Twins Welcome Move to Great Outdoors

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Architecturally speaking, everyone's excited, in one way or another, by what's happening with the Minnesota Twins.

The Twins are moving outdoors, and their new home's quite a sight: A roofless ballpark whose bejeweled canopy makes for baseball's most dazzling Northern Lights.

While the potential of a World Series interrupted by blizzard gives pause, as does the vision of summer mosquito raids in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, it's not the man vs. nature angle that most intrigues.

The Twins are leaving behind several man-made helpers at the Metrodome, their home and pleasure dome since 1982.

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So long, white ceiling.

Goodbye, carpet field.

Farewell, sound-sealing roof and weatherproof comfort.

The Vikings have you all to themselves now.

The rest of the American League, meantime, is cheering.

Ding dong, the Metrodome is dead.

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"Teams just hated coming into the dome to play," says Jacque Jones, a Twins outfielder from 1999-2005 who is trying out for the team this year. "They had to deal with the white roof. It was loud. We had a lot of guys that could run, and hit the ball on the carpet and bounce it."

The smelly Metrodome was for the Twins what the dumpy Garden was for the Boston Celtics -- annoying, even unsettling for opponents.

Jones laughed as he recalled how visiting players complained upon leaving the sunshine for the stagnant dome.

"I thought it was funny because you're psyching yourself out before you even get there," he says.

Whether these Twins play on a parking lot or a sandlot, they appear talented enough to win the kindly American League Central. And even with their closer deluxe, Joe Nathan, in doubt because of a bum elbow, the Twins look like a lock to forge their ninth winning season in the last 10 years.

But will they fare as well as they would've if the Metrodome was still their home?

Can they plunge deep into October without help from their convex friend?

As former Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog noted more than once, the Twins never won a road game in either the 1987 World Series against Herzog's Cardinals or the 1991 World Series against the Braves -- but because they won all four games inside the Metrodome, they sprayed champagne.

Don't expect Target Field, the new home of the Twins, to have the same volcanic effect on visitors as it did on baseball executive John Schuerholz. Veins throbbing after he saw carpet-enhanced hops go against his Royals, Schuerholz sounded off to Minnesota scribe Patrick Reusse inside the tinny place.

"The only thing that can solve the Metrodome's problems is a nuclear bomb," Schuerholz said.

For many Twins teams, it was dome sweet dome.

"I loved it," says Jack Morris, a St. Paul native who won two games for the Twins in the 1991 World Series. "I probably pitched my best baseball over my entire career in that ballpark. It was always 72 degrees, and there was never any wind. And that's the greatest friend of a pitcher -- no wind.

"I think you're going to have less homefield advantage initially (at Target Field). The question is, will you have an environment that make it more like the dome was? Because, the dome was an advantage."

A visitor from Southern California, delusional enough to think baseball is a warm-weather sport, suggests to Morris that the dome-dwelling Twins accrued an energy advantage from playing 81 home games indoors. They were untaxed by cold or wind, brutal heat or humidity, rain or rain delays.

"No question," Morris says. "We do have grass now, which is going to be a little easier on somebody's legs. But mud's not easier than consistent turf. The crowd obviously will be the one thing that won't change that much. But playing indoors in inclement weather early in the year is a big plus. That's going to change.

"The second thing is we got used to the roof, and a lot of other teams never did."

Now, the Twins are like the other dopey northern clubs that brave the cold, wind, humidity and rain.

Nothing quite like watching ballplayers blow on their hands for nine innings.

For second baseman Orlando Hudson, formerly of the Dodgers, Diamondbacks and dome-dwelling Blue Jays, the Twins are his first "weather" team. The weather in Minnesota may not be any colder than in Chicago or Cleveland, but there will be bracing nights before summer arrives. And the Twins will play many more night games in April, Reusse says, than when they played at Metropolitan Stadium, their former outdoor home.

"It's going to be a challenge," Hudson says. "But, hey, we've all got to deal with it. You've got to bring your long drawers."

Ideally, a retractable roof would shelter Twins fans, just as a giant slider has protected Brewers fans in neighboring Milwaukee.

