Ballpark Ghosts: The Met and the Mall

All that remains of Metropolitan Stadium, former home of the Minnesota Twins.

Imagine a ballpark so bad that a domed, plastic-grassed multipurpose barn was an improvement.

Picture a ballpark so woebegone that tearing it down and replacing it with a mall was actually a pretty good idea.

We can only be talking about Metropolitan Stadium, home to the Minnesota Twins from 1961 to 1981.

I was visiting Minneapolis for an education writers conference in 1996, and used some free time to wander over to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The Twins were on the road, but I was hoping to check out a gift shop.

I got even luckier.

I walked in and an employee asked "Are you here for the tour?"

"Why yes. Yes, I am," I replied, thinking quickly.

"They just started." the employee said. "You can catch up with them."

Sure enough, a group of kids — they might have been Cub Scouts — was there on some kind of field trip. I think the other dads thought I was a chaperoning parent who they hadn’t met yet. I tagged along in the rear of the group. No one asked who I was, and I didn’t volunteer information other than some small talk like, "Hey, they kids sure are enjoying the tour. This was a good idea." A good adventure always has risk.

The Hubert Humphrey Metrodome, not the nicest-looking ballpark.

We walked through some of the luxury boxes and some of the service corridors. The clubhouses were off-limits, but we were able to go out on to the field.

A college football team was practicing down one end of the turf, but we were allowed to wander around right field. Some of the kids and I had fun pretending to make Kirby Puckett-esque catches against the "Hefty bag" that serves as the outfield wall. A massive Dodge ad seemed to stretch from the foul pole all the way to centerfield.

I was struck by just how cavernous the place was. The team made some half-hearted attempts to dress it up with some banners of players hanging along the roof. And there was no hiding it’s multi-purpose-ness.

It didn’t seem like it was a particularly nice place to see or play a game, though there’s no denying the Twins have enjoyed some success there.

Of course, after reading about where the Twins used to play, the Metrodome seemed like paradise.

Metropolitan Stadium was built for the Minneapolis Millers of the minor leagues in 1956, but it was clear it was intended to lure a Major League team. It had a curved, triple-decker grandstand stretching from first base to third, and some temporary bleachers.

The Washington Senators arrived and were renamed the Twins in time for the 1961 season, and the first and second decks of the grandstand on the first base side were extended down the left field line. But for some reason, only better bleachers were added along the right field line, creating what I’m assuming were some horrible sight lines.

What was already a hodgepodge became even worse when the Vikings football team added a double-decked pavilion in left field, kind of an early version of the disaster in Oakland where the Athletics and Raiders share a stadium.

Given all these issues, it wasn’t long before there was talk of leveling the stadium, with the usual debate about who would be picking up the tab. Apparently maintenance was scaled back to accelerate the pace, and it got so bad that in the ballpark’s final season the third deck was considered a safety hazard because of broken railings.

But a bad setting doesn’t always make for bad baseball. The Twins went to the World Series in 1965 and took the division crown in 1969 and 1970. Zolio Versalles earned an MVP and Jim Perry a Cy Young. Hall-of-Famers Harmon Killebrew and Rod Carew played at the Met, along with Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva and Bert Blyleven, players who still get strong Cooperstown consideration.

Metropolitan Stadium was leveled in the early 1980s to make way for the Mall of America, which I learned is only a $1 bus ride away from downtown Minneapolis. I had some time after to conference ended and caught the bus, curious to see if anything remained of the stadium.

The mall itself is not especially exciting. It’s pretty much the same stores you see in every other mall — just more of them — with a small theme park in the middle.

A Camp Snoopy employee pointed me to a plaque in the floor that rests in the approximate location of home plate.

And high on a wall sits a stadium seat — with no way to get to it. That’s the spot where Killebrew hit the longest home run in Metropolitan Stadium history, a 520-foot blast on June 3, 1967.

In Other Words...

There are two Web sites, www.ballparks.com and www.ballparkwatch.com that I find to be awesome resources for stadium histories.

Ballpark Ghosts: Forbes Field, Where Yankees Wept

Any place where Yankees are humbled -- and goodness knows we need more of them -- is considered hallowed ground in my eyes.

So I was pretty excited when Will suggested we pay a visit to the site of Forbes Field before a recent trip to PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

Forbes, of course, is where Bill Mazeroski earned his Hall of Fame plaque by driving a stake through the Yankees' black hearts, winning the 1960 World Series with a home run in the bottom of the ninth.

How much did this hurt the Yankees? Let's go right to Mickey Mantle's autobiography, "The Mick."

"Nothing ever hurt as bad as that one.....Bottom of the ninth. Bill Mazeroski is at the plate, taking the first pitch, a high slider....And the most tearing moment of all, seeing Mazeroski's hard line drive heading for the left field wall. Yogi moves toward it, me backing him up, but it keeps going, going, going....There's a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. There's that unforgettable look on Yogi's face when he turns around, grim acceptance, expressed by a slow shrug of his shoulders.


"We walked off the field, a mob of fans already streaming past, and as Mazeroski crosses the plate his hysterical teammates grab at his uniform.

"In the locker room, all of us are wandering around in a trance, muttering, 'What happened?' I'm slumped in a stool, feeling so low I can hardly peel off my uniform."

Now that is something to savor. The problem with the Yankees, well, one of them, is that they think they are entitled to all the World Series championships, not just an occasional or even frequent trophy.

And the 1960 loss was so traumatic that the team fired legendary manager Casey Stengel two days later and raided their farm team -- err, American League rival -- Kansas City Athletics for Roger Maris.

The Pirates played their last game at Forbes in 1970 and gave the site to the University of Pittsburgh, which had the good sense to know that it was treading on sacred ground.

A good chunk of the outfield wall remains carefully preserved, ivy and all, as well as the centerfield flag pole, which was in play.

Home plate rests almost exactly where it was, but it is encased in glass in a first-floor hallway of Posvar Hall, an otherwise drab building.

A row of bricks outside traces where the outfield wall stretched, and there's a plaque at the spot where St. Maz's ball crossed the fence, so all right-thinking fans can stand and reflect.

I caught up with Will and his brother Scott at outfield wall, which is slightly covered by trees in a nice, park-like setting.

After posing with home plate, we opted to pay homage by playing catch in what was rightfield, where Roberto Clemente once patrolled.

Forbes, which had been home to the Pirates since 1909, also was the site of Babe Ruth's last three home runs on May 25, 1935.

But it was Maz's blast that elevated Forbes to hallowed status. We remarked that 45 years later, the you could still catch a scent of Yankee shame lingering in the air. Of course, it had just poured buckets and all the trees were in bloom, which might have had something to do with it. But I prefer the former.

While the team's next ballpark, Three Rivers Stadium, was a multi-purpose concrete disaster, I'm pleased to report that PNC is a worthy successor. It's an intimate yard with an awesome view of downtown and its yellow bridges, easily the best of the new ballparks I've visited.

The view of downtown from our seats, where we enjoyed watching Chipper Jones take the collar -- with three strikeouts!

In Other Words...

We were in town to kick off the BaseballTruth.com annual Executive Game weekend. Will detailed all our adventures -- and we have many -- on his site, which always is recommended reading.