It’s a perfect day for indoor baseball

I’m not sure what exactly it was, but something got me going about the Metrodome on my Twitter account this morning. I guess it was the rain. Today is exactly the type of day I would have been walking into the Dome with my Mom and one of us would say to the other, “It’s a perfect day for indoor baseball!”

Look—the Metrodome was really stupid. I know that, and that’s why I love it. It’s still funny watching the Cardinals get confused and distracted during the 1987 World Series because of the roof and the noise and the overall WTF-ness of the place. I mean, Bob Casey—the legendary Twins PA announcer of “There is NOOOOOOO smoking in the Metrodome” fame—used to sit in a hole in the wall directly behind home plate with some plexi glass protecting him. You don’t really see that often at major league ballparks these days. It was weird.

Some other people on Twitter got to reminiscing about the Dome too, like my friend @WinTwins, who tweeted this video of the dubbed “Great Moments in Metrodome History: The Beach Ball Rebellion":

At a normal baseball stadium this kinda stuff would probably be pretty annoying, but the Metrodome was not a normal baseball stadium. It was a stupid baseball stadium where fans could do stupid things and it seemed sort of normal.

One thing that did not happen in the Metrodome (besides smoking), though, was rain. The Twins played 28 season in the Metrodome and never had a rain out. Technically. There were a couple delays during games because of tears in the roof and yeah, okay, FINE one game in the Dome actually was cancelled due to weather: the April 14th, 1983 match-up against the California Angels. A heavy snow storm the day before caused the roof deflate. The same storm also stranded the Angels plane in Chicago, though, so it’s not like it was all the Dome’s fault.

The only other scheduled Twins game at the Metrodome to be postponed was August 2nd, 2007, the day after the 35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi river. The bridge was pretty close to the Dome and everything around there was kind of a mess with concrete and dead bodies and stuff.

Of course, there’s always the INSANE total collapse of the Metrodome roof in 2010, but that was during the winter and the Twins had already moved out by then. Let’s watch the video again anyway.

HEY DID ANYONE EVER FIND DAVE KINGMAN’S BALL? LOL. You know, the pop-up? The pop-up Dave Kingman hit into a drainage hole in the roof and never came down?

Before someone else says it: Yes, I know the ball actually fell out of the roof the next day during batting practice. I was just trying to make a cool, relevant joke, you wienie.

Anyway, today marks the fifth time this year the Twins have been rained out at Target Field. That’s a lot. That’s more than twice the number of games the Twins had to postpone for any reason the entire 28 years they played in the Metrodome.

I think you know where I’m going with this.

No, Target Field should not have or ever have had a roof—retractable or otherwise. Target Field is beautiful and a roof would have ruined it. I mean, have you ever been to a retractable roof stadium? It’s like trying to tell yourself an SUV with a sunroof is a convertible. Roofs also require more space than the tiny lot downtown where they squished in Target Field (which has the smallest footprint of any MLB stadium, by the way). If we built a stadium with a roof, it would have had to have been in Arden Hills or something and everyone would get lost in St. Paul trying to find it.

Instead, I propose a different solution: We rebuild the Metrodome and play there when it rains.

I know you’re going to say it’s impossible, but guess what? People told Kirby Puckett it was impossible for him to make it in the major leagues because he was too short and fat, and look where he is now: dead. Also in the Hall of Fame, though.

But seriously. This isn’t just some hair-brained idea I came up with today because the Twins game was rained out and I needed to write a lame post. I’ve actually been planning this for quite awhile now with my friend Dana Wessel from the Go 96.3 Morning Show.

Hear me out.

You know how you can buy those little jars stuffed with Metrodome trash? Here’s mine:

Maija Varda

We just need everyone who bought one of these to bring their jars to some designated location (I vote Mortimer’s) and we can start putting the pieces back together. It’ll be fun! Like a jigsaw puzzle. Also, Mort’s has free popcorn.

Obviously there are some other logistical hurdles here, like figuring out who bought the Metrodome’s old Carrier Water Source Heat Pump for $55. We also have to find a place to put the Metrodome when we’re done because the Billion Dollar Bird Killer is taking up the old spot. Preferably we could find somewhere that’s not Arden Hills, like maybe where the Minneapolis impound lot is. It’s close to Target Field and we can just, erm, move all the cars off to the side and save them for the first Monster Truck rally.

Of course, I’m assuming all of the materials, labor, and land we need for this will be donated in the name of ending rain outs, because rain outs suck and they make me miss the Metrodome. With teamwork and a little elbow grease, we can do this. It’s not stupid. Maybe.