The Twins admit that a roof would be an apt touch; however, the $150 million price tag was too much.

The nine Twins employees that I queried concurred with no other objections about the move outdoors. That's understandable, given the beauty of the new ballpark, Target Field's radiant heating for fans and players, its cooling system for the summer ahead, the prospect of greater revenues, and the decade-long tug-of-war that preceded construction of the 39,504-seat ballpark.



From top to bottom, the Twins depict the venue change as a no-brainer.

"It was a very easy choice," says club president Dave St. Peter. "The Metrodome was not going to be the long-term home of the Twins. The Pohlads (who own the club) were not going to move the team, but eventually, I think the viability of the franchise would've been in significant doubt. The biggest factor is the number of quality seats."

Picking up a related theme, general manager Bill Smith describes the Metrodome as a "football stadium" and Target Field as something special. Smith doesn't mention it, but the extra money from the anticipated three million in attendance this year can only help in the club's ongoing attempts to sign its best player, catcher Joe Mauer, for a sum that could approach $200 million. Already the Twins have sold two million tickets for this season.

"We needed a baseball park, " Smith says from his Florida office on a rainy morning. "The revenues to the Twins from the Metrodome are extremely low. It was time to get to a baseball park that is designed specifically for baseball fans and baseball players. We're going to have some weather challenges, but I think we have technology on our side. The ballpark is built to handle weather."

Indeed, a heating system keeps the field at 37 degrees throughout the winter.

Smith doesn't disagree that the Metrodome helped Twins preserve energy over a season's six months, but he notes that overall attendance will be greater at Target Field, despite 16,000 fewer seats.

More people, more adrenaline.

"We're going to have incredible enthusiasm and energy in this ballpark," Smith says. "It's going to be a great place for players to play. It's going to be a great place for fans to watch a game. And we're going to have big crowds every day, and that's going to energize players. It's all positive for us.

"Our biggest challenge is we're going to have to create a new homefield advantage in different ways."

Because so many Twins players originally signed with the club, within the players' locker room there's a sense of civic pride over the new edifice, whose bulwark was fashioned out of limestone from near Mankato, Minn.

"We're all looking forward to a new stadium for the fans' sake," says pitcher Kevin Slowey, one of 26 homegrown players on the 40-man roster. "I think our fans deserve a great place to watch a great team."

Says outfielder Michael Cuddyer: "Fans are going to have big, wide-open concourse and plenty of restaurants."

"We're going to have incredible enthusiasm and energy in this ballpark."
- Twins GM Bill Smith Cuddyer, who hit 32 home runs for the Twins last year, says the "Domefield" advantage was often overstated, particularly after the Metrodome's bouncier carpet was replaced in 2004. He notes that homegrown Twins -- and those to come -- dealt with rugged weather while playing for the franchise's affiliates in Wisconsin, New York and Connecticut.

Besides which, Cuddyer says the Metrodome has a bad odor to it, which Twins beat writers liken to "stale popcorn" and "greasy hot dogs." Or worse.

"We're going to a baseball field, a ballpark," Cuddyer says. "You're going to have smells of the ballpark. Whereas in the dome, you didn't have any of those good smells. You had smells, trust me."

Hudson says the Twins' much-admired knack for being sound fundamentally, in the end, is far more important than where the games will be played.

The Twins say they expect the ballpark to play neutral, although there are rumblings that the team's best hitters, left-handers Mauer and Justin Morneau, will more easily reach the right-field seats than they did at the Metrodome.

Among the opponents who'll be extra curious to see how the Twins like their new home is Torii Hunter, who played 11 seasons with them before following big bucks to Los Angeles.

"I think it's going to be cold," Hunter says, smiling, from the Angels' desert home in Arizona. "It's going to be freezing. It's tough, man because it's going to be freezing. It's a different scene from playing in a dome. Playing in a dome is 70 degrees every day, no matter what it is outside."

Twice more, Hunter uses the word "cold." He laughs.

"You don't know if it's going to have an effect," he says. "Nobody knows, because nobody's played outside in Minnesota in the last [29] years. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting to see what the game's like."