Sentimental (seat) journey

The author props up the two Metrodome seats.

One day after a tricky portion of the Metrodome demolition was handled with an explosion, my wife finally and officially took possession of our Dome seats.

These seats are supposed to be Section 227, Row 22, seats 22 and 23. The seat numbers are easy enough to verify; in truth, they could be from any section or row and we'd never know the difference.

The significance for us is that these seats were where we sat on our first date. So Linda says, and she has the ticket stub from Aug. 2, 1986 as evidence, which is proof at least that even then she had higher expectations/ambitions for us as a couple than I did. (She's always been smarter and wiser than me.)

Now that we finally have the seats, the questions remain: How are we going to stand them up? They don't have legs, per se; they have brackets to be bolted into the concrete steps of the dome. (Update: Turns out she has that planned.)  And once we solve that issue, where should they go?

I have proposed the backyard patio; she thinks the basement. Since this is largely her project, she will likely carry the day on that.

Of course, as one of my co-workers said weeks ago when I was describing the purchase, to get the true Metrodome effect we would need to put them in the TV room at an odd angle to the TV so that we'd get a crick in the neck.

Notes, quotes and comment

Workers removed seats from the Metrodome last week.
Power to the building is to be cut off today, which
will deflate the Teflon-and-canvas roof.

Today the Metrodome is to be deflated, I believe for the first time intentionally. I had a bird's eye view as a college student living in a high-rise apartment to the east of the Dome as it was being built. I attended, I dare say, hundreds of games there. I was witness to some of the best moments there, and some of the worst. Some of them, to be honest, are kind of the same. I'm thinking of the Dave Kingman popup that never came down; I was there, wondering if the law of gravity had been repealed. It was both a travesty and impressive.

There's a piece of me that will miss the dump. Target Field is a better place to watch baseball, to be sure. But I spent too much time in the Dome not to feel some fondness for it.

---

Friday was the deadline for exchanging arbitration figures, and hence a day when the posturing between the two parties ends.

The Twins had three arbitration-eligible players -- Trevor Plouffe, Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak -- and signed all three Friday. The projected payroll is roughly $85 million, slightly more than in 2013. (It's projected because there are only 12 players officially signed; most of the 40-man roster has too little experience to have the leverage of arbitration or free agency.

---

The approval of instant replay was announced earlier in the week. I was wary when Bud Selig announced that expanded replay was coming; I remain wary today.

A couple of pluses: The system put forth last summer has been refined; and its clear that management and players union alike expect further revision after it's been seen in action.

It's worth noting, as well, that the "neighborhood play" on double plays is exempt from review. Nobody wants to force middle infielders to linger around second base to get clobbered.

So that's one significant change down, one to go. Exactly how baseball is going to legislate the home plate collision out of the game remains to be seen.

For sale: One Metrodome pitchers mound

The pitching mound is removed from the Metrodome.

My colleague Pat Christman found this little gem on the state of Minnesota's auction site: The Metrodome pitchers mound is for sale. Click on the "Pitching Mound" link on the left side of the page to get to the specifics.

Yes, the heap of dirt on which Johan Santana won two Cy Youngs, Frank Viola one, and Jack Morris threw one of baseball's most famous shutouts can be yours. (Late note: As pointed out in the comments, the "description" tab at the website says the mound was used from 2004 on, so Viola and Morris had nothing to do with this specific piece.)

This really underlines the fact that baseball in the Metrodome is done. Period, and forever.

Bidding closes Nov. 25. As of Thursday evening the site didn't show any bids, and the minimum bid appears to be $250. You have to go to Arden Hills to pick it up, though. They won't ship it.

There's a piece of me that wants this to wind up in Brad Radke's yard. (I figure he probably threw more innings off that  the Metrodome mound than anybody else.)

A reminder: The Dome still has baseball use

Noooo baseball in the Metrodome this spring.

It's easy to overlook, because the professional teams tend to suck all the oxygen out of the media room, but just because the Twins are no longer playing their games in the Metrodome doesn't mean the place was without baseball.

