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Status:
"Let's replace the puppet show with actual leadership."
(set 16 hours ago)
Location: Suburban Dallas
52,700 posts, read 47,981,010 times
Reputation: 33875
It's a very impressive facility and I can't wait to see how it will look on television. The designs are new and fresh and will play in very nicely with the downtown landscape. It should be a fabulous place for the fans to watch a game. Now, it will get interesting in April and October weatherwise, but the officials do have a solution when it gets too cold. But those warmer months, now, that's going to be a heck of a place.
I hope the Twins play well in Target Field. I know they're gonna miss the home-field advantage of the Metrodome. However, the Twins would be able to make extra money with luxury suites (since the suites at the Dome were owned by the Vikings).
Most people up here would probably say not putting a roof on was the best thing they could have done although there's still plenty that would agree with you.
It was a long process to get this built and the extra $200M (or more) to add a retractable roof would have likely pushed this off indefinately. The Hennepin County board of 7 members took matters into their own hands and passed the needed funding by a 4 to 3 vote. No state, city or voter involvement was required. I believe all 4 of the commissioners won their re-election bids.
I haven't seen any of the retractable roof stadiums that ended up looking like anything more than a giant airplane hangers and the structure required to support the roofs end up basically sealing off the ballparks from decent views of the surrounding areas as well as severely limit the amount of sun to reach the stands. My impression is that these stadiums are not heated anyways.
In spite of the general impression, Minneapolis is actually well south of the Arctic Circle and my recollections of ball games at Metropolitan Stadium are pretty much void of blizzards or frozen fields. Comparisons to other Northern Cities with outdoor baseball shows that this argument for an enclosed stadium simply has little merit. I would venture a guess that we are probably "drier" than most (if not all) of the following as well. Avg high/low for April...
62/32 - Denver
59/42 - Chicago
58/38 - Detroit
57/38 - Cleveland
57/36 - Minneapolis
56/41 - Boston
54/36 - Milwaukee
Although I can certainly understand the desire to put a roof on Miller Park by our less hardy friends in Wisconsin.
The comparison to outdoor baseball years back in the old Met Stadium and today is apples to oranges.
Not that the weather has changed that much, but the baseball season goes much later into October than it used to.
I got drafted into the Navy October 14,1965 .
As we were leaving Minneapolis, we found out the Twins lost the World Series to the Dodgers. ( final game of the World Series--October 14)
If anyone regularly attends high school football games in Minnesota, they know how nasty and miserable Friday night games can be once October comes. Football can be played in a cold miserable rain. Baseball can't.
I think you have a selective and short memory, Genghis.
Also, look how many spring high school softball and baseball games get canceled in April.
The Twins can always resort back to the Metrodome if they reach the world series' November games. That place might be begging for some revenue by then.
Why didn't Minnesota put a retractable roof on the new stadium like in Seattle? That way they'd get the best of both worlds.
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