Anticipation

Anticipation, my friends, can be a dangerous thing. When you anticipate something, I feel there's a tendency to build up unrealistic expectations; ones that cannot possibly be met. Now, some of you may know that I'm a bit of a baseball fan, and consequently, I have been eagerly anticipating this season's opening of Target Field. For someone who has grown up watching my favourite team play in a concrete bunker with a garbage bag for an outfield fence, the prospect of afternoons and evenings spent under the summer Minnesota sky is superlatively tantalizing.

Anyways, the weather has been unseasonably gorgeous here in the Twin Cities as of late. No need for a coat!

With the aforementioned beautiful weather, I couldn't resist but to leave my clerkship at the federal courthouse today just a titch early, and take a stroll across downtown to examine the new ballpark. Just last week, the pedestrian plaza which connects the ballpark to the rest of downtown was opened, so you can now walk right up to the gates and peer inside at the field. Also, the ticket offices are open, and the team store.


I've been lucky enough to see a few other major league ballparks, other than the dearly departed H.H.H. Metrodome. Safeco Field in Seattle probably tops my list, followed by Miller Park in Milwaukee, and then U.S. Cellular in Chicago. I can only vaguely remember the place where the Florida Marlins play, but it changes names every other week anyways. But folks, believe me when I say this, even with my bias and my rudimentary inspection, Target Field in Minneapolis is truly a baseball cathedral of the highest circle. I daresay, the highest circle.

What I think is best about the new park, at least from outward appearances, is it recognizes the fact that Minnesotans are an incredibly nativist people, and seizes upon it with force. Admittedly, most of us are convinced of our own superiority, from our ability to survive the harshest of winters to the number of theatre seats per capita; the quiet self-confidence of our Scandinavian heritage to our lake dabbled northwoods.

So it only makes sense that the Twins, who arguably are the state's most beloved sports team, would seek to sheathe their new home in limestone quarried from Mankato, and have native fir trees in the batter's eye. The handles on the gates are shaped in the outline of the state, and giant "TC" emblems are fixated above them. One of the restaurants is named after Bloomington's own Kent Hrbek, and apparently, inside the bowels of the upper levels, there is an immense wooden mural of Kirby Puckett. I'm sure that inside, there have to be countless odes to our current heroic figure, that being a certain Joseph Patrick Mauer. And even to capture the inherent pretentious side of our state, there is this absolutely stunning piece of public art, that takes up an entire side of a parking garage on the plaza. It's a "wind veil," and it's comprised of thousands of little hinged pieces of metal, which shimmer and sway (with utter silence) whenever the wind hits them. It was absolutely transfixing.

Anyways, point being, I walked around the whole damn thing, standing on my tippy toes at every window, trying to stick my head inside every gate, and otherwise doing nearly everything I could to catch glimpses of the field, short of committing a misdemeanor. I stood outside of the right field gate, and I even pinpointed the location of my season ticket seats, way, way up in the upper deck along the third baseline. The field, just recently cleared of snow, is a glorious, vibrant, shocking hue of green. The permanency of the whole structure is what took the most adjustment. At the Metrodome, since it was shared by so many teams and groups, everything was artificial. All the decorations and banners were temporary, so they could be moved. Now, everything is opposite. There are Twins logos etched in stone, there are metal banners commemorating every season of the team's history, and apparently, in the near future, there are going to be bronze statues of the team's greatest players. All in all, there's a much more regal element to the whole experience, like something important and institutional is afoot.






I'm going to get to go inside said ballpark this coming Sunday. I'll try to get some good shots.