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The Poetry of FrustrationMarch 20, 2011 12:05 AM While I was running errands this morning, over 100 messages appeared on this board. As you might suspect, many of these were not happy. If you tried to buy Twins tickets today, I feel your pain. It sounds like a positively sisyphean experience. But as I waded through the cries of your broken dreams (and broken links, and missing popups, and virtual waiting -- which sounds a lot like actual waiting), I began to recognize a language forming. It was the language of frustration -- more specifically, the poetry of frustration with the Twins' online ticketing system. So, with apologies in advance to all whose words I'm about to apprehend, what follows is an anthology of poetry drawn from Saturday's comments, made from your angst-filled impressions of the Minnesota Twins 2011 Single Game Ticket Sale. Staring at a screen — Ben I actually moved This thing — FD This is — Lincster right now — schweady I too — Jared The person — tk my guy looks I'm thinking — schweady in certain sections — Minnesota Twins Came back TMI? — schweady Was first in line Must have smarted off — FD I'm still in the back Nothing surprising — Max I happened to be staring Gonna need to bill the Twins — schweady I WANTED to give you I really did But NO! — JamesM The 11th box — schweady Adding boxes You are around the corner — Lincster the ellipsis — schweady My virtual cliffhanger Dive at the ticket box — Lincster try to pick up one last game — ClarkAddison If it feels kind of lonely — Kevin Smith CommentsTo utilized enhanced comment features, please enable cookies in your browser. Brilliant, Rick! Well done...sorry that your co-authors had to endure what they did to create this. When a crisis occurs, the lasting impression is often how it's dealt with. So far the Twins are failing on this front by downplaying the visible failure of the team's online ticketing system in a manner that kicks sand in faces of those affected and displays almost a defensive attitude. It's not too late for a change in tone however. What people require is a more legitimate apology. Simply thanking people for their patience without properly accepting responsibility and showing remorse for the combination of errors and failures won't cut it. What's done can't be undone, but a statement from the Twins that actually uses the "s" word (sorry) might start healing wounded fans and the club's wounded reputation. The Twins are working on it - they just have not decided on how much to charge for an apology. The Twins are offering an apology...you just have to enter the Virtual Waiting Room to go get it. Periods of summer-like rain here in Iowa. Makes it feel like the regular season is that much closer. My scan this morning showed 17 games where you couldn't buy a ticket any longer from the Twins. Several other games were clearly just scattered singles (for example, you can't get 2 together in any section on April 10). However just like last year, the games in September have a lot of availability, as do the weeknight games in April and May. On the StubHub front, usually between 1700 and 2500 seats available for any given game, so between 4%-6% of the house is up for resale. Of course, for opening day there are 3500 seats available. I'm sure some of that is STH that are happy to just go to the other 80 games, but certainly some are lottery winners just trying to turn their tickets. Overall, this doesn't look a lot different than last year. I think we just had more people understanding that they couldn't just walk up to the box office and grab a pair 30 minutes before game time. It would be nice to get a sense of how many tickets are held back for various reasons (visiting teams, players, VIPs, groups, and so on) that are often released back for sale. I know those will come back on the market irregularly, but are we talking a few tickets, dozens, or hundreds? Wow Kevin Smith comes off as a real arrogant ass with his comments yesterday. Click my name for the link to the Strib article. He says that "This is not a sky-is-falling scenario" and that "People need to be patient. ... If it feels kind of lonely sitting at your computer by yourself at home, remember, you're not alone." Of course its not a sky-is-falling scenario for the Twins. They are making money hand over fist and could care less about a few problems as long as tickets are still being sold and demand is high. The Twins are really starting to rub me the wrong way with how greedy they have become. Remember just a few short years ago they were crying they couldnt make it in the dome, now that they are in Target Field they are taking every penny from Twins fans they can get! Posted on March 20, 2011 at 09:27 AM by Vikeologist 8 I actually managed to get through yesterday for 4 tix to the home opener and 2 to the Saturday Brewer game. One of the lone success stories from yesterday it seems. It's sad this happened. I can remember plenty of lean years when there was little demand for Twins tickets and the day tickets went on sale would have caused nary a ripple in the news. Now with interest in baseball and the Twins so high, this kind of glitch is the last thing that was needed. Vike- They have never changed, they have always been this greedy. Most people just allowed themselves to be blinded by the wonderful time to be had at the new ballpark. I was able to get 7 tickets for 6/17 vs Padres but waited almost 2 hours in the virtual waiting room. DSP will be on KFAN at 10:35am if you want to hear his spin about "incredible demand" and "thanks for your patience" regarding yesterday's utter failure. K I am probably going to get flamed for this but here goes- To a degree I agree with what kevin Smith said. People need to be patient. It's easy for us to sit on our side of the computer and blame everything on the Twins. Most of that is our anticipation, anxiety over getting high demand tickets, desire etc spewing out when [i]we dont get what we want[i]. It's almost as though we think we are owed something that is actually a privilege and we are mad when we don't get it. There were hundreds of thousands of people trying to access an online ticketing system, waiting in virtual waiting rooms, electronic lines and all that get through potentially trying to access the same 15,000 tickets for example, say the Yankees series. There are a bunch of electronic steps that all hundred thousand people are trying to navigate it is easy to see how that can overwhelm some server systems. We have to remember, what is their typical volume on any given day going through their site? Not nearly as large as what is expected on a day like yesterday and even then it's an estimated bandwith they are trying to account for. They can estimate based off of last years numbers but from what I have heard there was relatively more demand this year, so last years allotment wouldn't quite cut it. You can only prepare so much before you just have to let it ride and see what happens. Now I know my fair share of tech but enough to be an expert so I am not justifying anything they have done or said. Also, with that large of number its easy to say that there are people out their who could very well be having a problem on their end and it wasn't the twins problem. For all we know people encountering issues are people opening the ticket window, closing it, trying to refresh on their own, etc. Human error. That number hopefully would be relatively small but the main point is that who are we to diagnose where the problem lies as we sit behind our computers at home? Do we know that the twins have their ticketing servers in house and manage them themselves? We don't and for all we know their server system could (likely) be outsourced. As far as I am concerned the system did what it should. There may have been an overload or whatever but the system wasn't down that long. I sat through it and got back in relatively in the same place I was when it went down and still got through to get tickets. They added a new step (the e-line) and it got tested in a real world scenario and mostly from our perspective did its job. We can't honestly think that they would allow all fans to get right in and start buying tickets. That would definitely crash servers. There has to be some type of queue in place. What is happening now is we are all pitching a fit like a 7 year old being denied in a candy store. We want something, we aren't getting it the way we want it so we are pitching a fit until we get what we think are acceptable results. We all need to just take a step back, put ourselves in time out and breathe for a little bit and let some logic creep back into our heads. Yeah it sucks that we didn't all get tickets or tickets we wanted but that's how it works. There are only so many tickets and that creates the high demand which creates our desire and anxiety for getting tickets we want. Some get them, some don't. We just need to take off our angry glasses that are shading everything to the negative side when we really don't know what was happening. I am not justifying anything the Twins have said though. Just trying to provide some perspective. I have discussed this in length with a successful IT systems analyst and he agrees. You can flame me all you want but I went through the problems too, am upset too (to a degree) and I stand by what I have just written. DSP said the system the Twins used is the same one the Red Sox use..The system had a glich..It's a major issue..demand is high and in the future they will try to improve..I say..What the Hell else do you want them to do? I'd want them to offer a simple apology instead of making statements designed to cover the club's rear end while diminishing the scale of the problem and the degree of frustration and disappointment suffered by so many fans yesterday. The issue that I have is that they knew demand would be sky high (with all the other losing teams this year it's obvious MN was going to rally around the Twins this year). And despite knowing about this demand they continued to use a system that did not work well last year and collapsed this year. The biggest day of true interaction between fans and the Twins was yesterday and the Twins knowingly made the decision to use a system they knew was not up to the task. They knew this and yet they didn't care enough about their fans and the ticket experience to do anything about it. I think a reasonable experience is to wait a couple of hours and get tickets to some but not all of one's desired games. This experience did not happen for a lot of fans. K I agree with Jaded. This process could have went smoother but people were going to be mad no matter how yesterday went. I think some people went into yesterday with unrealistic expectations about what tickets they would be able to get. The system did work. It did what it was supposed to do. Get people to wait in an organized line fashion, let them through to buy tickets, facilitate the buying process and get them out the door. It sounds like people are complaining about the wait mostly. If there wasn't an online ticket system we would have to wait in lines at a ticket office, where likely we would be waiting longer...what more can you want? It did its job. The apparent issue with the crash is load bearing. You can build and test but how can you possibly load test to the capacity that happened yesterday? You can't. Just like a power station any surge in people turning their heat or AC on at one time can crash it. Same thing here, it isnt a constant stress on the system, it comes and goes. They have people behind the scenes controlling bandwith and such to facilitate loads (just like the power company) but a spike over what they are managing at the time can knock it out. They can know demand will be high but there is only so much they can do about it. Why make excuses for the Twins? I think Dave St. Peter did a good job explaining the situation. Kevin Smith, the DIRECTOR of PUBLIC AFFAIRS, just pretty much shrugged it off and said "This is not a sky-is-falling scenario." "be patient you are not alone" A director of public affairs shouldnt take that approach after his employer just took a kick in the shorts in terms of fan appreciation. But like I said, the Twins are making millions, so why would they care if a few thousand fans were unhappy? Well I guess ill just watch them on tv. Opps guess I cant do that either oh well. Jared, no the system did not work. yes it got them to wait in organazied lines, but once a lot of people got in, the site couldnt handle the demand and crashed. What is the point of having people wait in lines and then letting too many in at once to process purchases? I went on hoping to get 3 or 4 games, but in all reality only expected 1 maybe 2 games. I came away with ZERO! The Twins failed here, plain and simple The system did work. It did what it was supposed to do. Get people to wait in an organized line fashion, let them through to buy tickets, facilitate the buying process and get them out the door. It sounds like people are complaining about the wait mostly. If there wasn't an online ticket system we would have to wait in lines at a ticket office, where likely we would be waiting longer...what more can you want? It did its job. The system didn't work. People lost ground in the electronic line despite a notice on the page stating that it was not possible to lose ground. People reached the end of the electronic line and were allowed to launch the schedule in order to select games only to get a blank white page. People got into the schedule, picked games, selected an amount of seats and a price point, filled in the mish mash code words, and were then told that the system was overloaded (not that tickets weren't available) and their request could not be fulfilled. These issues went beyond people just having to wait extra long for their turn. I agree that