Change is good

Watched Joe Mauer get his first hit of the season yesterday. Missed his first home run today. But I saw this cool column by Tom Powers about my hometown boys (The Twins) and our ballpark, the new Target Center.

Target Field replaces the old Metrodome, which, bless its heart, at least didn’t have a corporate name attached to it. I could go on and on about this kind of thing, but I won’t except to say the corporate sponsor was probably needed to replace the old dome with the new open-air stadium. One with no retractable roof. In Minnesota. I suppose we would have needed a half-dozen corporate names in front of a stadium with a retractable roof. I can see it now: The General Mills, 3M, Kentucky Fried, Univac, West Publishing Target Field.

Anyway, this blog isn’t about the new ballpark. It’s about the unexpected (and a little bit about my continual revere on the rising of the sun).

Powers begins his column by saying:

“Imagine a world where nothing ever changes. A world where people do the same thing at the same time in the same place day after day.”

(I have to admit that there are days in which that would be a pleasant imagining to me.)

Anyway, he goes on to say, “That was the Twins world at the Metrodome. And it was mind numbing.”

The Twins opened Target Field with the loss of an exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals. But it was before-the-game chatter that Powers reports. One of our pitchers, Matt Guerrier saying, “It was tough going to the Dome. It was bam, bam, bam. Nothing ever changes. We stretch at this time. Do something else at the next time. Today, it was raining. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“The chain was broken,” Powers says. “Ooooh, this is what it’s like to live dangerously. … The Twins were like little kids wondering what the rain was going to do to the rest of their day. The answer was that it would bring changes. Batting practice was canceled. The pitchers didn’t have to shag balls.”

You get the drift.

Everyone concerned couldn’t seem to work up a care in the world about the loss. They were giddy with change, with living dangerously, with being like little kids.

I haven’t been a big fan of a ballfield without a roof as backup for bad weather. I’m not a big enough fan to want to sit in the cold or the rain. But the giddiness was infectious and the sentiment heartening.

Change is good.

Quotes by Tom Powers, “Rain? Ooooh. Now what are we gonna do?”, St. Paul Pioneer Press, 1B.