It was announced Wednesday that the roof tears in the fabric roof won't be repaired until sometime this spring. Which not only forces the Twins to find a new home for Twins Fest in January, but wipes out a slate of more than 300 college and high school games.

Those games don't draw like a Twins game, or even Twins Fest (which brought more than 30,000 fans to the Dome last winter). But they're vital to maintaining college baseball, with its February-June schedule, in the chilly Upper Midwest.

Jim Rueda, our sports editor, will be doing a story in the next few days about how the loss of the Dome will affect the local college teams.

The sky is falling (or just the roof)

The Metrodome was built about 30 years ago; the roof was
projected to be functional for 20 years. Guess what?

Say, didja hear that the Metrodome's roof caved in Sunday morning? Yeah, I thought you might have heard about that.

Looking at the images of the giant tears reminded me of two of the Dome's baseball lowlights, for both of which I happened to be in attendance:

• Friday, May 4, 1984, when Dave Kingman hit a pop-up that disappeared into a drainage hole and got caught between the roof's layers of fiberglass fabric; and
• Saturday, April 26, 1986, when a giant windstorm arose during the bottom of the eighth inning and ripped a hole in the Teflon.

Read the play by play of the second link. It's a marvelous deadpan sentence unmatched in Retrosheet's voluminous files:

TWINS 8TH: BRYDEN REPLACED FORSTER (PITCHING); Lombardozzi walked; On a bunt Gagne singled to second [Lombardozzi to second]; Puckett flied out to right [Lombardozzi to third]; Hatcher hit a sacrifice fly to right [Lombardozzi scored]; 15 minute delay because of roof collapse; Hrbek flied out to right; 1 R, 1 H, 0 E, 1 LOB. Angels 1, Twins 6.

Beauty. The play-by-play of the Kingman roof-rule double doesn't attempt to describe the delicious weirdness of the left side of the Twins infield congregating near the pitchers mound only to cower when the ball vanished from view. It just says: Kingman doubled.

The connection between the 1986 incident and the current problem  is obvious. The Kingman one? Well, so far as I know, that ball was never recovered. Now, it seems to me entirely possible that it's lying on the Dome turf under the snow.

Sun, wind and roof

It's unlikely that Dick Bremer reads this blog, but on the off chance that he does, a challenge:

Explain why it is more aesthetically pleasing to see an outfielder lose a fly ball in the sun — or misjudge it because of erratic wind gusts, as happened Wednesday afternoon to Detroit's Brennan Boesch — than to lose it in the Metrodome roof.

As a practical matter, it's the same result. Boesch's bobble resulted in a pair of unearned runs in a game the Twins won by one.

There is no environment that doesn't affect the game. None. Indoors, outdoors, turf, grass, whatever — baseball is a subtle game, with fractions of inches making huge differences. The challenges confronting outfielders in Target Field are different from the ones confronting them in the Metrodome, and the gusty winds of Wednesday may have been worse for them than the dingy canvas of the Dome.

Later in the game, FSN showed a youngster in the stands, which (again) started Bremer off on the tragedy of generations denied the opportunity to see the Twins play home games outdoors. This continued whining about the Metrodome is a tired act. It's history. It's past. Let it go.

Notes, quotes and comments

It was just something for me to bring a little piece of this place to the new place, sprinkle that on the mound. We've had some good times in this building.
— Joe Nathan after returning to the Metrodome mound after Sunday's game to grab a handful of dirt, which he plans to sprinkle on the mound at Target Field.

* The photo above is of the removal of home plate from the Dome after Sunday's game, the last game the Twins will play in the Dome. Didn't know it was so thick, did you?

* Another bad umpiring call played a key role in Sunday's playoff games. In the ninth inning in Coors Field, Philadelphia's Chase Utley checked his swing and bounced a dribbler off himself — and took for for first base. Home plate umpire Jerry Meals ruled it a fair ball, Utley had a "single" — the call at first base was rather dubious as well — and the Phillies wound up scoring the tie-breaking run.