neither the Twins nor anyone else can prepare for everything, but it appears that not enough preparation ocurred in this case, resulting in a colossal failure. What's done is done. Between tickets bought at Target Field yesterday afternoon, games purchased from a friend with season tickets, and group night for the school my wife teaches at, I'm going to get to a good amount of games. All I want is for the team to show a bit more remorse and sympathy to people who were screwed, especially those in outstate areas. Asking for patience is not the same as apologizing. Someone in Minneapolis at least had a reasonable option of heading downtown. Someone in Hibbing or Alexandria didn't. Very well said Jorge. I live in western Minnesota so I get so sick of the Twins saying the windows at Target Field are open. Yeah i know they are, but I can't drive there right now can I? Six windows were open at TF this morning and I had to wait just a couple minutes. For a Monday night game in July vs. Cleveland, only place to get 4 together was in the Family Section. Who'da thunk it? Found one other update on the plaza: They already have Joe Mauer's 2010 Gold Glove inscribed on the Gold Glove plaque. No 2010 team pennant on the fence yet, though. Are you sure it was the site or the ticket program itself?...it could have been a java applet that wasn't updated on your computer or on the server, it could have been another program or code that supports the ticket program or the software on your computer. We don't know where the real issue lies and we shouldn't place blame as a result of that. We just have to accept that something happened, there was a blackout period, high transaction volume errors, what have you and just quit pitching a fit over it. I do too because I am just as guilty of complaining as everyone else. When you have that many people trying to access a system at one time there are going to be issues. It's just not possible to totally prepare for it. There is just too much to speculate about where the error is that it shouldn't be something to get so worked up over. I just want to say this one last thing. I am not trying to get anyone worked up. I am not taking any of your posts as digs or anything and I hope you reciprocate. I agree with you all. There was a problem. But the fact of the matter is, it happened and they can't account for all issues with that kind of high traffic demand. We just have to find more productive ways of giving feedback and realize that we don't really know where the issue lies so we have to hold back on where blame is placed. There is no need to speculate on the source of the problem because the Twins have admitted it was on their end due to an unexpectedly high volume of users. My big issue with the Twins right now is not the problem yesterday itself as opposed their handling of the aftermath. Their efforts at damage control cause more damage than just saying "we're sorry and we'll try to do better next time". Like most people, I'm just venting my frustration and in a short while this issue will have run its course and we'll move on to something else. it may have very well been then software used, but the fault still is with the Twins. If you go to a restaurant and order food and its crap, it is ultimately the cooks fault, but the restaurant is responsible. I added Kevin Smith's poem to the end of the post. Posted on March 20, 2011 at 12:36 PM by Rick 30 Take me out to the VWR TTH: One of the best items I've ever seen on this site. OD availability on StubHub increased by over 1,000 tix during the course of the day yesterday - someone was getting through. People look to blame STH or Stubhub for the high price of tickets...but I think this would happen no matter if Stubhub existed or not. You would just have to walk to your local ticket broker to buy or purchase from Guido outside the stadium. All I know is no STH, myself included, or going to let go of their tickets as long as this environment exists. It will take one, or maybe two, 70-92 seasons to get this back to reality. What I find stunning, is not that STH are hoarding their tickets and flipping them, but the fact that the Twins allow these presales, and up to eight tickets per game between all full and partial STH and TT members. These presales are going to chew up several thousand more tickets that the general public will lose out on. I am stunned, given what we know last from last year, that they decided to go through with the presales this year, and further encourage them with the TT memberships. I bought my ST package last March...yes, just one month before the Opening Day. At that point, no one anticpated what the demand would be. But this go around, everybody knew. In fact, I think demand is stronger this year because of the fear factor from people getting gouged last year. All I know is this constant shortage of tickets is very good for the Twins. It creates pent-up demand that could last for several seasons. I would suspect Kevin Smith got an ass whooping this morning as DSP hinted on KFAN...As far as the TWINS...They used the same EXACT online system the Red Sox used(zero problems)..The system was tested and worked before..It's not like they Wi Fi'ed the Holiday Store with those great hot dogs.Geeez. There are SRO tix available on Stub. Have the Twins released any yet? Why are the Milwaukee Brewers games in such high demand? Is it the Brewers fans driving up the demand? Or is the "Interleague Rivalry" simply that popular? When Twins-Brewers played Interleague Rivalries in the Dome, it was never in such high demand. I know Minnesota fans travel very well to Miller Park too. It just seems so many people are/were looking for Brewers-Twins tickets this year and last year. Yankees and Red Sox have always been popular. And we all knew any games from Memorial Day thru Labor Day would be very popular as well. Well, I'm incredibly lucky to have shared a 30-game package with a friend this year. And, sounds like Rick has a block of seats in the RF bleachers - which is the one spot at TF I want to sit for a game. And, I've looked on the Twins' site for tickets (after all the hoopla settled down yesterday)...seems a lot of games don't even have 2 tickets together for a lot of games. BTW - props to you TTH for coming up with that. That was really good. They are not instant download, so I am guessing someone is trying to sell them in hopes of selling and eventually obtaining to sell. I think that the rivarly has always been strong, but no one wanted to travel to Minneapolis when Miller Park also has a roof. Twins are saying day 2 is easy sailing. I bought Tickets for a couple of games in April in the Home Plate View session with no wait. Posted on March 20, 2011 at 4:17 PM by firedog 44 Mike- Now they want to see the game in a real ballpark and they have been. I went to one of the Twins-Brewers games last year at TF and the amount of Brewers fans shocked me a little. They had a successful chant going that Twins fans didn't even try to stop. AJ - I went to a Brewers game at TF last season as well. There were a good number of Brew Crew fans in my section... I, too, was at a Brewers-Twins game last year and saw lots of Brewers fans. They were everywhere: in the concession lines, in the restrooms...I even saw them on the light rail! LOL!! I entered the virtual waiting room at 9:30 and at about 10 I was at the head of the electronic line. I sat in that front spot for a half hour before a box popped up and said I could buy my tickets. Nothing happened. I sat for five minutes waiting. Then I said "Hell with it!" and I closed the window and opened a new one only to find myself staring at the ticket buying screen. I quickly bought my tickets and thanked God I came out OK. I just finished istening to podcast of DSP with Barreiro this morning. DSP sounded progressively more annoyed by some of the criticism Dan directly gave himself and conveyed from others as the conversation went on. That was bad form on his part. Dan accused Kevin Smith of arrogance in his dismissive comment yesterday, but didn't let Dave all the way off the hook, noting that they didn't get "as much" of it from Dave after nearly saying they got none of it and then stopping short. Posted on March 20, 2011 at 5:31 PM by Jorge 50 Damnit! there was just 2 tickets available in section 222 Row 4 for $38 each on stubhub. I tried to buy them but when I checked out, I got a message that says the tickets were no longer available. Guess im not meant to go to a Twins game this year! You would think that God would have done a better job yesterday, James1979. That's when the Twins really needed him. Just want to throw my two cents in here. In these days of Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure, and various Google services (cloud computing), there is absolutely no excuse for the ticketing system for such a large corporation (Tickets.com is now owned by MLB) to not be able to handle the high traffic load. My opinion of Tickets.com was already rock bottom when I discovered they are storing my password in plain text (as evidence by their "Hey, your new password is " Not a talented team of engineers, it's unfortunate it sounds like the Twins are almost forced into using them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickets.com Has the MN sports scene sunk to a new low? Consider: Gopher hockey and hoops are not in the NCAAs. K Well, on the good side Kramer - U of St Thomas DID win the Division III NCAA basketball title this weekend. DSP says no SRO tickets have been released yet, but they are all over StubHub. He also said they will be selling more SRO tickets this year. Atleast DSP seemed sincere about the ticket fiasco unlike that arrogant pompous ass Kevin Smith. Posted on March 20, 2011 at 10:00 PM by firedog 57 ...and the Badgers men's bball team is in the Sweet 16 and their women's hockey team won a NCAA championship today. just sayin'... It's too bad Betaband ran himself off the site. He'd be all over that Badgers post. Nice show on the MLB Network tonight for the 30 Clubs in 30 days. The online version breakdown of clips should be posted tomorrow, but it appears there is a somewhat of a delay based on previous showings. Click name for link. Posted on March 20, 2011 at 10:51 PM by tk 60 Click name for a YouTube video from first row of 239 on 9/20/10. The Twins take the field as We're Gonna Win Twins plays. Remember? So many snowflakes ago. Posted on March 21, 2011 at 12:26 AM by Buzz 61 Article in the Strib, an apology of sorts...along with various other info. Can someone help me understand this... Then, we also are working to finalize the completion on the Wi-Fi system that's being installed at the ballpark, which I think is going to be a pretty significant game-changer for fans who use their mobile devices. We'll be able to offer those replays and things that maybe they haven't been able to enjoy in terms of the main scoreboard. They'll be able to access some of those things on their mobile device in the ballpark in 2011." --How am I going to be able to access replays from my mobile device? Posted on March 21, 2011 at 01:06 AM by tk 62 ok my experience....got into line at 10AM....at 2:15PM I was able to click on the link to purchase tickets...did so...and got a blank screen....AUUUGHH!!! Jared: The truth is, the system did not work. It crashed. Twice. At least. Now, I'm not saying that you design a system to stand up to a tsunami, but perhaps for our regular preseason and postseason F4 tornadoes. and Rick: Thanks for ballparkmagic. It was what got me through my "lonely but not alone" Saturday experience. The images in today's article sum it up perfectly. You have succeeded in bringing a level of thoughtful sophistication to the game that puts you in a league with the likes of TwinsGeek and BatGirl. DSP tweeted that new food choices at TF will be anounced tomorrow and 3/29. Anyone have any predictions? I predict that the food choice announcement will make me hungry. :-) I predict they'll expand the Kramarczuk offerings to more areas of the ballpark since that was one of the biggest hits of last season, perhaps by making it part of the Halsey's Haus menu. I also think the State Fair Classics offerings will be more widely available than last year. Either could spread out at the expense of the Senor Smoke's and Frankie V's stands although both could be salvaged by revamping the menu to offer better quality fare. Less likely, but possibly helpful would be some standardization of the Hennepin Grille and Mill City Grill offerings. Both stands offer some similar and not so similar items, but I got the impression some fans took the distinctions as inconvenient or confusing rather than as variety. Schweady- I trust your statements. My point in the recent post was merely to present the idea that there were many factors that could contribute to an error that any specific user would receive (versus everyone as a whole) and that while the Twins took responsibility, likely it was more than just what they said. The questions were meant to be rhetorical in nature and I didn't mean to single you out, my fault I could have easily worded that better. I still maintain that the system functioned as it should have and just couldn't handle the load stressing the different parts, which I believe is not the same as the blanket statement of "not working". This would be where we agree to disagree. Someone had to specify in the programming that the load max=x and when that is reached an error is output. This ticketing system is used by more teams than just the twins. So I also agree with everyone. With the amount of data they ("they" being whomever actually programs and runs the ticketing system) should have from all of them combined, especially over the past handful of years, they should be able to have the system better handle the overall loads and at least be able to prevent the "High transaction volumes" error. The