No Place LIke Dome

A few years ago, I went to an Angels game with my friends. We got cheap seats, since it was a pretty last minute idea. They were playing the Oakland A's that night and since I'm not originally from California, I didn't really care about the outcome of the game. I especially didn't participate in the Nor-Cal vs So-Cal debate between the hometown Angel fans and the Oakland (or just Bay Area, in general) fans. My friends and I were stuck in between the two groups of feuding fans, and to throw a monkey wrench into the whole discussion, I screamed "May the better team win!"

The game was entertaining enough but not very memorable. It was a September game, and one of the two teams (my guess, the Angels) had already clinched the division. Neither team was really playing for anything. They were just trotting out their September call ups to get some big league experience, but this game will always have a place in my heart. Why? Because it was my first baseball game in an outdoor park.

I've been to many baseball games before, but they were all in the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dome's aren't very popular these days, but they looked really cool... back in the 1980s. The Twins played there and used all of the Dome's quirks to their advantage. There was the super bouncy astro turf, the "Big Baggie" in right field, and the whiteness of the dome itself which replaced the sky, day or night. Looking back, it was unnatural as baseball could be, but it's really all I knew, as far as professional baseball was concerned. It was almost like a perk of being a professional. Instead of having to play baseball in the gross Minnesota humidity with gnats and mosquitos buzzing about, a professional gets to play in a nice temperature controlled dome.

I never went to a Padres game at Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium. (I've been to Petco, to watch the Twins whoop on the Padres.) There was a huge sports void in my life when we moved to San Diego. Actually, it was a giant void, period. I stopped playing baseball, playing piano, going to church, and I stopped begging my parents to go to games. After a couple of years, the piano playing and the church going started up again, but baseball was kind of dead to me. Then the lockout happened, and I stopped caring until my Twins started to become competitive again at the turn of the millenium.

I'll always identify with the Twins. They were such a huge part of my childhood. I got to live during a time where they won 2 World Series'. I have the Homer Hankies to prove it. Actually my childhood in Minnesota was all kinds of awesomeness. The North Stars went to the finals in '91, The Mighty Ducks was released. It was a good time to grow up loving sports. I miss the ice skating, the sledding, the snowmen building and biking around lakes. I believe I left at a good time. The North Stars left (but were eventually replaced by the Wild, who I love), academic scandal broke out with University of Minnesota Men's Basketball team, the Twins almost got contracted, and will soon be moving out of the dome (not that I object to that). My Minnesota childhood was a pretty amazing experience, and for me to think that moving back one day will provide the same experience is pretty naive. It's not that I believe Minnesota has lost its luster, it's just that I'm not prepared to experience it full time as an adult yet. I may never have that opportunity to, and I'm okay with that. I may not be able to root root root for my Twins as the home team, but I'll still love them as the villanous visitors.