Originally written October 8th, 2009

I had a lot of time during the summer of 2009, and yet by August, I had only really been to two new MLB parks on the year. I had tackled a good deal of Minor League parks, and been to some other parks that I'd already been to in the past, but if I didn't want the 2009 season to feel like a failure, I realized that I needed to hit up one more. When I look at the list of parks that I hadn't seen yet, I realized that there was a bit of a conundrum that I wanted to save, or rather "package" several parks together in future road trips for longer than just a day or two. So that narrowed my list of potential parks to very few, so the question was, how to narrow down that list even further?

I felt like the last baseball fan alive to realize it, but 2009 was to be the last season that the Minnesota Twins were going to be playing in Hubert H. Humphrey (HHH) Metrodome. So, that made the decision very easy of which park to tackle, the place that we wouldn't get to experience if not done immediately. Since I wasn't traveling alone this time, the our respective schedules found us conveniently close to the deadline, and a trip in October, thanks to the World Baseball Classic, for the final series against the Kansas City Royals was scheduled.

I met up with my friend up in Minnesota, and we eventually made our way through the vastly unfamiliar Midwestern suburbia until we found ourselves in Minneapolis before we knew it. By foot we eventually found ourselves within eyesight of the home of the Twins, for it was easy, by following the crowds of people in Twins apparel all throughout the city.

Something seemed wrong with this picture. For baseball, it's Hunter Hearst Helmsley the Metrodome. But for Vikings football, which was already underway, it was the Mall of America Field. Make no doubt about it - no matter the circumstances, HHH is a football venue first, and a baseball venue as an afterthought. This was quite indicative by all the purple and gold all over the venue, and not pictured here are the gigantic photographs of Brett Favre and Adrian Peterson that adorned one side of the building. Regardless, we still found it fit to make sure that we saw the baseball HHH before it was no longer an opportunity.

Given what I had experienced at RFK in previous years, I expected HHH to be more like that, since it was first a football venue, but then I remembered that it was also, still a dome. Much like the Georgia Dome, home to the Atlanta Falcons back in my neck of the woods, the indoor venue was fairly like any other venue where large groups would conglomerate for any special event. The innards of HHH were a little bit cramped and tight, and the fact of the matter that it was Fan Appreciation weekend, where Twins alums, Hall of Famers, and legends were making appearances, made for an uncomfortable passage through the halls.

Throughout the game, various Twins and Royals players would occasionally loft a flyball out to right. After the initial jump, I had no idea how the ball was played - when the crowd cheered, I knew that Jason Kubel had made a catch, and twice, boos rained throughout HHH as Royals players landed ground-rule doubles, or hit a home run.

One thing I must bring into the limelight was this massive behemoth of a hot dog. Inside HHH were these food vendors, called like Beef & Brats or something like that, but more than a few instances, I saw the locals eating this gigantic hulk of a dog, and after about the third time, I had to inquire where they got it from. Upon finding out where they got them, I made a mental note of it, and thought that this trip would not be complete without partaking in such a masterpiece myself.

After the third inning, I made a hike, and eventually found one of the vendors on the upper deck, and got one for myself as well as my friend. I looked like the world's biggest pig walking back to my section carrying two of these suckers, but it's all in good harmless fun.

It was called their Chicago Dog, but it was served with chopped green peppers, tomatoes, and black pepper, with pickles and juicy peppers on the side. It had to have weighed close to a pound, but in the end, the verdict is that it was nothing but delicious. I think I want to start putting tomatoes and black pepper on damn near everything from now on.

As far as domes go, I certainly prefer my baseball to be played outdoors, but I'm not going to lie - with prior trips to the Rogers Centre, and Tropicana Field, the other two domes, each one was met with rain and bad weather outside. Heck, both times I went to Rogers, it rained and was miserable outside. And the safety of the dome protected me each and every time. Although it didn't actually rain in Minnesota during my trip, I have to imagine if it were played out in the open, it would have served to be a miserable, gray and dreary baseball atmosphere.

A funny thing happened in regards to this trip. When the trip was initially scheduled, the Minnesota Twins were pretty much considered to be a dead team. Funny how the length of a baseball season works out - as the months rolled on, the Twins found a point where they stopped losing, and the division leading Detroit Tigers couldn't seem to buy a winning streak at times. As our trip approached, it got to the point where the Twins (and the Braves at the time) could not be ignored any longer, and people began to notice; ESPN started talking about it, and FOX flexed their schedule to televise the exact game that I was to attend, to a much larger audience. But nobody noticed more, than the home fans in Minnesota.

It goes without saying that out of all the baseball games I have ever attended, I don't think any one of them had more meaning than this one did. As the season hit the 161 game mark, the Detroit Tigers led the second place Twins by one game. A Twins win plus a Tigers loss meant that they were tied, and that it would boil down to the play of the last game of the season. Everyone knew the circumstances, and the Minnesota fans came out in droves to support their team.

It was a thing of beauty. Twins fans packed the entire HHH, and there was hardly an open seat visible anywhere. They roared with approval of any hit, or any defensive play made by their team. They booed and jeered the opposing team. For someone like me who is used to apathetic, ambivalent Braves fans, this was a stark contrast, and one that I am truly envious of.

I write the "notable performance(s)" and game results before I even write the write-up, but anyone reading this probably would be spoiled by me saying that the Twins won this game, and later in the evening the Detroit Tigers lost to the Chicago White Sox, and just like that, I was priveleged to witness the Twins tie up the AL Central crown live and in person. This might have been the most meaningful game that I had ever attended, and many might have felt the same, but it was certainly outdone the following day as the Twins did it again the next day and kept HHH open for one more day as they forced a Game 163, a tie-breaker game with the Tigers, which by virtue of superior record against their foes head-to-head, would be at HHH.

And the magic continued, and at the point of me writing this, HHH refuses to job, and allow its doors to be closed to baseball for yet another game, as the Twins took the tie-breaker against the Tigers, won the AL Central on the last game of the season, and entered the playoffs with the New York Yankees, where there will be guaranteed, at least, one more game, at HHH.

Simply magnificent story.