Target Field through fresh eyes

The blogger and his mother in the
gold glove sculpture on Target Plaza.
Photo made by Bill Thoma.

A brother and sister-in-law who live in the San Francisco Bay area made their first trip to Target Field Thursday. So did my mother. I tagged along as the resident expert on the place.

Bill and Janet have adopted the A's as their team -- they had partial season tickets during the A's good years in the late '90s/early '00s -- and, of course, the Oakland stadium is currently regarded as a consensus bottom-of-the-heap ballpark. (Oakland and Tampa Bay, neck and neck for the worst; I've not been to either.)

So I was joking when I asked how Target Field compared to "Mount Davis" -- which is just a piece of the Oakland park, but a significant reason why it's so poorly regarded as a baseball playground. But Bill surprised me by saying he thought Target Field was superior to the Giants' stadium in San Francisco.

Janet on one advantage Target Field has on AT&T Park: They both have big gloves, but you can sit in this one.


As a proud Mankato provincial, I pointed out that the stone used in Target Field came from Mankato ("we have some really big holes in the ground") and guided Janet to Angie's Kettle Corn. Then she hunted down a second bag to take home. I also introduced Janet to Killebrew root beer and all three to the glories of Kramarczuk's sausages.
The Twins, of course, lost in disappointing fashion, and I could probably wring a post out of how they lost, but this was a day when the game was secondary to introducing my mom, my brother and his wife to a special place.