Tag Archives: american league ballparks

Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome

Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Number of Games:  1
First Game:  June 13, 1993 (A’s 7, Twins 6)

(The Metrodome is no longer used for baseball as of the end of the 2010 season. It was town down in 2014.)

The Metrodome is the best among all of the domed stadiums I’ve seen, which is a little like being the tallest mountain in Rhode Island.  I like its location settled in so close to downtown Minneapolis, and I’m sure that Vikings fans (and, for that matter, Vikings) appreciate the protection from subzero weather in December and January, but I certainly wish that I could have been out in the sun on the Sunday afternoon I began my 1993 Erotic Love and Baseball Stadium Tour.  I drove the sixty minutes up from my sister’s college graduation from Carleton and settled into a month of crashing on friends’ floors.  (Which means, on Jennifer’s poster, the Tour begins with my sister’s name.  Sick, I know, but I didn’t know any other women in Minnesota, so my sister will have to do.)

First, a pleasant surprise:  my seat was in the second row, just a bit to the third-base side of home plate, about even with the edge of the foul ball netting.  Not too shabby…I had spoiled myself with the best seat of

the trip on the first game.  I was close enough to the action that I noticed some things I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed:  Dave Winfield is an exceptionally large and athletic man…way more impressive in person.  Also, Kirby Puckett’s chubbiness is just as evident from up close.

A couple of the Twins, including Winfield, were chatting with a sixty-ish woman in the front row, best seat in the house.  A season-ticket-holding married couple nearby told me what her story was.  She was an 81-game season-ticket holder who never, ever missed a game.  She worked as a nanny over the winters, but was finished by the spring so she could devote her summers to the Twins.  She was the most knowledgeable woman the about the Twins out there.  “She knew Hrbek was going on the DL before the media did,” they told me, amazed.  I was fairly amazed too.  Working six months out of the year to spend the other six in a dome?  I mean, Fenway, sure, but a dome?

Which leads me to a fairly obvious question, and the first thing I thought of when I saw the artificial turf.  If you had a room in your house that was as big as an indoor stadium, would this be the color of the carpet you choose?  Green grass, well, that’s pleasant.  Green carpet–that’s annoying.  Is there a rule that says the carpet in an indoor stadium has to be green?  Can we select some other color?  I suggest black–it’d be easy to pick up the ball and the foul lines, and teams could save money by cleaning and vacuuming it less often–but that might take away too much light.  Boise State University’s football stadium has blue astroturf. 

While blue is a fine color, on the rare occasions I see highlights on ESPN, I don’t think “gee, how different and daring,” I think “man, I need to adjust the tint on my TV.”  A dull red might work, but would blend in with the dirt cutouts around the bases.  Does anyone have a more attractive color than green for the few remaining astroturf fields?

One other lesson I learned…always pay attention.  I had my glove, needless to say, as I was in prime foul ball territory (and on an aisle, allowing for greater maneuverability).  Between innings, though, there was a pitching change, and I was focused on my scorepad to close the book on the previous pitcher, when–WHACK!–the side of my seat was hit by an errant throw from, I believe, the third baseman trying to get the ball back to the dugout, or maybe a left fielder. I’m proud to have been focused on the scorebook, but if I’d been looking at warmups, I surely would have seen the ball coming in, and for goodness sakes, I was wearing my glove–I should have led off the trip with a souvenir.  But I wasn’t, and I didn’t.  Buzzard’s luck…but I try to stay more focused now.

The game itself was quite fun…the first six players for Minnesota reached base, four scored, and they had a 4-1 lead after one inning before losing the lead in the top of the 6th, tying it up in the bottom, then giving up two runs in the top of the ninth and only responding with one.  Shane Mack hit two home runs.  I believe that a home run, especially a long one, looks most dramatic from behind home plate…you can really see the trajectory and respect the distance more from as close as possible to where the ball was hit.  I also have some kind of sense that, as much as I hate domes, home runs may look more dramatic indoors than out.  Something about the ball going almost all the way to the other end of a huge building is impressive…outdoors, the ball is really competing against the size of the world, or maybe against infinity.

Oh–this was the second game I ever tried to score…and the last I ever tried to score in pen.  I got a notion that it would be cool to score the whole trip with the same Minnesota Twins pen I bought at the Metrodome…but my scorepad is such a mess that I’ve used a pencil on all 100+ games since.  (Except one where I couldn’t find a pencil to buy.  Safeco Field let me down.)