crash is another story in itself but the error received once people got to the purchase process should be the easiest to avoid. I am still probably not explaining my idea quite right but to avoid confusion or potential good or bad arguments I will just leave it at that. Sorry about continuing the drudgery of the ticket process. Okay, Jared, we're good. I'm moving on to DSP, et al: LONG POST, I KNOW. IT'S ABOUT SATURDAY. MOVE ON IF YOU HAVE NO INTEREST. He continually hammered home that it's "the same ticketing system that sold 3.2 million tickets last year." (This one goes both ways: yes, the system worked well enough to fill the stands every game, but no, it was not without glaring problems that the Twins basically ignored in ramping up for Saturday.) When pressed for solutions, it came out pretty vague: "It's something that may require an incremental investment by the Twins or tickets.com..." (I'm picturing the cliffhanger guy again.) "We're going to work hard and do what we can to make good... we're going to try to take care of as many of these fans who experienced these challenges as possible." (I'm very interested in how they may propose doing this. Hand out pieces of bobblehead to folks without tickets who are clinging to the gate out on plaza? Give each one their 5 seconds of fame on the big video board, perhaps?) He defends the STH pre-sale as a "really critical perk." Then, he indicates publicly that additional inventory was put out for the public on Saturday, tickets which were not available earlier in the week. That little piece of insight into ticket sales control strategy is sure to make a lot of folks (STH and non-STH alike) really happy, eh? Okay, I might be done on this topic. (Insert raucous cheering from the crowd...) Anybody know the per game cap on standing room tickets? Could be a nightmare with 10 deep standing in the isles! TwinkFan, I think the cap was in the 1,500 range last year, but that could be off. schweady, you summed up my feelings as well. Too much spin control and redirection of blame from DSP. In all due respect to DSP, he said there is nobody to blame but the Twins and they accept responsibility for that...Now how do you accept responsibility for that mess, that is beyond me...but I don't think the Twins owe anyone anything. We have to accept the reality that getting a ticket to Target Field is now going to be like Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. It should not really surprise anyone that they had issues on Saturday...especially trying to get tickets for any game between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And I agree with the "STH perks with the presale"...is it really fair to call it a perk or exclusive presale when it causes that much trouble? Maybe they need to set more limits amongst STH's or implement a "point system" based on years as a STH, plan/package price, # of seats, etc. And then give that STH an exclusive window to redeem their "points". Whether they want 8 tickets to one premium game or 4 tickets to 2 value games, etc. Some sort of points system needs to be implemented in my opinion. Someone with an 81-game package should have more points than someone with a 20 game package. Someone with a 20-game package for 5 years should have priority over someone with a 20-game package for 2 years and so on. Ultimately, when the demand is as high as it is, there really is no easy solution or fair way of handling this. The Twins also advertised for years to get your Target Field seating priority and establish your seat to the best games by purchasing a season ticket plan for as low as $200 ($10/game)....Yes, its a lot of money upfront, but you are guaranteed seats to some of the most sought after games without the hassles of the online ticketing system and fees that come with it. I'm so happy to be listening to Ted Robinson doing the game right now on radio! Posted on March 21, 2011 at 12:15 PM by Faber College Alum 75 I would agree with Mike - if you want tickets either pony up for season tickets or realize that you will pay alot of money to go to Target Field. I think it's great that the year AFTER the park opens, there is more demand for tickets. I know I can't wait to get back and luckily my buddy sells me 5 of his games from his season tickets. Mike: I love the points idea. and when I wrote about DSP wanting to "take care of as many of these... fans as possible," I was being facetious about any real expectations. $1 beers on the plaza would be nice, though. "pony up for season tickets" Just keep in mind that this isn't as easy as it used to be. I have a friend who has been on the waiting list now for quite some time... But just knowing a STH can be a very handy thing, though they're all dealing with higher demand now too. Posted on March 21, 2011 at 1:05 PM by Rick 79 This is just a suggestion, and in no way do I believe this would ever happen, nor am I even sure I would like it to happen. I just think it may be nice to regress a bit from all of the online stuff and get people back out at the ballpark, a little excitement in early March, instead of 5 guys hanging out in a tent. Maybe to avoid all of this they should push online sales back a week after tickets go onsale at the box office. Thus allowing more people more access to the tickets and forcing them to get off their asses and head down there to stand in line. Still have 1-800-33-Twins going for the out state fans. Place a limit on the number of games and seats per game per transaction, say 6 games, 6 seats per, then you can go to the back of the line and can wait until you get another chance. Then after about a week, open up the online sales and there would not be as much traffic. Then maybe for the season ticket holders they could allow online sales at the same time as the box office opens, but limit it to 6 seats per game, with full season getting 10 games to choose from, 40-games 6 games, and 20 game 4 games. This way there are no restrictions on what seats the season ticket holders are getting to buy, but then they can't just buy as many games as they want. It may also limit the number of scalpers, except for those that are season ticket holders. Season ticketholders deserve to have a presale with all games on the schedule up for grabs. It's a logical and rightful perk that virtually every MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL team offers to some extent. However, I think the maximum limit should be rolled back from 8 per game to 4 per game to prevent some of the more obvious profiteering on StubHub. I'm a STH and I think the 8 tickets per game for all games is a little ridiculous. Most STH's will get the 10 or so games they want while the scalpers get tickets to almost every game. A similar thing would happen with the points system. I would think scalpers will have the most points as some seem to have entire rows in sections which would presumably mean more points. I think it's a very complicated issue. Right on, Faber! Robinson is doing a great play-by-play. Could his and Bob Kurtz's appearances this season be an audition for next year? The Twins MLB Network 30 in 30 has been posted! Click name for link. Posted on March 21, 2011 at 2:06 PM by tk 84 I like the limit of 8 since it allows people with bigger families to attend games as a family. 6 may be reasonable, but 4 is too small there are many people I know that have at least 3 kids. Last year I was able to bring my parents, brothers and myself to the game, which was nice since all of my brothers live out of state and had not yet been to the ballpark. I needed 17 tickets for a family outing to the May 29 game. Too many for STH pre-sale and too few to qualify as a "group". I picked up 3 seats on the pre-sale, my brother got his company's 4 seats and I was able to pick up the final 10 seats together on SH. I don't like paying more than face value, but what are ya gonna do? I'm all for $1.00 beer night!!!! Will Wally be back selling beers or is he still on probation? He looked a little lost selling beers from the tallboys next to a couple hotties at Sneaky Petes last year during the playoffs! LOL! My understanding is that you could still get a 20 game pack season tickets as far back as Feb of last year. I know I got mine around that time or late Jan. Wally, I believe, was fired (at least as a beer vendor) as per Twins policy. As someone who has worked with risk management, I doubt the Twins or any other professional organization would offer $1 beer nights. That is just an encourager of high risk consumption. Cleveland is a good example on why this will likely never occur, click name for article, "Relive The Majesty And Terror Of "Ten-Cent Beer Night" Posted on March 21, 2011 at 3:17 PM by tk 92 Wally failed to ask for ID from and then sold beer to an underage person working in undercover sting operation, the kind the police often run in bars from time to time. JoJo- I like Wally, he's a great guy, but you've got to check ID. Thanks Jorge, Its a bummer to here that. I remember growing up and going to the dome and getting Wally's baseball card and picture, and then coming full circle a few years later and actually getting to buy a beer from Wally. Both were special days to be a twins fan at the dome! Wally is claiming "entrapment" but if you don't check an ID, you don't check an ID...You gotta check everyone's IDs regardless of what they say. I see people huddled around beer vendors before every game in the main concourse so I don't see how the "entrapment" defense will prevail. However, this person may have been one of those persons who appears much older than they actually were. Probably had beard/facial hair and so on but was clean shaven when he appeared in court last week because Wally testified that person looked much younger in the courtroom than he did at the ballpark and that he absolutey would have carded him in that case. I like Wally and hope he wins this case and is selling beers again at Target Field, but the law is the law and you gotta check ID's regardless. Well ten cent beer is a little too cheap! How bout just giving each adult a couple of beer tokens say for 2 $1.00 brews? Do I really HAVE to find some sort of sarcasm emoticon to use with you guys? Yes, beer good; too much beer, bad. I was thinking that the $1 beer could just be Tuesdays or something. x-) (It's a joke. Again.) The whole Wally thing is a shame. I know, the cops gotta do what they gotta do. And Wally's gotta do what he's gotta do. And the courts gotta do what they gotta do. But it seems like much ado about nothing. It seems like the guy you want to catch is the guy who is knowingly and repeatedly selling to underage drinkers. They're out there. But it takes a lot more time and energy to catch them than it does to send a pigeon in and nab Wally on what is probably, at most, the occasional lapse. When it comes to alcohol, I'm a total libertarian (as some will remember from the discussion of alcohol at TCFBS). Posted on March 21, 2011 at 3:58 PM by Rick 101 10 exclamation points in one post? (Oh well, you get points for leaving out the LOL -- which, as I'm sure you know, only tweens still use.) Posted on March 21, 2011 at 4:01 PM by Rick 102 " --- often run in bars from time to time." Wally was not singled out and there is no evidence (I know of) that the kid knew Wally was any sort of celebrity. From what I gather it was just another compliance check at a licensed establishment - SOP for police departments everywhere. Wally should just keep his yap shut and take his licks - he has them coming. schweady, I missed the second LOL post, that indicates the sarc good enough for me. Sometimes, people take things too seriously, which I did in that last post...and sometimes people do not take things serious enough, when they actually are serious. Those who only occasionally defy or break the law apparently have Rick's blessing. " --- often run in bars from time to time." Wally was not singled out and there is no evidence (I know of) that the kid knew Wally was any sort of celebrity. From what I gather it was just another compliance check at a licensed establishment - SOP for police departments everywhere. Wally should just keep his yap shut and take his licks - he has them coming. Not sure what the "precious" comment was about. Police departments will, from time to time, send underage persons into drinking establishments undercover to check compliance as you stated. I completely agree that Wally broke the rules and rightfully lost his gig. In no way did I mean to imply that he had been singled out for harsh treatment, was a victim of a conspiracy or otherwise had been maltreated. In this case, he got nabbed. Had he been elsewhere in the park, another vendor might have been put to the test. Maybe DSP could arrange for a location - I dunno - somewhere close to TF but outside the gates so that you wouldn't really need a ticket, that you could pick up hot dogs for a reasonable price. Maybe $1? And then those who were lucky enough to have bought a ticket online (this would have to be 1:10 games during the work week in April, May, and September only) could bring them into the game with them. Suppose he'd spring for the foil wrappers? Those who are not aware of the situation might be interested to know that Wally was not alone - there were others as well (nine total?). He is caught red handed, so to speak, yet thinks it is someone else's fault or doing and looks to weasel out of it via spin - obviously Twins front office material (and it has been reported that DSP has approached Wally about another position). Jorge --- It was the doing something both often and from time to time - concurrently - that amused me. I really thought you would catch that. Rick, I know this is likely a large project that you have been working on for some time and I am not trying to be a pester, but do you have any idea on when you would have the screen captures posted for all