Itinerary: Target Field, Minneapolis

This might as well be the first in a three-part series. It’s been written here on this blog before: Three days in Minneapolis, three sporting events. And it seems Mrs. Fan and myself weren’t the only ones who had this bright idea. Many of the USC fans in town for the game against Minnesota also did the triple we pulled off — Twins on Friday, USC-Minnesota on Saturday, and Vikings on Sunday. Maybe some of those same fans blogged about the experience. If they did, I would have no problem with you going off and finding those blog entries … right after you’re done reading this one.

Anyway, you may have seen the recent issue of Sports Illustrated with Target Field as the cover shot, with the downtown Minneapolis skyline in the background. After going there, I know why they chose that shot. That view is up there with the best in-ballpark scenery in baseball — Pittsburgh and San Francisco, you have competition.

The approach

In some ways, it’s easy to catch a sporting event when you’re a visitor to a city. Chances are you don’t have to worry about a car. You’ve probably chosen lodging near the venue, or near public transportation that can take you to the venue. In Minneapolis, you’ve got the best of both worlds — all of its pro sports venues (we’re not counting the Wild’s Xcel Energy Arena because it’s in St. Paul) are downtown, and serviced by a highly underrated light rail line (more on that in a bit). Target Field was built on the edge of downtown, separated from all the tall buildings by a highway — but you’d never know it because the highway runs underground as it passes by the ballpark.

So everything is set up for you. If you work in downtown Minneapolis, you just walk to the game. If you don’t, you catch the light rail to the end of the line, which drops you off right at Target Field. The only way you lose is if you’re driving in, since you’re bound to hit traffic at some point, and of course event parking rates in downtown are typically outrageous – $10-20 depending on how close you are to the park.

Mrs. Fan and I stayed in a hotel about five blocks from the ballpark, right off Nicollet Mall. After a day of doing other things around town, we started heading to the game about 5 p.m. — but first we canvassed the surrounding neighborhood for restaurants/bars with good happy hour deals. And our options were quite good — a few holes-in-the-wall, and a few big restaurant/bars. All of them were lively and had good deals advertised. After some walking, we settled on a place called the M&S Grill, which I was later disappointed to learn was a repackaged version of the McCormick and Schmick’s restaurants you’ll find in every downtown of every major city in the country. But oh well, the plates were good (including these pot roast nachos which were just as good, and just as greasy, as you’d expect) and so was the beer.

Oh, and about the light rail in Minneapolis — right now it’s only one line, but for a tourist it serves nearly every destination you would ever want: All downtown points, the airport and the Mall of America. Plus, for $6 you can get a day pass that actually lasts 24 hours from the time of purchase. As a result, over a four-day vacation in Minneapolis we spent maybe $12 a person for transportation, including trips from and back to the airport. Can’t beat that.

The build-up

We walked to the park along Sixth Street, passing by the Target Center along the way. Once you pass it (and that is one massive arena, by the way), you reach a sort of pedestrian plaza leading to the right-field gate, full of statues, benches, planters and the like. And there were already beer and snack vendors selling their wares even before you get into the gate.

Right field, as it turned out, is the main point of entry into the stadium, which is understandable considering that’s the side that faces downtown. The team store is there, as are most of the statues and murals and other things that are supposed to enhance the fan experience and remind folks about the team’s history. We walked around the outside of the stadium a bit and found that the closer you got to home plate, the less pretty the exterior got — and the less people there were. So we just decided to enter at the home plate gate.

We had standing room only tickets, it being a mid-September game with the home team in first place and the fan base all abuzz. We overheard a guy say to his buddy, “I can’t believe they charged us 22 dollars to stand,” and I suppose he has a point. But since I didn’t care that much about watching the game, it was good for me to have an excuse to walk around and check the joint out.

The ambiance

Here’s my criticism of Target Field: I felt like I was at Target. Now, I realize that’s probably exactly what they were going for, but to me it was a little disturbing. I had to resist the temptation to scour the concession stands for some Archer Farms Kettle Chips with Sea Salt. But yeah, the signage and the fonts they used for lettering and such were all the same as they use in Target stores.

At this point, with the majority of MLB teams having fairly new ballparks, it’s hard to find things that stand out. Most of them go for the same thing — an old-timey feel, but with modern amenities. I’m not sure they intended Target Field to be old-timey, and that’s good. At least they avoided that whole red-brick-facade-and-exposed-steel-girders style that you see at practically every other semi-new park, but the yellowish stone they do use (an informal Google search tells me that it’s limestone, and I’ll take that as gospel seeing as I know next to nothing about building materials) reminds me too much of Petco Park. Which is to say, when you’re late to the new-ballpark party, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with something totally original. I do like the lights, though, integrated into the roof above the upper deck rather than held up by light towers.

Having SRO tickets allowed us to walk around and watch the game from different angles. We started off wandering the lower concourse, but even though it was super wide, navigating it was like driving through central Beijing. It was incredibly crowded. So we took the nearest escalator to the upper deck and finally settled into a spot in center field, right below the giant lighted Twins logo, for the first few innings.

We eventually made our way over to the lower concourse again (this time everyone was in their seats, thank goodness) and found a viewing spot along the right-field line, right in time for the dramatic moment of the game — bottom of the seventh inning, Twins down by two, but the tying runs on base and Joe Mauer, who had been given the day off from starting, up to pinch-hit with two outs. Everyone stood up, and me being not as tall as I’d like, I had a bit of a hard time seeing. But Mauer popped up, and the Twins eventually lost. No one seemed too depressed about it, though, and I suppose I wouldn’t be either if I had all those watering holes to choose from after the game.

The damage

Tickets: $22 each (face value)

Transportation: $0, since we walked to the game

Food: $5 for soft serve in a Twins helmet cup

Souvenirs: $0 (though we looked hard for a Twins men-shaking-hands logo patch, but were informed by a guy in the team store that they’d been sold out of it for months)

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