I got on a plane that night…I had a game in St. Louis, where I’d left my car with relatives, the very next day.

***May 2005:  There is now a taller mountain in Rhode Island.  I like Tropicana Field more than the Metrodome.  Barely.
 

BASEBALL STUFF I SAW HERE:

Shane Mack hit two home runs.  This is especially impressive since he only hit 10 during the entire year.

Eddie Guardado starts in his first major league appearance of what is, to date, an 11-year major league career.  Lasts 3 1/3 innings in a no-decision.

Goose Gossage pitches a scoreless 1 1/3 for Oakland.  I am surprised to see him still alive and well with a 2.53 ERA (that will balloon to nearly five by the end of the season).

Dennis Eckersley gives up Mack’s second homer, deep to straightaway center, but still gets a save.

(Written August 2001.  Updated July 2005.)

Arlington Stadium

arlington
Frank Albanese.  From Frank’s Ballpark Page.  Used by permission.

Arlington Stadium, Arlington, TX

Number of Games:  1
First and Last Game:  August 4, 1992 (A’s 9, Rangers 0)

Arlington Stadium was demolished in 1994.

Arlington Stadium was the one big-city stop for Dad and I on my way to start teaching in rural Louisiana.  We had about a week to get from Denver to Baton Rouge, so Dad and I made a few rules for the trip.

Rule 1:  Avoid the interstate at all costs.  When possible, we would even take roads that were not on our map.  For instance, if there was one town in eastern Colorado or western Kansas, and another town 12-20 miles away, and no road between them on our map, we knew–just knew–that if we went to the first town and drove out of it in the direction of the second, we would be on a county road between them.  And we often were.  That is an incredibly fun way to travel.

Rule 2:  We would choose destinations based on the names of towns we liked.  Our first destination was Punkin Center, Colorado.  It ain’t much–just a couple of buildings–but I’ve been there, and you haven’t.  Then we headed down through southeastern Colorado, through some alienatingly flat (but still somehow beautiful) grasslands in southwestern Kansas, on our way to the place we both wanted to spend the night–Hooker, Oklahoma.  How could Dad and I travel across the country without visiting a Hooker?  We made it there about sunset and looked for a hotel, but the one we found, to be honest, looked like a small-h hooker motel, so we retreated to Kansas for the night.  We did pass Hooker High School, however, which boasted Hooker Pride.  The Oklahoma Panhandle…well, it once was no-man’s-land, belonging not to the Native Americans, European Americans or the Mexicans, but to nobody.  I now know why.  Nobody wanted it.  It’s flat, boring, bleak, and depressing.  Hooker is 15 miles from Guymon, Oklahoma, and from Hooker, you could not only see Guymon, but you could see where the dead-straight road you were on cut through Guymon.  Very, very dull, bleak, and hot.  But I’ve been there, and for that alone, it’s worth going.

Rule 3:  Avoid Texas if we could.  I was raised in an exceedingly tolerant and loving household, where we were taught to be kind and respectful to everyone regardless of race, nationality, gender, creed, or sexual orientation.  The only real exception to this rule was Texans.  Don’t get me wrong, some of our best friends are Texans, and we certainly wish them well.  But I think Dad saw a few too many wads of used chew on otherwise white ski slopes (I once even heard a few folks shouting “yee-haw” on the chair lift) to extend his tolerance to Texans.  But when I suggested we do a little father-son bonding at a major-league baseball game, A’s versus Rangers, he decided to set foot in Texas to bond with me.  That was quite a sacrifice, Dad, and I thank you for it.

There was nothing terribly wrong with the stadium, although it had more a minor-league feel than anything else.  Dad and I sat down the right-field line and watched Ranger pitching absolutely make a mockery of the game.  But we focused our binoculars on Rickey Henderson’s stance, marveled at how patriotic the Texas folk were (everyone boisterously singing the national anthem), and talked about whatever we thought about, since the game was so bad it wasn’t a distraction.  You know–we bonded.  You don’t need a Hooker for that.

BASEBALL STUFF I’VE SEEN HERE:

Jose Canseco walked 5 times in 5 plate appearances.  The next day, he walked in his first 2 plate appearances, which set a major league record for consecutive walks by a batter–seven.