sections at TF? I only ask because I am just curious to see how close or far away from the aisle I am with the 2 games I was able to secure. Thanks for all that you are doing! I've come to realize that I don't really LIKE Wally the Beer Man, I just like the IDEA of Wally the Beer Man. Seeing him at games on occasion gave a sense of place, of tradition. The fact that he handed baseball cards out -- mostly to kids... it was rare when I saw anybody of drinking age get him to hand one over -- pretty much cemented the deal. He was part of the fabric of the game. The other day when I heard him talking to a reporter, he just came off like any other bitter old creeper. Sad to say. Sadder to see. I cant make the game 4/13 royal 12:10.. i will be taking the friday and sat off for the opener and cant miss anymore work.. will sell them for 60.00 for the pair... click my name and email me if you want them... Posted on March 21, 2011 at 9:05 PM by mazaratirick 113 Ben, with a red face I'm opening up my old English books. Came across this review of the San Diego (It means "a whale's vagina") Padres' ballpark. At least to this person, the disparity of access for the "haves" and "have nots" really affects the ability to enjoy the ballpark. How does this translate to Target Field, in your humble opinions? Posted on March 21, 2011 at 9:51 PM by The Truth Hurts 115 I saw a game at Petco in 2004 and think the author is being a bit harsh. The sandstone look works for the location. The park has a unique look and feel. Not getting to move from deck to deck is annoying, but it's not the only park where such a thing is either not allowed or at least difficult. I can't speak for having trouble with no hawkers on the upper tier (didn't go up there). All in all, I enjoyed my evening there, but then again, every outdoor park felt special in the days of the Metrodome. TTH -- So, I've never been in Petco, but I've been downtown twice while games are going on. It is a wonderful venue and the main drag seems much more fun than the warehouse district quite frankly. That may be just because you can eat outdoors year round in SD. But, going off the article, we have to approve of TF because... 1) I think we would all agree that there are good food options at TF. Not everything is a winner, but there are good choices. 2) The bars and restaurants and accessible to all fans outside of the Met Club, and even that is accessible to 25K of 40K per game. 3) All fans can wander anywhere. I can't tell you how important that is to the experience. 4) The atmosphere, it can be a cold Tuesday night under the heat lamps, or a warm summer day in the sun....we can't get enough of it yet that's for sure. I think the Padre fans are way spoiled. We are better off as outdoor baseball fans having the climate that we have. Interesting TTH...I was at Petco in 2009 & stayed at the Omni (visiting team hotel FYI). Had no idea the really nice looking restaurant behind home plate was for hotel guests. Personally when you can buy a ticket 3-4 rows behind the dugout for about half face value it is hard to bitch & moan about the separation of classes. I guess I'd have rather had target fields main bowl seating with Zero exclusive areas. But I am not naive in that the premium seating is where a significant portion of the business comes from. I don't have a problem with a dedicated club level above the main seating bowl, but in my perfect world the main bowl would be nearly identical to Camden Yards. Lots of sections with short rows & no ushers blocking off the bottom few rows for VIPs. I think the mixing of socioeconomic classes is one of the great attributes of baseball & what gives certain ballparks more favor IMO. Ive now seen most of the current parks & a few retired ones. Heading up to Toronto next week. Anyone been to Skydome? Tips? Lincster: That isn't entirely true. Fans are kept out of the Legends Club, Suites, & Champions Club if they don't have tickets for those areas. It is just the reality of modern ballparks. The separation of classes is not going away anytime soon. BTW: They have several Rubio's fish tacos stands at Petco. Very tasty. Also read today that Five Guys burgers is pulling out of their Nationals park location despite it being an overwhelming success (albeit among typically small DC crowds). Rick: will TC Traders be back in 2011? Or may we use this forum to buy, sell, trade our tickets via linked email addresses? Catching up... Ben, I'm not blessing what Wally did. He made a mistake, broke the law, and is being properly prosecuted. I'd be very surprised if he wasn't convicted, because it sounds like he's admitted that he didn't ask for IDs. He just asked everyone if they were "over 21". But I think that the sting and prosecution is a bit of a waste of resources, and does next to nothing to curb underage drinking. tk, Big project, indeed. It's coming. Watch the "Game Central" page. In the meantime, email me your section and I'll send back the detailed image. Max, TC Traders will be up again this week. I'm making some streamlining changes. Posted on March 21, 2011 at 11:41 PM by Rick 120 As for Petco, I haven't been there. (I'm off to see AT&T and Oakland in May. Hoping to make it through 30 parks in three years -- with detailed reports here, of course.) In photos, it looks huge, and we all know that it plays huge. Architecturally, I think it's reasonably attractive, but I don't really understand it visually. I'll have to see it in person first. It's dismaying to hear of the strict separation of classes. That's one thing that I think they did very smoothly at TF. Even though there are exclusive areas (the aforementioned Legends, Champions, Budweiser, and Metropolitan clubs, and the suite level), their presence is offset by the complete freedom of movement throughout the rest of the facility. And there's enough in the way of non-exclusive clubs (Townball, Hrbek's, Twins Pubs, Captain Morgan) to provide a variety of places to hang out during a game. In fact, having seen games from all of these spots, I can honestly say that the non-exclusive areas of TF are so good that what the average fan is missing in the exclusive areas is mostly a matter of taste (albeit sometimes literally). I still find the moats to be a little heavy-handed and limiting, though I've come to appreciate the freedom of movement they provide. The various classes seem to coexist more or less peacefully at TF, and there's an experience for almost every wallet size. Posted on March 22, 2011 at 12:18 AM by Rick 121 I'm off to Petco this summer too along with the rest of the California ballparks. Even though from afar I think it looks interesting it's by far the stadium i'm least excited for. Truthfully SD is making the schedule so the lady and I can go to the beach and the zoo on Sunday, the fact that the Padres are in town when we get there on Saturday is a bonus. Rick i'm surprised that your heading west in May instead of holding off until June to see the home town 9 in San Fran. AT&T has been my favorite stadium i've never been to from the day it was built, and i'm extremely excited to finally see it with the Twins. The schedule was dictated by a few things beyond my control. And it's much easier to evaluate a park when I don't care that much about either team (in which case I'd be tempted to sit down somewhere and just watch). Posted on March 22, 2011 at 12:48 AM by Rick 123 If I remember right it was always mentioned as the peoples ballpark. Just a question though would the people have class separation. I was dissappointed last year at the open house when I was told we could not see the champions club which was the whole point of going there to see stuff one would not see at a normal game day only to be told what one could and could not see that was and still is kind of a raw deal. Posted on March 22, 2011 at 02:30 AM by Leroy (aka Leory) 124 I know this is a longshot, but I am looking for 2 opening day tickets if anyone has 2 extra. Don't want to get raped on prices, so if you have any let me know. Click my name for my email Posted on March 22, 2011 at 08:38 AM by Vikeologist 125 Yeah I had just checked on some tickets this morning at 8:30 and got thrown into a virtual waiting room. I thought that was weird so I stayed in it. Then they announce at like 8:50 they're about to start selling them. Well I'm not sure I will ever get out of this waiting room, even though I was probably one of the first in. Twins ticket office isn't open either. I call the ticket office at 9:08 and i get a message saying the call center is currently closed and that hours are 9-5...ok so if hours are 9-5 shouldnt you be open at 9:08? who is running things over there? yeah at 9:12 they finally open. I am not on hold and in the virtual waiting room. Yeah me too Vikeologist. Anyone else find it suspicious that so many people were looking for seats that there was a virtual waiting room at 8:30, when they didn't announce that seats would go on sale today until 8:50? Was able to get 4 SRO's for Home Opener pretty easily over the phone. The ticket icon is not on the schedule online right now. i see someone has SRO tickets for opening day on stubhub already for $48 each. im going to wait it out for a few more days Exactly Vikeologist. I had good luck last year getting the tickets for opening day during general sale (about a week before the game). I want to take the little guy this year, but there is no way I'm going to get a nine year old to stand for four hours to watch the game. It'll be hellish to find a good sightline for him too. I'm hoping to get lucky this week for actual seats, will just have to keep looking and checking. Stubhub currently has 3,854 tickets available for opening day. One way or another I will be going, and I think prices will drop between now and then! TK, go to the tickets drop down tool bar and click on single game tickets to the far right. When the page loads scroll down to the upcoming series and click on the little ticket icon for any of the teams. You will then be loaded into the virtual waiting room. I hope all those greedy people get stuck with all those tickets! Prices will most certainly drop. Demand is always greatest when single game sales begin. Give it a few days, especially when the first weather forecast comes out. thanks to this site i was made aware of the SRO availability and got tickets to the 3/4 games i was planning on attending this year. i could have gotten the 4th but we need seats when we take our 3 year old to a game. so with the possibility of snow tomorrow will they put the tarp back on? But the other vendor was found guilty. Huh? Posted on March 22, 2011 at 10:34 AM by fiesta 148 No the tarp will not go back on...the field is heated to about 60 degrees now, so most if not all snow will melt. the sooj--I doubt they will re-tarp the field. It's not going to be that much snow, and they likely already have the grass heaters turned on. Leroy- You can see the Champion's Club on the TF tour. It is nice to see it and realize that you would not want to be there during a game anymore than a wealthy friend's finished basement. It is esthetically pleasing, but I believe all of the wine they serve is made with grapes too sour for my taste. Rick- I recommend going to a Giants' game the first day. The next day, do some site-seeing (SFMOMA, Alcatraz, etc.) and then go back to AT&T's right field "knot-hole" section and watch up to three innings for free. Very exciting to see a catch up close at field level. Oh, why do they taunt me so with the green 'T' on April 8?... Either it's the 'No seats are available' message, or SRO is listed but 1 is too large a number of seats to find available together. Those teases.... Did anyone hear how many SROs are being sold per game this year? Wally is a popular man with a lot of money so he is able to hire the best of the best for a defense lawyer. The new food announcement for today is Walk a Taco. I would think he would get it back, fans are already begging the Twins to let him have his job back, but people will be lined up to hire wally if they dont Im pretty sure they are selling 2,000 SRO per game. Ive seen that number before, and then kind of 'played around' with Friday Yankee tickets. Here is what I found. SRO tickets have four groups: I had the chance to buy Yankee SRO3 tickets in a group of 8, ticket #'s 480-487. Dumped the tickets, tried again literally a minute later, and the tickets that were availible were SRO4 44-51. So Im guessing 500 tickets per SRO block. Of course I dumped those, checked again as was back to SRO3 in the high 400's again. I'd bet money on 2,000 though. -will thanks, visionsaul. Yeah, seems like I did that same thing last year but couldn't remember my math. DSP had tweeted at some point that it would be consistent with the end of last season. Whether that means the playoff levels or the regular season levels, I am not sure. Wow 2,000 SRO tickets per game? Yikes! They still asking $20 a pop? I think the 2000 number is right on. The RoofDeck holds 130 SRO, so only 870 throughout the remainder of the ballpark? Yes, they are specifically for the RoofDeck, but they could be anywhere in the ballpark in theory. 