We Played Here – Metrodome
Minnesotans' shared home for 31 years.
Baseball is a game where dimensions are what you want them to be. Short porch? You bet. Shaped like a box? Sure! Ugly as sin? Why not! Baseball is unique from other professional sports as, outside of the playing diamond, there are no restrictions1 on what the rest of your field, and venue itself, can end up being. There are so many different baseball-hosting stadiums out there that have unique stories baked into their oddly shaped walls, out-of-the-box features, and just “Why?” factor. In this series, we’ll go on a journey, of sorts, to those ballparks. Combing through the history of baseball to find, and talk about, baseball stadiums that hosted such a simple sport in not-so-simple confines. Welcome to “We Played Here!” A series by me, baseball fangirl and Minnesota Twins defender maddy! Using her special interest in sports stadiums to go on tangents about baseball’s weirdest, uniquest, and most interesting places to host baseball.
We Played Here — Episode 1 — Metrodome (Minneapolis, MN)
Close friends of mine might think this is cheating. I am a Minnesota girl through and through and this is the only stadium that’ll end up in this series that I will be able to say I visited (unless the White Sox stadium goes under; I can talk about that one). It also won’t be the most recent stadium I will talk about (take this teaser as you will).
The Metrodome represents a lot. An era of baseball stadiums that only barely still exists today thanks to the Rays’ Tropicana Field. An era of Twins baseball that saw two World Series titles, its most iconic players taking the field, and a home field advantage teams could only dream of today.
It was also an era for many Minnesotans when we had this shared home. The Twins shared the Metrodome with Minnesota’s NFL team, the Vikings, for the Twins' entire run at the stadium, making the Metrodome one of the many multi-use stadiums of the ‘70s and ‘80s, when these stadiums dominated American sports. Vikings fans and Twins fans, and the many Minnesotans who rooted for both, all had one place that was home. We’ll get more into the hominess and nostalgia of the Metrodome, but first…
What was the Metrodome?
Its most unique feature was its roof—it was called the Metrodome after all. It kept the cold Minnesota air from finding its way in to affect the play of the two usually outdoor sports the stadium held. It was the only multi-use stadium in the United States to use an air-supported roof; the old Kingdome in Seattle and the slowly dying Astrodome in Houston were the only other multi-use stadiums to have a roof of any kind before the Metrodome.
Unlike most multi-use stadiums of its time, the Metrodome was not really kind to baseball in terms of dimensions. It was built and shaped like a very typical non-multi-use football stadium of the era (and kinda similar to the currently active Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte). The Twins still needed a place to play, so the Metrodome underwent more changes to it during a football-to-baseball conversion than most multi-use stadiums. The stands on one of the football sidelines, if kept in their normal place, would make the right field foul pole for baseball roughly 200 feet from home plate. So these seats would be retracted back for the baseball configuration of the Metrodome, but the distance down the right field line was still relatively close to home plate at only 327 feet. So may I introduce you to the “baggie”?
Seen here in 2006, this was added to hide the retracted seats (barely) and also make it a little tougher to hit homers to right, as balls would have to clear the 23-foot baggie wall. It was, to me, the most iconic feature of the entire stadium. It was our own little Green Monster and it added flavor to the playing dimensions, as most multi-use stadiums at the time were just giant circles with no odd field dimensions or even wall height differences.
However, the dome became outdated very quickly, more so than its other multi-use counterparts. Ignoring said multi-use stadium fad slowly starting to wane by the mid-’80s, its design—mostly the air-supported roof—dated the stadium fast. Most stadiums, multi-use or not, either went with more solid domes (like the aforementioned Tropicana Field) or began to invest in the new retractable roof (funnily enough, Seattle and Houston were the first in baseball to do this at T-Mobile Park and Minute Maid Park respectfully).
By the late ’90s, both the Twins and Vikings wanted out, with the Twins even threatening to leave for North Carolina if a new stadium wasn’t built. But both teams stayed in Minnesota and got new, sport-specific stadiums by the mid-2010s: Target Field opened for the Twins in 2010 and U.S. Bank Stadium for the Vikings in 2016. The Metrodome saw its time come to an end at the conclusion of the 2013 Vikings season. It was demolished in early 2014 and the aforementioned U.S. Bank Stadium now stands in its place.
The Metrodome wasn’t anything super special and honestly was a mess and a joke in the state. Yet it still holds a place in many Minnesotan hearts, not because of the stadium itself, but for moments like this. And, for me, this. It was a stadium that seemed to attract great moment after great moment (at least for the Twins, sorry Vikings). It was almost like there was magic in that old garbage bag stadium. Anyone over the age of 20 in Minnesota probably has some memory of the stadium. It was an iconic piece of Minnesota culture that felt like ours.
The Metrodome ended up hosting several events: Super Bowls, NCAA Final Fours, World Series, NBA games, concerts, University of Minnesota football and baseball, and so much more. It was home. It was a place of comfort for Minnesotans for 31 years. It put our state on the map for sports in America. Target Field is a wonderful ballpark for the Twins, and U.S. Bank Stadium has held many of the same events as the Metrodome, but perhaps nothing will capture the emotions, the feelings, the nostalgia, the sense of home the good old dome gave us: the land of 10,000 lakes and one Metrodome.
MLB does have official rules in terms of distance to home plate but everything else is fair game, baby!
The Metrodome is the only sports field I have slept on. I miss it.