Terry Steinbach comes to the plate with the bases loaded in each of his first three at-bats.

Dave Stewart and a reliever combine for a 4-hit shutout.

(Originally written August 2001.)

Tiger Stadium

 

upperight

© Lowell Boileau, The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit, http://DetroitYES.com. Used by permission.

Tiger Stadium, Detroit, MI

 

Number of games: 2
First game:  August 11, 1980 (Tigers 8, Red Sox 7)
Last game:  September 3, 1982 (Tigers 6, A’s 3)

Tiger Stadium is no longer in use as of the end of 1999. The stadium has been knocked down, but the field remains.

Because I grew up in Denver before it had a major league baseball team, I didn’t begin my ballpark quest in earnest until after college.  Tiger Stadium was the exception.  I visited it twice on visits to relatives in Detroit.  I was ten and twelve.  And while I had been to a few Denver Bears and Denver Zephyrs games at Mile High Stadium, my only two childhood major league games were at Tiger Stadium.  Because I was a kid, I can’t give you a fully accurate description–I just thought it was incredibly cool.  I didn’t notice it was in a horrible neighborhood–in fact, I wandered out to the concourse alone during a rain delay to look at the skyline.  I didn’t pay any mind to the 1912 architecture and the beams that obstructed my view from the second deck down the left-field line–I had nothing to compare it to.  This sounds cliché, but what I remember of the stadium was all that gorgeous grass.  Also the funny stuff on the scoreboard.

There was a very long rain delay, which means I got to hang out with my aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandmother for a while watching highlights of the 1979 World Series.  I remember thinking it strange that the umpire would stop the game in the middle of an at-bat and not wait until between at-bats.  The rain delay was awfully long, as was the game, which didn’t finish off until 12:51 AM.  I laughed out loud when the PA announcer said:  “The next Tigers home game will be against the Boston Red Sox…tonight.  Drive carefully.  Good morning.”

My cousin Joe–maybe six or seven years old?–clued me in that Richie Hebner was the absolute greatest player in world history.  When Hebner came to bat in the third inning, Joe shouted from our upper-deck seat:  “Keep your eye on the ball, Richie!”  Even at ten, I found such advice to professionals to be superfluous and silly.  Or was it?  Hebner homered.

I faintly remember heading out to the concourse hoping to buy a pennant and finding I didn’t have enough cash for one.  But the hawker–a teenage kid–talked me into buying a pencil with a pennant on the end of it.  At first, it felt like a poor substitute for the real thing, but I was glad to leave with something.

I went to the 1982 game shortly after visiting my great-grandmother in the hospital.  She was 90 and a bag of bones.  I knew she was a baseball fan and a Tiger fan, but only after talking to her in the hospital did I realize quite how hard-core she was.  She not only knew that the Tigers were playing Oakland, but said something like:  “Every team has their really good players, and they have Henderson.  He’s really something.”  Not bad for a woman born in Kaliszka Gubernia, Poland.

I’m not 100% certain, but I may have tried to score the game when I was 12.  I remember copying the names, anyway.  Maybe I just wrote the home runs down.  No evidence survives.

In short…I have little memory snippets–mostly of the games–but Tiger Stadium will always hold quite a bit of sentimental value for me.  I have no memory of its many problems…just memory of excitement, family, and two good games.

BASEBALL STUFF I SAW THERE:

Looks like I saw Fred Lynn hit a home run.  Jack Morris and Bob Ojeda started my first ever game, but both were driven out early–Ojeda without getting an out.

Rickey Henderson stole a base in the game I saw in September 1982–his 124th of the season, extending his record in the year he stole 130.  I think it was the first inning–he was walked and stole second, but Lance Parrish gunned him down when he tried to steal third.

Dwayne Murphy hit a home run off of a light tower on the right-field roof.  I remember the sound of that.  Crack–fffsssssssssssssss–ping!!! (Okay, maybe the “fffsssss” is added only in my memory.)  The crowd was so surprised and impressed that we gave him a polite golf-clap ovation as he ran around the bases.  There can’t be too many people who have done that in Tiger Stadium’s 87 years.  If the light tower hadn’t been there, I don’t know where Murphy’s shot would have landed…I swear it was still going up.

Lance Parrish, one of my favorite players as a kid (because of these visits to Tiger Stadium, I grew up a Tiger fan), hit a homer in the Oakland game.