(Note: With this morning's deflation of the famed Metrodome's roof, I pulled out this remembrance of our family's first & last game all together at the stadium in the Twins' final season there in 2009. For many, the Dome highlights were football and the Vikings. But for us, baseball ruled. -- Dana Melius, January 18, 2014.)

October 21, 2009

Metrodome memories: It wasn’t pretty, but it served us well

By Dana Melius

Corralling six kids, as a rule, is a difficult task.  When they’ve spread throughout the country – throughout the world, at times – it gets even tougher.  So, to have all eight of us in tow for the Minnesota Twins’ final weekend of baseball -- the October 3, 2009 game -- at the often-maligned Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, well, as daughter Ambryn put it, was “not too shabby, folks.”

Our family had never quite warmed up to the Metrodome.  For starters, our first-born, Ben, didn’t arrive until August 1979, just months before dome construction began in that peculiar industrial area of Minneapolis, just off the I-35 freeway.  The power players who snared the Twins from Bloomington and old Metropolitan Stadium called it downtown, but it never quite seemed like it to me.  Cousin Gary “Gigs” Saxton and I lived at 1104 South Eighth Street, downstairs, at the time the Metrodome site was named, and we couldn’t quite see it.  Bad roads, bad access, little room, still blocks from the more “vibrant” Hennepin Avenue district.  Or maybe it was the smoke from the burning mattress on the front yard.  It wasn’t a pretty area.

But a mere eight years later, Ben would join me for that wonderfully unexpected World Series championship run by the Twins.  Section 141, Row 22, Seats 31 and 32.  We took in the opening game win versus Detroit in the American League Championship Series, nearly catching Dan Gladden’s home run; and we were waving our Homer Hankies in a Game 1 World Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.  My dad, Pud – quite the baseball lover, himself – was only half-joking about his omission from those games.  He died April 14 of this year, still longing for one more Twins miracle season.   I’m hoping he saw it. 

Pud always saw the special connect baseball held in the lives of Minnesotans, long before the Metrodome and Twins.  He played and managed town team baseball during the ‘40s and ‘50s, when it was king in rural Minnesota.  Communities planned their weekends around town team ball, with local crowds usually in the hundreds, sometimes in the thousands for big games.  When the Twins arrived in 1961 to Bloomington, it still felt a long ways from the big Twin Cities, so there was an immediate attachment for rural Minnesotans, longing for big-league baseball.

The 1982 move to the dome changed that for a spell.  While we could be assured of a game in 70-degree indoor weather, it was Minneapolis.  Traffic, parking woes, seedy business fronts.  It took some getting used to for those of us in Greater Minnesota.  But as in most sports, winning has a way of taking care of most woes.

There are other grand Metrodome memories.  GFW’s state championship football game in the fall of 1989 was very special, helping to unite the three communities early in the school’s history.  Watching the boys play high school baseball there was nice, and being on the field as a GFW baseball coach was a grand experience.  Even once brought Puddy to a GFW game there. And almost lost him when the wind gust entering the Dome nearly did him in and he slammed up against a cement wall, not wanting to go on. We had to wheel him in on a delivery cart as he moaned about the embarrassment and kept complaining, "God, do we have to do this!" 

But when I think of the Dome, I think of the Twins…and that ugly, yet unique baseball stadium.

Twins baseball remains something special in Minnesota.  While the Vikings actually rule the state of sports here – especially now, especially with Favre – Twins followers have an odd spirituality about the team.  I believe it goes back to that surprising 1987 World Series run, while the Vikes have floundered in their four Super Bowl tries.  But two of our children – Andy and Mikell – had not yet been born.  Andy arrived in 1989, after World Series #1; and our baby, Mikell, was born in 1992, after the classic World Series championship versus the Atlanta Braves.  They only remember Kirby Puckett’s heroics in Game Six and Jack Morris’ 10-inning masterpiece in video.

So the Melius family hasn’t had a lot of opportunities to get all six kids here at once.  Making it even tougher, daughter Ambryn’s been to India twice, and son Matt spent 18 months on the island of Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  With Ambryn coming home from her new residency in Seattle, and Matt finally back from San Diego after his five-year Navy stint, the time finally seemed right. With time running out, a last-minute organizational effort – and some pure luck in scheduling – brought the entire Melius clan together.  So, on October 3, for the first and last time, all eight of us gathered to take in a Twins game during the Metrodome’s final weekend.   Meeting at the Mall of America (and that’s an entirely different story), we took the light rail transit into the Dome.

We settled into Section 103 in centerfield, just happy to be a part of the festivities.  We were one of few fans who brought Homer Hankies from days gone by, waving them during Twins’ highlights.  And none was better than Michael Cuddyer’s game-winning home run, which extended Minnesota’s Central Division hopes of catching the Detroit Tigers…again. 

While we all later agreed that Game 163 might have been better, this one was just fine.  For the purpose of this trip wasn’t just baseball.  My wife, Kim, of 30 years, and all six of our children – Ben, Ambryn, Bill, Matt, Andy and Mikell – were together at the Dome.  And I made a special point of looking up at that ugly, discolored Teflon roof and thought of Dad.  Puddy loved the Twins. 

That’s what makes baseball so special, it’s for the generations.  And the Metrodome played host to it all.  So long, dear friend.