Saturday,
April 3, 2010
Night One at
Target Field
On Saturday morning at
10:00, I will be on DW
The Great’s podcast, so check that out.
I feel the need
to start by mentioning that I was “stuffing my face” with an order of Nachos
Grande. Yes, that was me and my brother who were on the television during the
bottom of the 5th inning of last night’s Twins/Cardinals tilt. Bert
Blyleven said, “Now that is relaxing. That gentleman is stuffing his
face at the ballpark.” Or something like that. Within seconds, my phone was
vibrating. I had four texts, two e-mails and some facebook messages. Each of
those numbers increased in the next few minutes. Apparently it was quite the
topic on Twitter including pictures. Some don’t look too bad. Some looked
horrible. Oh well, what do you do? It was about 6:33, so I had to eat
something. It was kind of comical. But if nothing else, my TwinsCentric
windbreaker and my SethSpeaks.net hat got some air time.
On Friday, I
left work at noon, and met my brother at about 1:45. We got to Garage A by
about 2:00, and walked through the walkways toward the stadium. It was raining
hard outside. After it slowed just a bit, we walked down onto Target Plaza, but
then it started raining again. We just stood under a walkway. It was plenty
warm, with temperatures in the 60s. It rained right up until about 3:00.
Fortunately, a little after two, I saw a few people walk in our direction. I
recognized a couple of them. Steve Singleton, the father of
the Twins infield prospect, came over. We had met in Phoenix at an Arizona Fall
League game, so it was nice to catch up with him again. The one bit of
information that he shared with me that I feel comfortable telling people is
that Steve Singleton, the son, has become a switch-hitter this
spring. So far, it has been a successful decision for him. But it was great to
talk baseball with him. I also me Steve’s, the son, girlfriend. We had been in
contact for quite some time via facebook, so it was very nice to meet her in
person as well. I’m sure our friend Roger
would have been jealous!!
We went into the
stadium about 3:10 and went up to the Legends Club. Unfortunately, we could not
get into that section without a ticket to that section. Then it was confusing
because until game time, all of the escalators only go up, so we had to go up
to the top and then find an elevator to go back down to the main level. Our
seats were down the left field line, in the lowest level, in the bleacher
seats. Great seats.
The only
negative about those lower level bleacher seats are that you can’t see the
scoreboard. On some plays, they show replays on the right field wall. I wish
they would do the pregame information or at least the lineups on that screen.
I think Dick
Bremer over-romanticizes the whole outdoor stadium thing. I mean,
listening back to the broadcast later last night, I heard him at one time say
that it was exciting that the players would be able to see their own shadows in
the field for the first time in thirty years. That takes it a little too far.
However, there are some things about last night’s game being outdoors that was
very cool. I have to admit, watching the grounds crew take the tarp off of the
infield about an hour before game time was kind of fun. We heard about the
drainage system under the field. Well, based on how much it rained from about
1:30-2:45, even the outfield barely looked wet. The concourse traffic was much
smoother on Friday night than it had been last Saturday during the Gophers
game. I think more people were into watching the game as opposed to
sightseeing. The corporate advertising was definitely out around the stadium
for this game, and I’m sure there will be more by Opening Day.
Before the game,
Ron Gardenhire announced that Jon Rauch would
be the team’s closer to start the season. I don’t have real strong feelings
about that either way. I’m sure he’ll do just fine. My question is actually
more about what happened over the last few days since Gardy announced that the
team would be using a Closer-By-Committee approach.
As expected, Joe
Mauer got a nice ovation when his name was announced before the game
and when he came up for his first at bat. But the loudest ovation of the game
came for Jacque Jones, who clearly was taken aback by it. I thought it was
great. As I’ve said, Jones was probably my favorite Twins player of the early
part of the ‘00s. Jones also made a diving catch to end the previous
half-inning.
Denard
Span got the crowd going early. He ended the top of the 1st by
tracking down an Albert Pujols fly ball to deep right center
field. He led off the bottom of the inning with a triple down the 1B line. His
next at bat, he drilled a long home run through the wind and into the right
field seats for a home run.
Justin
Morneau has really struggled the last two weeks of spring training. How concerned
am I? Zero.
What a thrill
for those non-roster minor leaguers to get the opportunity to be involved in
these games to help open the new stadium. Big league hotel rooms and
accommodations. Their names are on their lockers in the locker room. They get
an opportunity to play in a big league stadium in front of 40,000 fans. They
got to see Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew. I
just think the honor is tremendous.
Brian
Dinkelman came into the game in left field the last few innings. In the top of the 9th,
he caught a fly ball on the warning track. The entire lower level bleachers
crowd started chanting, “Dink-el-man! Din-kel-man! Dink-el-man!” It was kind of
cool. Then when he came to bat in the bottom of the 9th, the chant
extended to more of the stadium. That is kind of a random note, but I thought
it was neat and probably made him feel pretty goodl
Anthony
Slama got the Twins out of the top of the 8th. He was rocking some actual
stir-ups. It was also great to see Kyle Waldrop get to pitch
the top of the 9th. He got the first out on a ground out. Then the
next batter hit a line drive off of his glove wrist. That had to hurt. He had a
scoreless frame.
The Minne and
Paul Minnesota sign is pretty neat. It is lit up throughout the game. After Denard
Span hit his home run, Matt Holliday turned and watched the sign. The
two were shaking hands and the lights were lighting up. Any time a Twins
pitcher would record a strikeout, the Minnesota border would flash randomly
around it. I am looking forward to seeing what all happens on the big screen.
Once the game
finished, we left pretty quickly, got to the car and easily got out of the
area. It was so much easier than I thought. I hate to give away too much, but
if you’re driving in on 394, park in Garage A! It’s simple! It’s $13, which I
think may be a little high, but for how convenient and easy it was, it was
totally worth it.
The rain stopped
two hours before game time and it didn’t even sprinkle the whole game. It was
in the low-60s at game time and was around 55 degrees the game concluded. It
got a little chilly, but it was comfortable.
Also, I bought
tickets via Stub Hub for the first time, and I can’t believe how easy it was.
The main thing,
I am excited to get to my next Twins game at Target Field. This first game was
terrific. Were you there? What were your thoughts? Leave comments here.