Twins Need A New Ballpark, But Do They WANT One?

I'll start, I guess. I can maybe sell some stuff on eBay and get the fundraising rolling. Maybe I'll stand outside the Produce Palace near my home and shake a can, asking for donations. But I wish the good people of Minnesota would gather their own cash already.

I don't know if there's pending legislation, or if it's been tried and failed, but someone needs to buy the Minnesota Twins a new baseball facility. Now. Put all the other problems of the state aside. This takes priority.

OK, not really, but it should be on someone's to-do list over there. Gosh, I can't stand that damn Metrodome, which surely must be one of the five worst places in which major league baseball has ever been played.

But I wonder if the Twins really want a new ballpark, after all. As horrible as it is, it does provide them with a sinister home field advantage. And they've taken advantage of it, using it to win the 1987 and 1991 World Series.


Ugh.

It's not baseball that they play in the Metrodome -- it's ping-pong. Or pinball. It's aesthetically bankrupt, and it so drastically changes the way the game of baseball is played that it should be outfitted with enough explosives to blow it to kingdom come -- and then some.

The Tigers are getting ready to play three at the Dome this weekend, and already they're talking about the roof.

"The color of the ball is the same as the color of the (roof) top," Tigers outfielders coach Andy Van Slyke said in today's Free Press, talking about the extra work he was going to have to put Curtis Granderson and co. through before the games. "If you take your eyes off it (the ball), then you might not be able to pick it up again."

How MLB allowed one of their stadiums to be built with such a brainless deal as the roof being the same color as the baseball, is beyond me. But they did, and that's only part of what irks me about the Metrodome.

I guess my dander is up because the Twins have played there since 1982 and it was a bad idea even back then, as a brand-new facility. Twenty-six baseball seasons later, it's still bad. All I know is, the Twins played outside from their inception in 1961 to 1981 -- 21 seasons -- and so I don't know why in the world they can't do it again. At least make the new stadium, if it has to have a dome, equipped with a retractable roof. And paint it this time -- something other than white, too.

In my older age I find myself getting cranky easier. And that crankiness is leading me to suspect that the Twins enjoy their awful ballpark just fine, thank you, because it gives them an advantage unmatched in MLB.

Cowards.