1,000 seems low to me. I thought last year they started with 1,000 and upped it to 1,500. Anyone else have any thoughts/insight? Can't wait to the the SRO impact as Thome gets to 598 and 599. The overlook/plaza area will be packed. Im actually worried about fire codes, and how they will keep people circulating as I posted a week or so ago. -will -will One of these days ill get with it im and old man and I dont like change Posted on March 22, 2011 at 11:50 AM by Leroy (aka Leory) 163 Heres a link to a game from a Saturday last year against the Angels. Attendance is listed as 40,966. http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/news/boxscore.jsp?gid=2010_08_21_anamlb_minmlb_1 I believe seated capacity is listed as 39,504. Which would be a difference of 1,462. With a stated intent to increase it this year. Not trying to argue, just trying to get some facts out there so we can all figure this out. -will It was great to stand at the drink rails around TF last year before they sold SRO tickets. Plenty of room to hang out and watch comfortably. Sometimes I get claustrophobic in my seats, especially when it is hot. I met many nice fans at the drink rails. I would sometimes trade my seats for SRO tickets to out-of-towners, first-timers or elderly couples I met. They would be grateful and also surprised that my Field View tickets cost less than half as much as their SROs. I once traded with a couple we met at the Metropolitan Club drink rail that had 20-games in Left Field Bleacher seats. They rarely sat in their seats and thought it would be fun to try ours. those wide concourses are jam packed now, can't imagine what it will be like with even more standing room. I don't like it, but im sure the Twins love the money The only problem I ever with crowded SRO, even late in the season, was behind home plate. I don't like standing there, though, because it's tough to see where the ball goes on a pop-up. Not even the plaza area was bad, with maybe only 1 or 2 deep after the drink rail. My favorite place to stand was either Batter's Eye or right above that, under Minnie and Paul. (Or are both areas consider Batter's Eye?) Then again, I'm 6'1" and have no problem seeing over that stupidly tall wall. Why do the twins advertise tickets available for A game when they are not. I keep clicking the links and I get the were sorry no tickets available for the selected game. Man maybe I should mulitply myself so I would be more than one person then I would have a better chance heheheheh. Posted on March 22, 2011 at 12:21 PM by Leroy (aka Leory) 169 I see the Gophers open up April 1st @ Target Field. Long ways out but says sunny and hight of 59 on accuweather Is it the tarp for the infield or the tarp covering all the grass? The biggest issue I have with SRO tickets comes from the very ability to freely roam about. This causes two problems: conjested areas and not being able to charge tiered (specific area) prices. Currently you can have someone sitting in the top row behind home plate that payed $65 and someone standing right behind them that only paid $20. It's this freedom of movement that makes me not like SRO tickets. Have one or the other. not both. Jury full of morons - just what Wally counted on. As far as getting his job back --- is he not still in violation of stated job rules? I have nothing against Wally - just hate to see celebrity trump policy or law. My guess is he will get his job back selling beer. Dave St. Peter had already proposed bringing him back to sell other items, now that he is "not guilty" there is no reason not bring him back. It may possibly lead to a law suit if they were to not bring him back, being that he was found not guilty of the infraction that he was fired for. I really didn't care one way or the other if he was convicted but the kid that he sold to, from the statements made in court, seemed like a douche. As for the SRO tickets, in the 13 or so games I went to last year, I never noticed it being overcrowded, nor had to wait a long time to get a good drink rail spot at the Captins Deck. This could be because of the number of tickets scalpers have to eat on a nightly basis. Slowey to the bullpen and Baker is the 5th starter. I personally would have liked to see the situation reversed and see Scotty Baker the Home Run maker in the bullpen. Posted on March 22, 2011 at 1:16 PM by Duffman 176 Obviously the kids are wasting way too much money on fake IDs when you need only answer a question incorrectly. I was an early advocate for putting in drink rails and selling more SRO tickets, but by the end of last season it had gotten completely out of hand. Sounds like it will be that way again this year. In terms of seeing the field, a group of people five deep is roughly equivalent to the cement walls which separated the concourses from the field back at the Dome. The effect of the open concourse is muted pretty severely. But we have to admit that this is a direct result of success on the field. I think we'd all rather have this than being able to see a team that sucks from the concourses... Posted on March 22, 2011 at 1:20 PM by Rick 178 By the way, I still have tickets available at face value (plus shipping) for the two BPM nights: April 9, 6:10, Section T (Skyline Deck, vs. A's) (And if you've already made a request, you're in!) Posted on March 22, 2011 at 1:29 PM by Rick 179 SRO ticket inventory fluctuates based on demand and weather amongst other things. Early and late season games have smaller SRO inventories so fans can congregate under the various radiant heaters. With the increased use of the radiant heaters early and late in the season, the Twins release less SRO tickets for those early and late season games. At least that is what I remember being told last year. Obviously the Twins have the ability to release additional inventory closer to the game date based on the demand and weather forecasts and other factors. Keep in mind it's not only SRO ticket holders that are standing around. I would guess a significant portion are folks who simply left their seats. Either due to they really didn't like their seat location or they just want to look around and get different views. Even if there were zero SRO tickets sold, those drink rails would get used alot. I think SRO was done to help provide the public with ticket options away from scalpers and for the Twins to capture that revenue. As long as the team's on field performance doesn't fall off a cliff, sellouts and near sellouts will continue, making SRO tickets a necessity. However, the day will come a few years down the line when the team isn't as competitive and the ballpark won't be as new. At that point getting seats to most games won't be as much of an issue anymore and the sale of SRO tickets will only occur for a small handful of games each year. Even when the Indians had their 5 or 6 season streak of sellouts, the end of the boom period was inevitable. I am still pissed about waiting four and a half hours just to be circumvented. I was in the waiting room before ten, before we were moved to the electronic line. I sent the Twins two emails that day about different things that happened to me while trying to buy tickets on their site, but never heard anything back. I've never heard so much as an apology from the organization. It's more like a shrug and Sh*t happens additude. As much as it pains me to do it, I'm boycotting Twins games this year, since the apparent agony and torture of their fans' wasted hours and missed chances seems to not matter to them in the slightest. Luckily our area has another baseball team to watch, so this year I'm going Saints. Posted on March 22, 2011 at 4:03 PM by DGJ 185 I'm sure there will plenty of Saints tickets. Course that huge mound of snow might still be in the lot come June! LOL! Come on DGJ - you aren't mad at Rick. How about at least going to the two Ball Park Magic nights? As of right now, I don't think you will even have to enter a virtual waiting room with him. No waiting at all (virtual or otherwise). A reservation just costs the price of an email! Posted on March 22, 2011 at 4:45 PM by Rick 188 (rick at this domain, of course) Posted on March 22, 2011 at 4:46 PM by Rick 189 Email sent, Rick! Posted on March 22, 2011 at 6:34 PM by StatFreak101 (Erik) 190 It was very clear last year that the hottest standing room was in the bars behind home plate on the second deck. You could have a ticket for the top row of the outfield, but if you got there at 5:45 and were willing to stand, you had a great view of the game and a bar right there. Those are the standing room steals for sure. For the vertically enhanced, I liked standing on the batters eye wall as well. My vertically challenged bride thought it was stupid, but I really couldn't blame her :). The one standing area I just didn't get was the Captain's deck. It was always way too crowded and I couldn't see a thing. And when I could, the angle wasn't that good. I didn't get attraction. Others that liked it there? Tell me why. Oh, Lincster, you know that for a lot of those guys, once they got a little Captain in 'em, the angle was just fine to them. If anybody out there is a youth baseball coach and are looking to brush up on your skills the Twins and Play Ball Minnesota are hosting a coaches conference on April 2nd at Target Field. Breakfast and lunch will be provided and from the sound of it you'll get hands on instruction on running drills, protecting young pitchers arms, coaching philosophy etc. Click my name for the link, it's $23 per person to register, and you get tickets to the April 27th game against the Rays. Posted on March 22, 2011 at 7:57 PM by jp 193 Rick, as for people complaining for high resale price for tix from STH, yesterday i offered my 24.00 per seat tix at 30.00 per seat for a game 4/13 royals game.. thats less in mark up than any non STH would have paid from the Twins with conv. fees and handling charges but of course nobody here inquired about them cuz some just want to complain. keep that in mind when you are trying to get tickets to the Yankees games in Aug when its 78 degrees and stubhub and craigslist is asking 125.00 for 24.00 tix.. say what you want to say about me but atleast im honest and letting some of you know you are hypocrites... mazaratirick, I would have loved to take those tickets off your hands, but I don't live in the Twin Cities, so a weekday game in April doesnt work for me, otherwise I would have already bought them from you. maz, My only point was that becoming a season ticket holder isn't as easy as it once was (which I think is also your point). You can't just do it at will if you're having trouble getting tickets any other way. As for a Wednesday afternoon game in April against Kansas City, I'm not surprised to hear that there weren't many takers. I was reminded recently that the second home game of last season, a rainy afternoon game against the Red Sox -- but game 2 at the new ballpark no less! -- was a tough ticket to get rid of. One guy told me he lost $5K on that game alone because he couldn't give the tickets away. It's just supply and demand, as impacted by weather, timing and the opponent. Posted on March 22, 2011 at 9:40 PM by Rick 196 I just dropped $62 for SRO from the Twins for August 5th, as I did not draft this game, it actually was the 1st Round, 2nd pick. By purchasing 2 of the allotted SRO tix, it allows me to avoid a larger secondary mark-up for a game I would normally be forced to look at SH or elsewhere. This is why I think we will be seeing the SRO tix stay available on any "sell out" and why we are seeing them already for this season. Can someone remind me what first deck row is under the Legends Club overhang? And which row it starts to impact your ability to follow popups. Thanks! Just looked out the window. Would someone please drive a stake through the heart of the Vampire known as The Winter of 2010-2011? My Twins Tickets on the Twins website is seriously messed up. There are 2 games that I can't go to in September that I tried to list on Stubhub through there--it wouldn't let me. Then, while looking at my tickets the 4 SRO's that I bought yesterday for Home Opener are listed as Cancelled or Sold Ind on Stubhub. I definitely did neither of those, nor do I plan on doing either of those. I ordered them over the phone and am awaiting delivery. Also, the 2 Home Opener tickets I bought through the pre-sale that I have already received do not show up. I assume it is just a glitch in their system (this statement has been said alot around here lately) PatMeares, are you looking to sell those home opener tickets? if so hit me with an email Posted on March 23, 2011 at 08:58 AM by Vikeologist 201 Nooooo I am using all 8 we have. I actually need another SRO ticket--I should have just bought 8 on the phone yesterday instead of 4. Driving in today with all the ruts and ice on the roads reminds me of the halloween blizzard of 91. Might take a week to get the chunks of ice and snow of the road. Body shops, wheel alingment and muffler shops in heaven. Did not see one plow truck on the road the entire way into work! I would say row 15 is about as far back as you want to go under the LC overhang. To be safe I'd stay 13 or lower. Got my first batch of tickets in the mail yesterday, from the 'Twins Territory Team' pre-sale last Wednesday. So, now I'm ready for baseball season to start! Of course I'm ignoring what's going on right outside my window right now... not complaining at all about it im just saying people who say there is not a affordable way into the park to watch a game is a joke.. its just not THEE game with THE perfect weather at THE perfect start time vs THE PERFECT TEAM... i will either take the day off or give my seats for that game to my kids mom and she can take one of my kids.. im not a broker i have a 20 game pack so im not worried.. but best beleive my 800 investment will pay its self off by all star break.. I agree Maz - everyone is after those games from Memorial Day thru Labor Day but you can get plenty of affordable seats for April-May and September. DSP was correct when he asked which games people are seeking tickets for that were causing the most problems....I bet most people were after those June-August games. I personally had no problems finding tickets for games in April, May and September. STH's and Scalpers do not make big profits in those early season and late season games. For as good as they can do in June-August, they can take some big hits in April, May and September games. It's no different than Fenway Park or Wrigley Field...your best bet on tickets at those venues are games in April/May/September against teams