HHH Metrodome Seating Chart

MINNESOTA TWINS: Metrodome

It’s fair to say that the Minnesota Twins aren’t exactly proud of their current home, the Metrodome. On the Twins’ official site, you have to hunt to find any mention of the Metrodome. Instead, the stadium pages directs fans to a page of information on the proposed new ballpark to be located in Minnesota’s Warehouse District. The sketches are beautiful, the plans sound attractive, and the team has committed to contributing $125 million in cash to the park’s construction.

There’s only one catch: even if it’s approved (the team is still hoping for a retractable roof park while the local government is balking, although the sides were very close to an agreement in April 2005), the park won’t open until 2009. The Twins aren’t exactly pumping up their old park in the meantime. The Twins website includes a “Comparison of New Ballpark with Metrodome” section that essentially makes their current home look like a run-down dump.

That’s not exactly true, and the Minnesota Twins didn’t seem to have much problem with their park when it was helping propel them to World Series championships in 1987 and 1991. Fans who tracked down elusive World Series tickets for those matchups set new sound records while waving their Homer Hankies and cheering the Twins on to victory.

The Metrodome is definitely a multipurpose facility, and as is usually the case in that environment, baseball fans make some major concessions to football. Fans buying Twins tickets have to deal with an ample amount of foul territory and seats that are significantly removed from the playing field.

But the Metrodome is a great ballpark for engineers. The fiberglass fabric roof is supported by air, and fans enter through revolving doors designed to keep the roof inflated. It’s not always a perfect system despite the snow melting ducts on top of the roof-in 1982, the dome collapsed and had to be reinflated.

Capacity: 56,144

Year Built: 1982

2004 attendance: 23,490 per game; 1,879,222 total

Dimensions: 343 to left, 385 to left-center, 408 to center, 367 to right-center, 325 to right

Hotels Nearby: Embassy Suites Minneapolis Downtown, Best Western Normandy Inn, Residence Inn at the Depot, Marriott Courtyard Depot, Holiday Inn Metrodome

Thrill of victory: Oct. 27, 1991: If you saw this game, you saved your World Series ticket. Jack Morris turned in a 10-inning shutout masterpiece, propelling the Twins to a 1-0 win over the Atlanta Braves in one of the most unlikely World Series pairings in history. Pinch-hitter Gene Larkin gave the Minnesota Twins the world championship with a single in the bottom of the 10th over a drawn-in Braves infield that scored Dan Gladden. This was only the second World Series in history that saw the home team win all seven games-the other was 1987, which also involved the Twins.

Agony of defeat: Although the Twins have struggled to stay competitive as richer teams boast bigger payrolls, the Metrodome has consistently provided World Series magic. They’ve never suffered the agony of defeat in World Series games, posting an 8-0 record in the Fall Classic. The first game of the 1987 Series against the St. Louis Cardinals was the first World Series game to be played indoors.

Twins Ticket Tips: Metrodome seating remains one of the best bargains in the majors. For 2005, the team sold a full season ticket in its Cheap Seats section for just $200/seat, a cost of $2.46 per ticket. Of course, the Cheap Seats (which cost $5 apiece for individual games) are far removed from the action, but it’s hard to argue with the price. Some teams price almost every section in the park differently. Twins tickets are much different, as they’re largely just broken into lower between the bases, lower outside the bases, and upper level categories. As the Twins continue to fight it out in the competitive AL Central Division, their games against division rivals usually provide the most intrigue. The Chicago White Sox are a perennial rival.