The last time I witnessed a Minnesota Twins home game, Reggie Jackson was playing for the visiting Baltimore Orioles.
For students of baseball, this carbon-dates me; specifically, back to the age of almost 16 in 1976, when the Twins played at Metropolitan Stadium. Now, after more than two decades trapped in the mercifully demolished Metrodome (currently the spot where the new Vikings football stadium is being constructed), the team has a gleaming new park called Target Field, located in downtown Minneapolis.
It is open-air and quite nice, combining the expected retro touches with space age technology, like stations where you can fill your own overpriced mass-market beer. Fortunately, craft beer is freely available, if not free, and there are numerous contemporary food options. For adventurous sorts, there also are actual games, and ours resulted in a Twins win over the White Sox.
However, the best thing about a game at Target Field is that with adept advance planning, one needn't drive a car to reach it.
In fact, a light rail station is attached to Target Field. We drove into Minneapolis from Madison on Sunday morning, a few minutes after 11:00 a.m. and checked in with our airbnb hosts at the Bobbin House Studio. A Green Line light rail station is located three walking minutes away on University Avenue. Twenty minutes later, for a couple bucks each in round-trip tickets, we were at Target Field, prepared to forage in advance of the 1:10 p.m. game time.
After the game was over, we decided to walk to Black Sheep, a delicious coal-fired pizzeria situated in the revitalizing warehouse district just west of downtown. The walk took us past Fulton Brewery, which functions now as I belatedly wish Bank Street Brewhouse would have all along.
Back at the Bobbin House via the Green Line, a brief respite yielded to a walk through the tidy left-leaning neighborhood, which in turn led to the left bank of the Mississippi River.
And there sat the car, in the driveway throughout.
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