such as the Orioles/Blue Jays/Rays or Reds/Pirates/Astros. We have the same scenario at Target Field with early/late season games against teams such as Cleveland, Kansas City and Detroit. Maz - Your final statement "but best beleive my 800 investment will pay its self off by all star break" speaks volumes. This is the exact attitude every broker has, be it big volume brokers or small time brokers. They just want to make a buck or see games for free at the expense of real fans. And as far as I'm concerned, are the true hypocrites calling themselves fans. Not sure if this has been mentioned, but for the "have's" it appears that FSN and the MLB have picked up another game of Spring Training. There is some difference between STH that want to go to games vs. ticket brokers that buy just to re-sell. yes and no. There are season ticket holders that buy up tons of extra tickets during the pre-sales and re-sell them and ridiculous prices to pay for their orginal seats. Not saying its stupid, it just hurts other fans that dont have the luxury of season tickets because instead of buying face value tickets from the twins, they have to go to a secondary market like stubhub and pay twice what they are worth. perfect example yesterday morning. Within minutes of standing room only seats going on sale, there was over 200 new SRO seats for opening day on stubhub. Most of them were in lots of 8 which is the max the Twins allow you to buy per game. Like i said earlier, I hope they get stuck with all those tickets Vikeologist, What is a ticket worth? A ticket is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. "Real Fans" only complain when tickets are selling for more than face. You don't hear them complaining when tickets were selling for way less than face. If you checked StubHub last year you could see that this happened a lot at the end of the year. Im sure you would not pay face vallue for a $50 ticket if you could go on StubHub and get it for $20. thats not my point..my point is these so called 'real fans' are buying up tickets just to make money off other 'real fans' they have the right to do this, but I just think its a bunch of bull... I am a Vikings season ticket holder, and I usually can get more than what my tickets are worth, especially for the Packers game, but I sell them for face value to a 'real' Vikings fan, not some visiting team fan, or rip off one of my fellow fans. PatMears, I am having the same issue with some extra games I bought during the single game sale last Saturday, they are listed also as canceled/sold but I called the twins to verify my order was in the system since my card was charged and they said "not to worry" and that they were really stumped as to why my twins tickets account would reflect that lol, no one really knows from the 2 people I spoke to. " --- they have to go to a secondary market like stubhub and pay twice what they are worth." What is paid establishes worth. some people would rip off their own mother just to make a buck Posted on March 23, 2011 at 3:13 PM by Vikeologist 218 Thanks for the update Justin. I'm not worried about it, just a little annoyed with their ticket systems never working correctly. Ticket update: A trip to the Target Field box office this morning yielded "obstructed view" tickets available for a number of previously hard-to-get games in July and August. Doesn't look like you can buy these online either -- just Standing Room Only. Gotta agree with Vikeologist here. It's a symptom of a Me First mentality that is all too prevalent today. Everybody is out to make a buck and screw the other guy. Sad, but just a part of the culture it seems. You see it in the way people drive and generally treat other people when they think they can get away with it. Lincster, I concur in spades. I'm tired of seeing white - I wanna see green. Bp - from the Twins' website (also click my name to link to it): Restricted View Seats * Because the Home Run Porch Terrace overhangs the left field wall, seats in those sections as well as the Home Run Porch View sections, are unable to view the left field wall. * Because the Grandstand overhangs the right-center wall, seats in those sections are unable to view the right-center field wall. * In Field Box section 101, the lower-numbered seats in rows 25-40 (closest to the right-field bleachers) only have a partial view of right field and center field. This is noted in the seat information that appears when you move your cursor over that seat for each affected seat. * In the Main Level sections 107-126, rows 24 and above will only have a partial view of the main video board due to the fact they are beneath the club level overhang. Two 42" flat-screen televisions mounted above each of these sections will show the same images that appear on the main video board. * In the Main Level sections 107-126, rows 16 and above are beneath the club level overhang. * The Left-Field Bleacher sections 128-131 do not have a view of the main video board due to the Home Run Porch overhang. * Right Field Bleacher Section 139 does not have a complete view of center field. * Section 127 does not have a complete view of the main video board. Posted on March 23, 2011 at 4:39 PM by luke 223 I got a block of obstructed/restricted view seats in the right field bleachers this morning, for the Friday August 5th ChiSox game. The same seats were apparently available for other previously unavailable/SRO games in July & August too. I got them in-person (no fees!) at the main ticket office, but I would guess you could also get them by phone. (I think they just like to explain to people about the obstructed/restricted view, so they aren't normally offered online?) Lincster -- yes the area in the bars behind 215 was popular. Luckily for me, my season tickets are in 215, row 6. Great view, get to sit or stand and lean against the wall behind, there's a ledge for sweatshirts/peanuts/beer/bags, etc -- and when we want a beer, not far to go! Also, great place to have (or overhear) interesting conversations when the windows are open! For the person who wanted to know the revenue that was made last year, click my name for info. Twins made $213 million in 2010, which is only slightly more than I expected. This article shows the payroll at $112 million. So they're using 53% of revenue on the players. Possibly more, I'm not sure if the revenue is where they take out the revenue sharing from (which the Twins now have to pay into rather than get). Posted on March 23, 2011 at 6:27 PM by AJ 226 And if I would have just read a little further... Vikeologist, I have some opening day tickets, currently listed on Stubhub, that I may be willing to part with. Not sure I would let them go for face value, as even co-workers, family, and friends have offered more. But if you are interested shoot me an email. Posted on March 23, 2011 at 7:28 PM by Josh 228 The restricted view seats list should include: "Lower numbered bleacher seats in the rows nearest the rear of Section 139 do not have a view of much of anything except some of right field and about two-thirds of the infield. Views do include home plate, first base, the pitcher's mound and third base." Closed circuit to Jared, the OFFICIAL BPM meterologist: I have tickets for the first night game; Saturday April 9th. I know Accuweather only goes 2 weeks out - any hunches on the forecast? Also - I attended a class and am now an official SkyWarn weather spotter here in Dodge County. So I'm a Twins geek (that's not copyrighted, is it?!?) and weather geek, I guess! First 8th grade baseball practice Monday! Looks like we might be in the gym for a while. Better plan lots of inside drills, I guess. Pretty much the full lineup for our favorite team today. Liriano struck out 9, walked 3, threw 76 pitches in three innings! That's quite the line. 5-2 win vs. Baltimore. * In the Main Level sections 107-126, rows 24 and above will only have a partial view of the main video board due to the fact they are beneath the club level overhang. Two 42" flat-screen televisions mounted above each of these sections will show the same images that appear on the main video board. Rarely if ever are those flat-screens showing the same images as the main video board. Especially of live things like crowd shots. And you can't see pop-ups or high fly balls be they outs/hits/homers. But if it's cold and rainy or sunny and extremely hot these seats are still nice. The restricted view seats list should include: "Lower numbered bleacher seats in the rows nearest the rear of Section 139 do not have a view of much of anything except some of right field and about two-thirds of the infield. Views do include home plate, first base, the pitcher's mound and third base." AMEN, BROTHER. I personally wouldn't consider an obstructed view of the scoreboard an obstructed view seat. @Ole- AWESOME! I renewed my training this year and must say the location I went to this year was much better than the last one I went to. They covered the material way better. I hope your training was beneficial for you. It's a great hobby. I can't wait to get out in the field and after some storms again. As for the game forecast...I don't have time to look at this moment but will see what the long range stuff looks like hopefully sometime today or tomorrow. I will keep you posted. Often all the forecasts that far out are good for is determining what the pattern will be like. Timing can change so much. So I will have a look at it tonight and keep an eye on the Opening weekend forecast and provide updates as needed. Ole my first game is also saturday April 9th. Not sure why in the world they are playing a night game instead of a day game this early in the year. Accuweather goes out 14days. Doesn't show any 60's at all. As long as it's dry and no more freaking snow! Could be in the 30's or 50's game time me thinks. Would prefer to be in the sun saturday afternoon though fer sure! Hey! That's BPM night yer talkin bout there! It'll be perrrrfect. (Face value tickets still available in section T. Send me a message.) Posted on March 24, 2011 at 09:52 AM by Rick 236 In addition to the weather factor, Minnesota is hosting the Frozen Four National Championship game at the Xcel the evening of April 9. An evening Twins game just doesn't amke sense. I much prefer night games to day games, even if they are that early in the season. You guys realize that the 3rd round of the Masters is that day right? April 9 is also my first game. I wrote the Twins when I saw the schedule and suggested they re-think the 6:00 start time, especially since it is a Saturday. Pat I much prefer sitting in the sun during the early games of the year for weekend games. I get the sun most of the game from my section 326 for day games. Feel about 20 degrees warmer for those early spring games than in the shade. I was going to say the same thing Twink -- that is one reason I moved from the first base side (103) to the third base side this year (125) was due to the fact it gets too chilly for my liking in the shade over on the first base side for early and late season games. If it gets too hot in the sun in July/August, I figured I can just go up to the concourse to get out of the sun. But all in all, the sun is well worth it for those early and late season day games. I too am surprised they have a 6:00pm game right off the bat on that Saturday night. Not that the University of Minnesota hockey team will even be playing in the Frozen Four in St. Paul...but they could have had a 3:10 game Friday, 12:10 game Saturday, and 1:10 game Sunday...that means I can count on the minor league lineup on Sunday, April 10.... I have tickets to that game as well in my STH's in the terrace on the sunny side. I am just personally excited about sitting around all day watching golf while nursing my Home Opener hangover, and then heading to the game at night. I don't care what the temp is opening weekend as long as there is no precip. Averages for that weekend: High 52 Low: 32 I could live with an average day! Forbes reports value of team @ 490 million - up TWENTY-ONE PERCENT from last year. I'm sure they are playing the Saturday 4/9 game at 6:10 so they can hold the 12:10 slot as their home opener make-up "safety slot". Most home openers up until this year would be on a Monday, with Tuesday being an off day and the make-up slot. This year with the schedule shift you have lots of teams opening on Friday and playing a night game on Saturday for that reason. They never want to disappoint those that want to absolutely see the home opener. Remember for FOX you can only play at noon or after 6:00 on Saturdays if you aren't on the nationally televised games (at 3:00). There are now 4,694 opening day tickets for sale on Stubhub. Of those 662 are SRO. Someone has 300 SRO tickets listed at $300 a pop. It would be nice it the Twin's box office could just continue to sell unlimited SRO right up until game time. In reality, that is the only way to prevent scaplers from buying up the entire inventory and then setting their own price. With over 10% of the seating capacity currently on sale, the prices can only come down between now and April 8th. Dave, you can think what you want about me, just remember next time someone gave you some t wolves tix for free... you just make sure you force him to take the face value for them... or you are not a FAN They should only sell SRO tickets starting an hour before gates open. I'd prefer SRO on game day only, and only in person at the box office. Posted on March 24, 2011 at 5:36 PM by Rick 249 I had about 6 games last year that I accepted well below face value for my Twins tickets, I also got above for certain games. It's all a wash and if someone wants to take me up on not being a fan, I am more than happy to have that discussion. Good game by the Twins today, both starting pitching and batting. *Blacky went 6 scoreless innings, 6 hits, 5K's 1BB and 0 ER (against a strong