is a disadvantage to the visiting team ─ the harder surface allows for a much faster game, while the fly ball can hide itself against the dome from the uninitiated defender.

I for one have never appreciated baseball played indoors, and I’m pleased new stadiums are going back to playing under God’s blue sky and on His green grass, the way the game is meant to be played, even if it means facing the elements, which leaves neither team advantaged.

It’s true that April temperatures in Minnesota can drop into the thirties, and that snow is still a threat, but if that means a more level playing field when the Tigers visit Minnesota, then so be it. May the better team win, without the benefit of a tenth man.

Farewell to the Metrodome, and good riddance.