Opening Day at the Homer Dome

Baseball is here folks, well, I guess it has been for a while. For some reason the twins home opener was 16 weeks into the season. So four of us (Myself, Jon, Matt, and Andrew) hopped in the Pehler mobile and jetted up to the sold out Minnesota Twins game sans tickets.

The way up was fairly uneventful. We got caught in a decent amount of traffic, Matt dumped fries all over the car, the usual road trip stuff.

When we got there we had to deal with the scalpers, something none of us had done before, we're just innocent like that I guess, we went to an area where the scalpers usually sell, but had no idea what to do from there, luckily the scalpers spotted four saps with confused looks on their faces, whispering like they were shopping for a kilo of coke. The scalpers wasted no time pouncing on us, one offered us $15 dollar tickets for upper deck general admission ($5 face value.) Not a horrible deal considering $15 wont get you in the door at many other ballparks. When we hesitated he slipped into crack dealer mode, and was like "Unless you want the good seats, I can get you the good seats, you want the good seats?" I think one of us muttered, "Like what?" He said "I can get you behind the plate for $75 each." $75 is a spicy meatball. (For the record I wouldn't pay $75 for front row, 50-yard line, Viking/Packer tickets, let alone a Twins game.) We all promptly declined and were ready to take the tickets for $15 but told him we were going to check with a couple other people. He then offered them to us for $10, done deal. We slipped him a couple 20 spots and headed around the dome to our gate. We got in and deliberated about where to sit. We decided on right field due to the higher likelihood of getting a homer. In right field there is no lower deck. This caused Jon to panic and express his fear about falling onto the field.

There was a little pre-game opening day ceremony. Unfortunately the dome has horrible acoustics combined with the absolute worst sound system. You can tell people are talking but it sounds like the announcer is talking into a microphone that is under a pile of wet towels. You used to be able to hear people over it, I think the speakers were blown during the ‘98 Vikings season.

The Twins came out blazing and went up 4 - 0 in the 2^nd. Don't hold me to this, but I think 27 twins got a hit in a row over the course of the first few innings. Then they forgot baseball games were 9 innings long, because they didn't do much from there on. At 9:11 there was a moment of silence. I know it was a tragedy but really, come on people, how long is 9/11 going to be our excuse for everything. Psychological problems, unemployment, an excuse to stop sporting events at 30-second intervals for patriotic songs and moments of silences..........I'm rambling.

The Twins pulled it out 4 - 2, fortunately they were playing the winless Tigers, who never got anything going, despite the Twins taking the last 6 or so innings off. At one point the Twins were on offense for about 17 seconds, it had to have been some sort of record. Strike out on 3 or 4 pitches, pop out on first pitch, and another quick out. Ugly. The Twins' fielding wasn't anything to write home about for most of the game either. Ugliest of all, however, was our victory high fives and the end of the game. We had the ones where the fingers just barely graze each other. We were banging wrists. Awful. We hung our heads in shame and shuffled out of the dome.

We got out of the parking garage surprisingly quick. At one stop light this drunk guy came to the window, shook Andrew's hand and told him he loved the car. He stumbled away, toward an angered girlfriend, and Jon remarked, "Yeah the ‘93 Lumina is a classic." Needless to say the windows were promptly rolled up.

It wouldn't be a Twins trip if we didn't hit up Denny's in Hudson on the trip back. The prices double every time we go. I ordered chicken, they brought me a veggie burger. I hate bringing food back, if it was a regular burger I would have just eaten that. (Mainly because I was struggling with the decision between chicken or a burger anyway.) It will be a cold day in hell before I eat a veggie burger so I took it back. About 10 minutes later they brought me what I ordered, with a fresh loogie I'm sure.

Another Twins game tradition is listening to Loveline on the way home. I was disappointed that there weren't any of their normal type of calls, you know the ones where the girl calls in "I'm 15 years old and I'm having sex with a 23 year old married man with AIDS. I was wondering if there was a chance I could get AIDS." Aren't health classes required in schools? There was one call where the unintentional comedy factor was off measurable scales. The exchange went something like this.

Kid (Male) - "Yeah I'm an 18 year old virgin"

Adam Corrolla (Who as best we could tell was high, or pretending to be) - "Cool! Good for you, dude man bro"

(Long pause as they are awaiting a question)

Kid - Um........I was wondering if there was anything I can do about that.

Hilarious.

Other Trip Facts:

Jon used the phrase "jumped the shark" about 167 times on the way home so we decreed the phrase "jumped the shark" has, in fact, jumped the shark.

This trip marked the 32^nd occasion on which we debated is Brittany Spears hot or not. Jon doesn't think so, I pushed him out onto the interstate, good times.

We decided that on road trips it is ok to revert to 7^th grade humor. We all had a good laugh at a building labeled "Big Wood."

-Jeremy Lindgren still likes football more