* It's been a rough first round on closers. Nathan blew a two-run lead in the ninth inning on Friday. The night before, Ryan Franklin, the Cardinals' All-Star closer, coughed up a ninth-inning lead (with a little help from Matt Holliday). On Sunday night, Huston Street, pitching in a tied game, was the victim of the Jerry Meals bob-boo. And earlier Sunday, Jonathan Papelbon coughed up a 6-4 lead for the Red Sox with three runs in the ninth.

It took four years after the start of divisional play in 1969 for somebody — reliever or starter — to blow a ninth-inning lead in the playoffs. This year it's a daily occurrence.

* One reason Nick Punto got caught off third base Sunday: Derek Jeter has more range up the middle than he once did. While everybody else surrounding the Yankees denied what the newfangled fielding stats said about him, Jeter recognized the truth and did something about it. I suspect that two years ago — maybe even last season — Punto would have been correct in his assumption that Span's grounder had gotten through the infield.

The Dome will not die

There's something about this AP photo from Tuesday night that I just love. Delmon Young on his cell phone sitting on the Metrodome pitching mound in the dark.

It's a forlorn image at a time of great joy — he's out there for the call because there's a party in the clubhouse — in an empty arena ball park that's supposed to be dead now, at least for baseball.

It ain't dead yet. The Dome will not die, at least not easily and certainly not quietly. There was very little quiet to Tuesday's game.

There is something simultaneously hopelessly hokey and soul-stirring to the sound of some 54,000 people sing-shouting to a Journey song — Don't stop believin' — and laughable about their replacing a reference to Detroit with boos.

There is something odd about the guy who sat about a dozen feet away, a tattoo of this much-derided arena on his left biceps peaking out from the sleeve of his Michael Cuddyer T-shirt. I can't help but wonder: Is he going to be happy with that piece of body art in 20 years?

The game was a tease, riddled with mood swings, alternating brilliant exploits with jarring mistakes in judgment and spicing the mix with a few blown calls.

Did the Dome have something to do with it? Probably. Baseball is a liquid; it takes the shape of its container. The contest is always shaped by the venue.

Maybe Ryan Raburn would have misplayed Cuddyer's single to lead off the bottom of the 10th in another stadium. But it was in this one, in this mutant mushroom with plastic carpet atop concrete, and when the ball skipped past him only Cuddyer's lack of speed made it a triple rather than an inside-the-park homer.

Cuddyer was still on third one out later with Matt Tolbert at the plate when I noticed water falling onto the aisle steps. The Dome was leaking. Or crying.

Moments later Tolbert singled to tie the game anew. And the weeping Dome was just leaky.

And two innings later, another light-hitting infielder would insure himself a place in Twins lore with a game-winning single — this after screwing up as a pinch runner.

And we'll Casilla later today.

The Yankees have generally had immunity to whatever infection the Metrodome imposes on visitors, and this series opens in the Bronx, but there will be baseball played again at the Dome. Perhaps the Dome can stave off its baseball demise a bit longer still.

A Metrodome memory

I have been to several hundred Twins games in the Metrodome — a pretty good number considering that I started out boycotting the place. Eventually I concluded that I had to come to peace with the indoor arena or abandon the team, and I couldn't do the latter. (I tried, but that's another story).

So when it came time to write a farewell to the Dome for Monday's print edition, there was little chance of working everything I could say into 20 column inches. What follows here is a segment I wrote, then excised.

----

The Star Tribune on Friday listed the Top Ten baseball moments in the Dome. It turns out I and/or my wife were there for eight of the 10.

Games 6 and 7 of the ’91 Series; games 6 and 7 of the ‘87 Series. The welcome home after winning the 1987 pennant. The day the Twins became the first team in American League history to draw 3 million in a season.

And the two oddities.

Yes, I was there on May 4, 1984, when Dave Kingman’s popup went into the roof and stayed, and I was there on April 26, 1986, when a storm ripped a hole in the fabric during a game against the California Angels. Just lucky, I guess.

That latter probably should have scared me away from the joint for years.

The roof was rippling, the lights were whipping back and forth, the players dashed off the field and the crowd streamed into the aisles — and stopped, I suppose because there was no place to go. The concourse was nowhere near large enough to accommodate a crowd of nearly 32,000.

