Dome Sweet Dome

I've found myself increasingly interested in the MLB pennant races over the past week. Admittedly, this happens to me in most years, as the Reds become mathematically eliminated and underdogs cross the line from "Wouldn't that be nice?" to "Holy Hell! This might just happen!" This past week however, has struck me with an unusual intensity. I didn't realize it initially, but had to stop and think on it, when I found myself yelling at the TV at a baseball game on Saturday.

Generally, there are four reasons this might happen:

A) I'm watching the Reds in a game that actually counts

B) I'm rooting for someone to complete one of those magical baseball moments, like a no-hitter or perfect game.

C) I'm rooting against a hated team to make the playoffs (i.e. Red Sox, Yankees, Cardinals)

or

D) The success of my fantasy team is on the line.

Saturday's game in question was between the Twins and the Royals. Neither team remotely falls in my "hated" zone, so that takes out reason C. The game didn't involve the Reds and, besides which, neither the Reds nor my fantasy team have been alive for some time. Thus go reasons A and D. And, other than being a fabulous pitcher's duel for 6 innings, no baseball feats were threatened in this game. If we take out reason B, then why was I yelling at this game? What came over me? It took me a while, but I figured it out: The Hefty Dome.

The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (opened in 1982) is a dinosaur by current ballpark standards. Instead of inviting natural grass, the field is made up of turf, with cut-outs for the base areas and the pitcher's mound. The outfield seats are mostly high above the wall, making room for pushed back bleachers that can be pulled out for football games. The classic MLB on TV camera angle from behind the pitcher shows only wall and exhaust fans. Balls bounce high off the floor, players don't kick up tufts of turf, and luxury boxes look like out-of-place eyesores. Charm is non-existent...unless you grew up a baseball fan in the 80's.

The Metrodome is everything baseball was in the 1980's. A inorganic, decidedly non-intimate crater of a park that lent itself towards speed and pitching (look at those foul areas!) instead of homers and "fan experience." And the Metrodome was one of the most legendary of these parks! Plastic that looks like garbage bags stretched over the right field bleachers: check! The Teflon dome responsible for hundreds or thousands of lost balls: check! The in-play speakers: check! And (cue the national anthem playing quietly in the background) GENERAL ADMISSION SEATING!!!! Say it with me: GENERAL ADMISSION SEATING!!!!

Can any one place remind me so much of both my days as a boy watching baseball on TV and going to Old Cardinal Stadium to watch the Redbirds play live? Let's face it, children of the 80's, these outdated, ugly, multi-purpose parks are the foundation of our baseball heritage. They're you're first car: not pretty, not completely functional, but a hell of a lot of fun. I have nothing but good memories of these parks. (Including sitting almost top-row in swirling winds in an early May game at the Vet. It wasn't cozy, but it was an experience).

It's funny. for all of the hubbub over how crappy the Metrodome was, I attended two ballgames there, and had a great experience both times. Say what you want about how close the fans sit now, and how great the experience is, the fans make the experience. And Twins fans make it more than most. For instance, do you realize that the Twins are undefeated at the dome in the World Series? A perfect 8-0. No team has a better home-field advantage than the Twins right now (not even you, Fenway, or you Wrigley. When everyone, and I mean everyone starts showing up for just the baseball, we'll talk). When the dome is packed, no one can beat it.

I think of my own fan-dom, and I wonder. Am I better off in Great American Ballpark than I was in the yellow deck of Riverfront Stadium? Sometimes I wonder. I love the standing room vistas of the new park, and many of the amenities, and the aesthetics...but is it all that much better? Is it better?

In the end, though, the better question is "does it matter?" Progress is progress and people who go to the park on a regular basis do not need to be confronted with the end-warehouse scene from every 80's action movie on the way to their seats. The deserve comfort. But I deserve my memories. At least, for one more damned October, I deserve my memories.

I call upon you, fellow baseball fans of my generation. If your team is out of the playoffs, band together in support of the Minnesota Twins. Band together in support of our baseball heritage. As artificial turf goes the way of the dinosaur (except in Tampa, though the Rays didn't exist in the 80's) and Toronto, where Skydome started the trend toward stadium decadence). I want to hear the shear volume as, one more time, Minnesota fans blow the roof off of the Hefty Dome and, as I turn 30, watch major-league baseball finally completely distance itself from the baseball I knew in my youth.

I'm not bitter about it, mind you. I love several of the new stadiums, and look forward to taking my own children to grow up watching baseball in these places (and watching many more games on TV at these places). I simply relish one last look at turf manipulated to look like a lawn-mower cut it, choppers that take off like super-balls, and exhaust fans...oh, those suspiciously large Metrodome exhaust fans. Oh, and the innocent youthful exuberance that baseball has never lost for me...just sometimes misplaced.

Long live the Dome! WHO'S WITH ME??!!!!!!!!!!!