line-up) *Nathan had a rocky outing, 1 inning, 3 hits, 3ER, and a BB 3 HRs today: Hughes (6), Young (2), and Dustin Martin (1) SRO should only be date of game at gate purchase. I know that some clubs hold onto late release tickets and only sell in person to the 1st 20-100 on game day a couple hours before the gates open. That's a good point about the "safety slot" should the opener be postponed; I hadn't thought of that. Still wish there were some way to avoid an early April night game. by selling all these SRO tix its gonna be even harder to get around in the ballpark.. Listening to MLB Network on Sirius XM today. They were going through the Twins' starting rotation and mentioning which pitchers they had confidence in. They listed Duensing, Blackburn, and (kinda) Baker. Kinda threw me for a loop there on the Baker pick. I would agree, though, that the Twins have zero shutdown starting pitchers. Twins last had that with Santana, and Liriano before he got hurt. Until that changes, I have little hope for anything outside another division win. You can't win a best-of-five without a dominant ace. Call me a homer, but I'd rank the Twins starting 5 as one of the top rotations in baseball. Not the Phillies, not the Giants, but plenty of reliable 200 inning arms that will win 90+ games....and then get their ass kicked in the playoffs. There are worse things. Posted on March 24, 2011 at 10:16 PM by twinswschamps2011 255 What about Pavano? Had his best season in 5 years in 2010. This spring had an 18 inning scoreless streak. Buster Olney claimed Pavano had the best stuff of any pitcher in spring training a week or two ago. I honestly think he will win 20 this year. Liriano will probably be the same as last year. Has this already been discussed, and I missed it? Anyway, it ends today. Enter for a chance to win 4 tickets to Opening Day at Target Field clicky... Posted on March 25, 2011 at 09:07 AM by schweady 257 Hard to believe, but Opening Day is just ONE WEEK away while the Home Opener is two weeks away. Also, today is the last Friday without baseball until October! If there is anyone out there with Dugout Box, Legends Club, or Home Plate Box that would like to discuss swapping a few seats throughout the year, please let me know. Seems last year TCTraders was intended for this purpose, but it never really took hold. Would like to see it happen this year... Posted on March 25, 2011 at 12:02 PM by jctwins 259 Though not officially relaunched yet, TC Traders is once again fully operational. Check out the link at the top of the page, or click here. Posted on March 25, 2011 at 12:27 PM by Rick 260 The Twins have posted their printable schedule online... Posted on March 25, 2011 at 2:28 PM by Mike 261 Am I to assume you're calling Pavano a "dominant ace?" REALLY?? REAAAAALLLLY???? Sunny outside, snow is melting, a week away from first pitch in Toronto. Two weeks from the home opener. Don't be harshing my mellow. ;-) F_T_K, At my house the snow is very, very crunchy. No sign of melting. I'm taking comfort in a mental image of green grass, since the actual image is nowhere in sight... (And it should be noted that the mental image of Pavano-Duensing-Liriano-Blackburn-Baker is not increasing my comfort level.) Posted on March 25, 2011 at 4:25 PM by Rick 265 Easy TTH! Did I ever say dominant ace? Did your previous post ever mention dominant ace? no. Your post said pitchers they had confidence in. I have faith that our offensive numbers will allow for our 5 to have decent stuff to get W's. I mean, look at starters that should have won 20 games if they were on a team with actual offense. Actually, the last two words in that post were, uh, "dominant ace." But if you're saying he's not a dominant ace then there are no qualms. But I put little -- no, make that zero -- faith in Buster Olney saying Pavano had great stuff two weeks ago. Two weeks ago he was pitching against guys who are now in the minors or outright released. Pavano is a good pitcher. But he's no Game 1 playoff starter pitcher that you can have confidence in that he'll leave the seventh inning having given up fewer than three runs. By "dominant ace" I assume they are talking someone in the ilk of Santana, Holliday, Lee, or Sabathia. Sadly Pavano is not included in this group. He is, by far, our best pitcher (Liriano is too inconsistent), but Pavano is not going to go into a game and strike 15-20 people out. He'll eat innings and pitch consistantly well, in other words a great #2 starter, not the ace. The problem the Twins have is they don't draft "Ace" style pitchers, they draft strike throwers, more like Brad Radkes as opposed to Johan Santanas. I think this starts with Rick Anderson and because of this I have, for years, wanted him to go away. (The 100 pitch count is not helping either.) I smell 18-20 wins for Blackburn...and I'm dead serious. He was #1 starter-like for 2-3 months last year. If he can put together a complete year like those months, he will be a Cy Young candidate. Posted on March 25, 2011 at 10:59 PM by twinswschamps2011 270 Great comeback tonight by the Twins to take the Mayor's Cup. The Atrocity in Miami (AKA the Airplane Hangar, AKA the docking station for the Mother Ship, AKA Dark Side of the Moon reunion concert soundstage, AKA the secondary garage for Orange County Choppers...) has been topped off. Posted on March 26, 2011 at 9:26 PM by luke 273 Too bad the Twins won't face Jenks more often this year... That's true TK, but they will be seeing a lot of Jesse Crainwreck....BATTER UP!!!!!! Can't wait to witness the first Crainwreck at Target Field. Finally the Twins will have an opportunity to hit some home runs. Does anyone know why FSN is only televising spring training games on weekdays? It would be nice to see some Twins baseball on the weekends when not at work. "Finally the Twins will have an opportunity to hit some home runs." That opportunity exists every time a Twins batter steps up to the plate. Crain has nothing to do with that fact. Overall, Crain was a pretty decent pitcher. It's just that when he melted down, he really melted down in a memorable way. I think that he meant have the opportunity to hit some home runs off of Crain, it was previously hard to do when he was on the same team. That being said, I don't like Crain being on the White Sox. For four months last year (until he hung that slider against the Yankees), he was unhittable. If I recall correctly he began pitching well after some tips from Rauch. Maybe he will revert to him old self and get shelled every 4th game, we can only hope. By the way it appears the Twins Twitter Twitterer(?) has a sense of humor. Has anyone seen a picture of the new coating for the Batter's eye? Posted on March 27, 2011 at 11:22 AM by Duffman 280 TTH - if memory serves correctly, Crain had more meltdowns than the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. I think Crain was better than we remember, as we only remember the meltdowns and not the times he got us out of jams. I think he will be a nemesis for us this year. Jenks....well, I wish he was still with the White Sox too! One of the few "premier" pitchers I can remember that we really got after on a regular basis. I think most of us agree that the Marlins ballpark is not something we would wish on anyone. It is sad for their fans that they will have to play in it for 30 years. That said, if they make 15,000 season tickets given that location and that team, it will be considered a success. Remember the Twins were going to press for 18,000 season ticket equivalents when they started down their road. The problem for the Marlins is that they are in a division with Philadelphia and Atlanta. They've had as many above .500 seasons recently as below .500, but except for 2003 when they won it all they haven't been great this decade. Does that 15K STH become 8K within 2 years? People can bitch about the retractable roof in Miami, but with an average high around 90 and humid in the summer it makes sense. At least it is not a nor retactable dome like Tampa. Remember last summer when it hit 92-95 degrees and the outfield seats and others in the sun at Target Field were all but vacant? It is pretty much the same argument about the Vikings and a roof. What I don't understand is how they haven't designed a roof that can fold away with really no visable sight of it. The Miami park would have been easy to do. They just would have needed to rotate it 45 degrees so that it closed towards the outfield and retracted back behind home plate. Then widen the rood so it could encompass the building without coming into the ballpark. Posted on March 27, 2011 at 2:55 PM by Duffman 284 Let's try to remember that the Twins were STRONGLY in favor of a roof. What would be the chatter had they gotten their way? Oh man, Ben, if the Twins had gotten a roof, there'd be a ton of pissed off BPM'ers, myself included. As kevin in az will tell you, I used to be one of those who wanted a roof on TF; but after my first trip there for the Open House last March, I was a convert and was incredibly glad they didn't get the roof. I would love to have Miami's ballpark here. My preference before TF and now would of been for a retractable roof. Of the 12 games I attended last year maybe 2-3 were what I would call good baseball weather. About 4-5 were way too cold, 2 way to hot/humid, and 2-3 drizzly/raining. Don't get me wrong, TF is great, I love it. But I would much more prefer a reliable consistent playing/watching environment. 5-10 years from now, I'm betting most all new ballparks will have some form of retractable roof. And we will all be wishing we had one! By way of answering my own question: "We" would be regurgitating whatever spin the Twins were putting on it - just as most of "us" are doing at present. Duffman is exactly right. Luke clearly hasn't been in South Fla between May & September when it rains/storms everyday between 3-6pm. The oppressive summer humidity & daily storms make the roof a must. So for those going to Opening day, where you sitting? I'm in 323 row 14, but will prob walk around My group will be up high in the grandstand, 238. Rick, any lead-up-to-the-opener posts coming soon? Need something fresh to wash away the bitter taste of the dark poetry above! I will be in section 201, row 1 for the home opener. Anyone planning on going down to the yard for the Gophers game on Friday? Section 304, row 2 for OD. Friday, I am going to watch the first Gopher game and a half from my new desk in City Center. I will check out the rest of the second game as I wonder around TF. And Saturday, somewhere in the sun! I am still hoping to snag one of the late releases in the Dugout Box Actually I have Max. I say, buck up and deal with it. I'd rather have humid, with a slight chance of rain every day. That's baseball. Don't want to get scorched by the sun? Don't sit in the sections where it's going to be a problem; or bring sunglasses and SPF 15 sunscreen. Plus, if it rains/storms every day between 3-6pm down there, and most games at 7, 7:15pm, what's the problem? luke, I'm pretty sure the players don't have the option of standing in the shade during the game. I'll be in section 229 row 3 for the opener. In the morning I'll be headed to Murray's for a REAL steak sandwich and then off to the ballpark for batting practice. If hungry around the 5th I'll be at the Town Ball Tavern for one of the pesto turkey sandwiches, the best food item at Target Field in my humble opinion. Mix in a few Summits and a halfway decent baseball game and it'll be a perfect day. Sooj, I'm in your section. Twins web site appears to be tweaked graphically. An improvement, but the site still remains difficult to navigate, too busy and not all that user friendly. Posted on March 27, 2011 at 11:05 PM by The Truth Hurts 299 This an excerpt from a message board post I read on the Twins' site, and I'm interested in your opinions (as I have mine). Are the Twins unwilling/unable to evolve?: "Over and over again I keep hearing about the Twins doing things the right way. How their players are the salt of the earth and how everything is just swell over in the clubhouse. That may very well be true, but I see very little in the way of diversity. Everyone appears to be a drone. Everyone seems to have that same poker-faced, glazed over look. Rarely do you see demonstrative discussions between players. They are pretty much kicked back, just playing baseball. Very often when there is a player who steps out of the norm fostered by the "Twins way" they are sent packing or are criticized for being 'immature' or having an 'attitude'. I doubt very much a guy like Paul O'Neill would have made it here. He was as straight-laced as they come. A family man, a Christian....but when you put him on the field he was possessed. This team doesn't seem to allow for that kind of intensity. Emotions and intensity seemingly are collared by a sanitized philosophy that doesn't accept players getting to high or to low. I find that odd because psychology, momentum and emotion are big players in any sports. Paul O'Neill is just one example of a player who understood that. These things seem to be ignored here and I believe that is a big mistake." - ewen21 Well TTH, look for me, I'll be the Indian dude haha! JP i may need to stop by the tavern for a drink! I'll be in section 219 with my dad and we couldn't be happier :) He is handicapped so we're in the WC row but they really are great seats! I just booked tickets to be in Chicago at Wrigley for the opener there this Friday so IMO that's 2 amazing Fridays in a row for this diehard baseball(Twins) fan! TTH, I disagree with that post TTH, the twins have shown the willingness to step well out of there comfort zone the previous two years with players like Orlando Hudson and Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Hudson has always been seen as a motor mouthed individual, not a bad guy but not a fall into line drone