Stay-De-Um!

Pictured: Section 310, Sunscreen, and mild -but not bad- vertigo

FINALLY!

Can I get an amen, please? I was starting to feel like the only person who hadn't been to the new Twins Stadium. F#ck, my best friend who is about as far from being a sports fan had been there. What is HAPPENING IN THE WORLD!?!?

Here's what's happening: I am not a gi-normous sports nut. (Which, I think, mildly alienates me from about 90% of conversations with most dudes.) I mean I like seeing professional sports at whatever venue it is, but I won't actively pursue purchasing season-tickets...dig? (Or- historically speaking when I was a kid- pester my parents for tickets) And yes, I'd go see Twins games as a kid, sure...mostly through Scouts or Safety Patrol...but it wasn't like I really gave a poop about the game. (I'm a 7th inning "leave"er) And when you go to those promo games, invariably I'd wind up by the jumbo-tron in the nosebleed seats. (With one notable exception in 1993 when a friend was hooked up with bullpen seats b/c she worked at the hotel the opposing team was staying at)

Oh, oh...and don't get me started on stadium building. I was of the mind that the Dome was perfectly fine in spite of friends arguing the opposite. I mean the acoustics sucked. Fine. Andthe sightlines were meh, and you'd get vertigo just trying to navigate the stairs. But c'mon...it was built in the early 80's! People liked multi-tool stadiums back then! It was like a Triple-Change Transformer! And remember when we HAD to get a stadium for our new basketball team back in 1990 it set in motion the bitchin' and complainin' from the other franchises (See why I'm jaded and resentful? Look how well the Wolve's have done! )

So that was it. Meh on sports. Fond memories of powering down stadium beers and Dome Dogs. And if you're a professional sports team, you better bring home some medals or some shit before you whine about needing a new place to play. Boom. Truth bomb.

Being a fan of new experiences and having heard the hubbub from pretty much EVERYbody, when afforded the opportunity to check out a game at the new stadium (Versus Detroit, which is ironic in the sense that I feel like every game I saw between age 10-16 at the Dome was usual the Tigers) I hopped on it. And here is where I salt and pepper the crow I'm about to eat, because the thing about the Twins Stadium? What's really, really cool about it? Is how much it gets right. Which in turns, makes those faults of the Dome that much more glaringly apparent.

See, the Dome makes it so you're sort of "herded" in to the big concrete muffin tin. And ya gotta circle and circle to and move and climb to just find your seat. Madness. But at the new stadium you get to walk across the plaza to enter the stadium and you are greeted with BASEBALL. Maybe it's the bronze sculptures all around. But to Simple Mike, it was apparent that you're about to experience a Major-League Baseball game...and it's going to be awesome. And that's when I understood. And I didn't get my Hebrew National like I normally do, but instead got a deep fried turkey sammich. And a $7 Summit. And I was sold on traversing the escalators to the upper levels. I was sold on "non-trough" bathrooms where you uncomfortably relieve yourself "cheek to cheek" with another guy. I might not run out to get a jersey, moreover I'm still reserving the right to be skeptical as to the Vikes getting a new place to squat- but I'll tell you...if you haven't?

You gotta check out a game.

I'll go with you.

I still need to get a Hot Dog.

And I still love Saints baseball...