Northern Road Trip, Day 3: Twin Cities, Twins game, twin transit.

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.

A transit friendly sports edifice? Which planet is this?

As a woebegone fan of the Oakland Athletics, I follow a blog called New A's Ballpark. In recent days, the blogger has been reporting on visits to major league ballparks around the country, and today's entry is from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the city's new field has drawn rave reviews in this, its first season. As you read, think about Louisville's new arena ... and where you'll be parking, in the absence of thoughtfulness about transit options.

Day 11: Target Field

Target Field may be the most transit-friendly ballpark in the nation. It was designed as both a ballpark and a transit hub, with a light rail station alongside it, a commuter rail station underneath it, and weatherproof bus platforms adjacent to it. It’s an extremely clever and convenient arrangement, which paid off for me in a big way.

Spoiler alert: The home team won at the new Target Field.

I attended a Minnesota Twins baseball game in 1976. The game was held in Minneapolis at the old Metropolitan Stadium, and the Baltimore Orioles were in town as we wound down a family vacation. It was the only season that Reggie Jackson, my favorite player, was with the Orioles, and it was the only time I ever saw him play live and in person. He went 3 for 5 with two runs scored, but no homers.

Attendance was sparse, and behind us sat a leather-lunged Twins fan who cleverly heckled Earl Weaver, Baltimore's manager, without a single profane utterance for the entire nine innings. Players could hear him, and were laughing. It was an amazing performance, and I remember it better than the game itself.

For the past quarter century, the Twins have played in the notoriously kitschy Metrodome, originally the Hubert Horatio Humphrey Metrodome, later referred to as the Homerdome. Until this season, that is. Target Field has opened, and yesterday was the first home game there. The reviews are in, and they're glowing. First, from a Bay Area blog I regularly follow, which charts the future stadium prospects for the A's:

Envy Abounds: Target Field Opens

Today, for the 16th time in the last 22 seasons, at least one Major League Baseball team had a home opener in a brand new yard. This time it was the Twins turn. In the few shots I saw on TV I saw enough to see that the place is an absolute palace. (Here are a few local reviews, Finance and Commerce, Star Tribune, Pioneer Press)

And, Yahoo's story by Jeff Passan, who makes great play of the "Walleye on a stick." In Louisville, do we even get river cats at the Bats games?

Twins’ new playground a Minnesota state fair

The baseball stadium, at its finest, represents its patrons. And so like they did in the Bronx with outsized spending and in San Francisco with a festival on the water, the Minnesota Twins reached out to their fan base in the most honest fashion possible: by dipping foodstuffs in bubbling grease and/or impaling them with wooden instruments.