FTLOSBW's Trip to Target Field - Post Game Report
Yup, it's f'ing sweet.
Click here for the slideshow.
Better than you can imagine. You'll never hear the words "I miss the Dome" (sure, that is an easy one but it's like we never played there now.) Our visit felt like we were in another city on vacation and went to the local pro ball team's home game.
Here is a sampling of our thoughts:
1. It's just cool that the light rail pulls right up to Gate 14.
2. People were actually milling about before the game, beers in hand, hanging out.
3. Jersey count: Mauer - 80%, Morneau - 10%, Everybody else - 10%; we saw everyone from Carew to Dick Such. Best of the day was the Big Wiz sighting in a custom Twins jersey with "612" on the back (don't let looks fool you, he kicks it.) Yeah, we had no idea who he was either.
4. Not cookie-cutter and not retro-lame-chic. Great nods to Twins baseball history without having jerk-offs in knickers dancing around shoving it down your throat.
5. Restaurant highlight - Town Ball Tavern. Great pictures of all Minnesota town ball stadiums, floor is the old Laker's hardwood baseketball floor. Best part is a 20ft terrace bar that hangs over the light rail and looks into the warehouse district.
6. Restaurant lowlight - Hrbek's. DTK summed it up best: "It's shitty but not because they did a bad job, it's shitty because it's probably how he wanted it." The ceiling is cool, the bar is cool, the outdoor area is semi-cool. The problem is that the rest of it looks like he finished it himself. It was like he went to Kinko's blew up some pics of him during his playing days and hung them on the wall. There is an odd Hrbek-'Warhol' picture in the corner (his image in pastels) and a huge opening to the back of a crappy kitchen.
7. There is not a bad spot to watch the game. Tons of open areas to stand, hang out. Lots of plasma t.v.'s.
8. No need to shed a tear over the elimination of the Dome Dog, Schwiegert's better.
9. We have a bullpen!
10. The centerfield sign of the "Twins" shaking hands across the river sign is really that cool.
11. It's outside. It rained during the game, rained hard for a bit. People could get shelter and still watch the game.
12. You could hear things like the crowd, it wasn't like the announcers were inside a pool.
Bonus part of the day was the invite we received from friends to join them on Friday night for the park's first night game.
2 Comments:
Nice, Jan, nice. Outstanding summary and outstanding photo album. I didn't know about the Lakers' hardwood floor in that bar. Fantastic.
Here are the NY Times' writer's thoughts:
MINNEAPOLIS –- It’s the first day at a new ballpark, and there are so many new things to see that your mind is bouncing a thousand different directions. At least mine is. So as I sit in the press box here at Target Field, I’ll share a few stylistic observations, rapid-fire:
•You cannot overstate how cool the massive old-fashioned Twins logo in center field is. The Minneapolis and St. Paul characters will share a neon handshake every time a Twin hits a homer. Like the Mets’ apple or Bernie Brewer’s slide or the Phillies’ giant Liberty Bell, this is a distinctive feature that will have special appeal to kids.
•Many ballparks have a distinctive background color: the faded green at Fenway Park, the orange/red brick at Camden Yards in Baltimore, the light blue at Dodger Stadium, and here it is a charming kind of light yellow. There were 100,000 square feet of limestone used in construction, trucked in from Mankato, Minn., and the color jumps out at you from the left field corner, the tops of the dugouts and the box that overhangs right field (that, by the way, is another cool feature, borrowed from Tiger Stadium and Citi Field).
•There are four advertisements on the outfield walls, but otherwise there’s a refreshing lack of ads. There are several spots where the Twins could have shoehorned billboards, but they did not. The resulting solid colors are visually calming. Love it.
•There seem to be a lot of seats above the outfield, fairly close to the field, an intimate bleacher kind of experience for less than $30 per ticket. Good value.
•Above the bullpens, there’s a scoreboard that apparently will keep track of the pitcher’s running box-score line, along with total pitches, broken down by balls and strikes. There’s also a column for the pitcher’s WHIP. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have that at Metropolitan Stadium.
•The scoreboard at the very top of the ballpark has the Twins script above it, with the word “win” underlined, as always. That’s one of the coolest little subtleties of any logo in sports.
•As Peter Pascarelli of ESPN points out, it doesn’t remind you of anywhere else, and that’s a good thing. But there are some of the best elements of other parks, like the evergreen trees behind the center field fence (similar to Coors Field in Denver) and the nearby downtown skyline, like Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Cleveland.
•The gates are numbered 3 (for Harmon Killebrew), 34 (Kirby Puckett), 29 (Rod Carew), 14 (Kent Hrbek) and 6 (Tony Oliva).
•There’s a sunshade canopy atop the ballpark, which covers a good portion of the third deck. The lights are built within it, a look I’ve never seen before.
•O.K., there’s no roof. But it’s a nice afternoon for day one. We’ll deal with the elements later.
April 14, 2010 at 5:45 PM
Awesome stuff. Sorry I can not add more, just swamped and I barely have had time to read the blog.
Yesterday's Twins highlights looked sweet. Just a constant circling of Twins on the bases and Liriano Sliders striking out BoSOx.
April 16, 2010 at 1:07 PM
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