My friend and I were in the middle of one of those outfield rows. We couldn’t reach an aisle, much less the concourse, and I finally said, “Well, if we’re gonna die, it might as well be in a ball park.” We went back, sat down and watched the spectacle.

Call up the play-by-play of that game at Retrosheet.com and you’ll find this deadpan description of the home half of the eighth inning:

... Hatcher hit a sacrifice fly to right [Lombardozzi scored]; 15 minute delay because of roof collapse; Hrbek flied out to right ...

And that might not have been the biggest collapse of the night. Mickey Hatcher’s sac fly made the score 6-1 Twins.

But with a massive rent in the roof, the stadium operators had to jack up the air pressure to keep it inflated, and maybe that had something to do with the disaster that followed in the top of the ninth:

Double, homer, single, homer, foulout, walk, strikeout, homer. Three two-run dingers, the first off Frank Viola, the last two off Ron Davis, and the Angels won 7-6.

Yep, the Domefield advantage went the other way that night.

Showdown, Game 2: The Dome strikes again

The tragic number: Still stuck on 13.

---

Don Kelly is a 29-year-old with all of 50 major league games on his resume.

For a player like him, every day in the majors is wonderful. But Saturday had to feel like something less than that. For Kelly was the defensive sub in left field in the eighth inning who lost Orlando Cabrrera's fly ball in the dome roof.

"If he can see it, he'll catch it," said Dick Bremer on the Fox telecast. But he didn't see it, and he didn't catch it, and when the inning was over, the Twins had scored five runs and turned a 2-1 Tigers lead into a 6-2 Twins lead. And win.

We'll never know what would have happened had Kelly caught that ball. We know what did happen — a "double" for Cabrera, putting him and Denard Span in scoring position; an intentional walk for Joe Mauer; a bloop single from Jason Kubel on the 128th, and final, pitch from Justin Verlander; and then the three-run bomb from Michael Cuddyer (above).

And, for that matter, we'll never know what would have happened had the game been played without a roof.

After all, even major league players have been known to lose a fly ball in the sun.

My last (?) Dome game

Tragic number: 13. Can't count on the Royals beating Detroit every game.

My wife and I went Wednesday to what we expect will be our final game at the Metrodome (photo, right, by Linda Vanderwerf). While the journey itself will, for reasons irrelevant to the blog, likely be more memorable than the game itself, a few observations:

* More examples of how difficult it is to capture defense in the stats. Cleveland's Aaron Laffey — a pitcher I really like — was victimized repeatedly by the apparent decision by his teammates that cutoff plays are overrated. A Twin heads to third, the throw has no chances of getting him, the throw goes through, and the batter takes second base. Some variation on this play happened three times Wednesday, and it would have been four if Jason Kubel could run — and the Twins turned those extra bases into three runs.

Then there's Jose Morales's second double of the game — or, as I would have scored it, single and error on Shin-Soo Choo. Next guy (Matt Tolbert) hits an grounder to first, Morales goes to third, later scores. If Morales is held to a single, maybe the Indians can keep him out of scoring position.

These things matter to Laffey. Well, they matter to all pitchers, but they particularly matter to a Tommy-John-in-training. He's going to give up hits. He needs his defense to keep the double play in order, and they didn't do that Wednesday. So he gets saddled with six earned runs — but if the defense had been sharper, it's three or so.

Not to oversell Laffey's performance. He did give up 12 hits and three walks, and he didn't strike out anybody. He's been better.

* It sure seems as if they've had more problems with the Dome's dirt since the football season started and the Dome has to do double duty. At least twice now the grounds crew has had to come out for mid-game mound reconstruction, and on Wednesday Michael Cuddyer twice spent pitching changes over at the mound cleaning mud out of his spikes.

Mud. In the Dome. Strange.

* Jose Morales can hit. (Two doubles and a sac fly, a run and an RBI in four plate appearances.)

* Carlos Gomez can run. (Scored from first on a double by Cuddyer — who took third on the throw home. See above.)

* The bullpen made me nervous. Jose Mijares, Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier and Joe Nathan combined to throw 67 pitches to get eight outs. Only 36 of those pitches were strikes.