either. Tsuyoshi irked other players in Japan with his flashy ways and his individuality in a culture that thrives on conformity. Even Danny Valencia was said to be too cocky in the minors, and yet the Twins have embraced him as a solution to the monotony they've been stuck in the past several years. Pavano was viewed by many as a primadona who wouldn't work hard enough to be healthy, Orlando Cabrera has irked his way onto 5 different teams in 5 years, Delmon Young had more baggage than anybody in baseball and the Twins still traded arguably their most valuable asset to obtain him. The drone image comes from Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, the teams two mvps and two of the most boring characters in professional sports. It's hard not to draw parallels between an organization as a whole and it's best players, so this myth about the "Twins Way" has been allowed to grow. The fact that this group of individuals has come together to be as successful as they've been is a testament to Ron Gardenhire and the rest of the field staff. You can argue Gardy goes too far with his underdog rhetoric and that ultimately leads to playoff failure, but I personally can't blame the front office for not picking "firey" enough personalities to get it done. I think I agree with that post as well. I don't know of a Twins player currently (or in the recent past) who was "possessed" on the field, a la Paul O'Neill. Anyone read Jim Souhan's article in the Star Tribune this weekend? Is the Twin Cities becoming a "Twins town" or are the Vikings still #1 in popularity? You look at the Twins' TV and radio ratings (top 3) along with their jersey/merchandise sales and they are top 10 in MLB. There are also a lot of Green Bay Packers fans in the Twin Cities area, diluting the Vikings fan base, so its a fair argument to say the Twins are on the verge of becoming the most popular team in the Twin Cities. I never knew the Twin Cities area was a pick-a-sport team city. However, when I think of Minneapolis, I think of the Twins. Well the Vikes are in the crapper and heading south anyways! Plus the threat of a lockout and a dump for a stadium does not help at all. I see the forecast for April 8th is sunny and 67? We shall see! I started to, but Jim Souhan is such a terrible columnist that I stopped about 3 paragraphs in. I would say in terms of popularity the Twins are the cities favorite team, but the NFL is still cities' favorite sport. As for people doing things the "Twins Way", I tend to agree more with TTH. The last person who really stepped out of the doing things the "Twins Way", was Garza and because he wanted to get up there, throw hard and get strikeouts they shipped him off to Tampa. JP- I would also disagree the sucess of this team is a testament to the on field staff. I believe the amount of talent on this team is why they are successful. Gardenhire was badly out-managed last postseason, including failing to take Liriano out when he was clearly done in the 6th inning. I personally believe Vavra and Anderson are actually holding back the potential of the players on field. I don't think there was a poster on this board that did not rejoice when Ullger was pulled off the field and put in the dug where he couldn't blow any more base running decisions. Don't get me wrong, I do like Gardenhire, but he is fiercly loyal to his coaches to a fault. As long as the Vikings are here, they'll still be number one. The Twins have built a lot equity with Target Field and the AL Central crowns, but the mood of the area doesn't rise and fall with them as it does with the Vikes and it likely never will. Even when the Vikes have a rough patch, fan interest doesn't really subside. That's in great part due to the one game per week nature of the NFL season. If the Twins have a bad season, people's attention turns elsewhere by August. I might be road tripping to Miller Park this summer. Having not been to the stadium before, are there any seating areas that are underrated or perhaps best avoided due to bad sightlines or other factors? Speaking of the "Twins Way," I would love to see this type of interview with Gardy! This is a clip from Cubs Manager Quade about the release of Silva and the comments Silva has made, click name for link. Posted on March 28, 2011 at 11:24 AM by tk 312 I agree Gardy's loyalties get him in trouble, and I've said it before that he's an awful playoff manager and a mediocre at best field manager. I'll disagree that the bulk of this teams success is based on sheer talent winning out. Last year they were a very talented team, but in previous years Jason Tyner and Jose Morales saw regular time at dh. Look at the lineup from game 163 (span cf,o-cab ss, joe c, kubes rf, cuddy 1b, delmon lf, morales dh, tolbert 3b, punto 2b)nobody can say that this team was more talented than the Tigers, or any other al contender, and yet they still won. Give Gardy credit where it's due, he pulls guys together and makes them play hard. You can argue that with the talent level this roster has now, and hopefully in the future that his skill set isn't what we need as a manager, but it's difficult for me to say he didn't play a huge role in this teams success in the previous decade. The Twins have too much talent to go win-less in the playoffs, and last year made me sick. Gardy is 0-12 in his last dozen playoff games. What other MLB manager still retains his job after such a lousy stretch?? No one. It's TF, not the Twins. The Twins are still "just" the Twins, only the venue has changed - although the deterioration of the Vikes, et al certainly factors in. As far as the Twins playing "the right way" --- that is just another pot of spin which has not held water for a decade. There is a spark missing - the tools are often there. Whether or not its due to Target Field, its still very impressive having the 2nd highest local tv/radio ratings in all of MLB, behind only the St. Louis Cardinals. It's also impressive to rank #8 in overall merchandise sales. Yes, I am sure some of that is due to the new outdoor ballpark, meaning fans need to buy more merchandise (jackets, hoodies, caps, etc) to dress for the elements but it seems there is A LOT more Twins apparel being sported year-round throughout "Twins Territory" these days. Update attached on the new Fulton Brewing operation opening this fall a couple of blocks from the stadium. Posted on March 28, 2011 at 12:37 PM by Badjuggler 318 " --- meaning fans need to buy more merchandise (jackets, hoodies, caps, etc) to dress for the elements --- " An outdoor stadium results in a requirement that fans purchase team merchandise? Are you serious? There is much higher quality available at much lower cost pretty much everywhere you look - including your finger tips (Bauer, Amazon, etc.). It's the new park, the spin,and the Kool-Aid. Come back in two years and see for yourself. Sheeeeeeeeeeesssh! That #8 figure can also be attributed to the team redesigning its uniforms and also altering its logo slightly. I do think one of the reasons the Twins are so highly rated is Joe Mauer. I will withhold my personal feelings, but there are these rubes in Minnesota that absolutely love him just because he is from Minnesota. Kids in Minnesota love Mauer. If he wasn't from Minnesota he would not be as wildly possible here as he is. His popularity with the masses is what makes him worth the $23 million a year, because it sure isn't his hitting. (Hitting for average is not worth that much) You cannot judge whether Mauer is worth $23M until he plays his first season making that much money (this coming one). No one can argue about what Target Field has done for the popularity of the Twins. However, during the last 5 or 6 years at the Dome, there was a significant resurgence in interest in the Twins - all with a new generation of Twins fans. This was caused by a lot more than the dollar dome dogs. A dozen years ago it was tough to give your tickets away to someone in their twenties. This all changed a few years back, and has increased exponentially with these fans with the new ball park. Ben - I don't think thousands of fans traveling to KC and Milwaukee to watch the Twins, or the Twins selling out Hammond Stadium for every game has anything to do with Target Field. Yea, being the Most Valuable Player in your league, while playing probably the most physically demanding position, is pretty average, too. Season opener less than a week away, I just received the rest of the tickets I ordered, hopefully the wonderful lady that does my taxes tells me I have enough money to splurge on a new hd tv before Friday - I'm a bit giddy today! Twins fans have always traveled to KC & Milwaukee, and Hammond is up but how far, really, did they have to go. The Twins have been hitting on all eight commercially ever since their return to respectability, which began just about the time they dodged contraction - people like a winner. There is definitely a new generation of Twins fans - but that hardly explains the totality of the crowds as well as the venue. How many of those "fans" are actually watching the game (sitting in Hrbek's or elsewhere watching on TV does not count), and how many are there just for the experience? My argument is that a great many of these "fans", in time, will figure out that they needn't spend $30 or more for the opportunity to spend $7 for a beer and be seen. TTT- I would not feel any better if the Twins won two games out of the five, but still got knocked out. Both have the same fate. Winning some gives you hope and a chance to move on, but for Cox and the Braves...they only moved past the first round once (same as the Twins). That being said, as much as it sucks to always go three and out, I'd rather have that than no playoffs at all. You can't change your fate in the playoffs if you don't even make the playoffs. Only the Yankees have made the playoffs more times in the last 10 years. The Red Sox, Braves, Cardinals and Angels have all made it the same amount of times as the Twins. Out of that bunch, only the Braves and Twins haven't won a World Series in the last 10 years. That sucks to think about. We're due and we're running out of time. The talent on the team isn't getting any younger. Still, I'd rather be a fan of a team that gets to the playoffs rather than one that does not. I'd rather have this team to watch than the 1992-2001 Twins. I'm loyal either way, but 2002-2010 is a lot more fun. I think the younger generation that is there today was able to get up close to the Twins between 1993-2000, when parents were able to bring there kids to games and make it a family outing. I also think the college/student id nights really helped bring in students. I know that the Timberwolves are doing similar promotions now, but I doubt anything can help that organization. I'll argue this until I'm dead: A MLB manager's job is to get his team ready to play everyday during a long 162 game season. His job is to avoid long losing streaks and get his team into contention. Gardy has proven to be excellent. Once he has steadied the ship during a long grueling season, and his team makes the playoffs, then it's up to the players to win a short 5 or 7 game playoff series. Just my opinion. I'd much rather be a Twins fan and watch my team make the playoffs most seasons. If they are playing meaningful games in September, that's a successful season. We're spoiled. I really believe that. Wow...all the negativity in this town sucks! Spring training is not what it used to be like...each year there are more and more fans that go to Fort Myers and anyone that is around the team knows the fans flock to Fort Myers more and more each year. The crowds down there are unbelievable. And no, Twins fans have not always traveled that well to Milwaukee or Kansas City...it has probably been in the last 7 years or so that the traveling has been so great and continues to be great to this day. Fans never traveled that well to KC or Milwaukee back in the days. County Stadium never had many Twins fans in attendance as Miller Park has seen over the last 7 years or so. Each year, the winter caravan seems to be getting more and more popular with people packing into area gyms, schools, churches, and other venues to attend the winter caravan and talk Twins baseball in January. Twinsfest continues to set attendance records year after year (except this year when they had to cap sales) along with the autograph party and other things. TV/Radio ratings are 2nd highest in MLB. We actually have a team in this market that is consistently competitive regardless of how bad the AL Central may be. Just the fact we have a competitive team we can follow from April thru September is a bonus. Try being a fan of the Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles or Washington Nationals... Yes, the Twins have been terrible in October and its very frustrating watching their demise in the ALDS year after year, but how many teams would love to simply be in a pennant race in September??? As for Joe Mauer, the Twins would be bashed for not re-signing him and they would be bashed for signing him and overpaying him. No matter what the Twins would have done in that position, they would have been criticized one way or the other. They have a top 10 payroll in all of MLB so they are not "being cheap" by any means in regards to payroll. The Pohlad's own the Twins are are going to make a profit off the team, that is fact and is the purpose of owning a business/entity. If you don't like the Twins or Twins' ownership, than don't watch/listen to games, don't attend games, or don't buy merchandise. Lets all just be thankful we have at least one team in this market that is worthwhile and consistently competitive and fun to watch. the Vikings are the biggest chokers and always find a way to disappoint, Gophers have not been legitimate in football, basketball or hockey in years, Wolves have not been to the playoffs in 7 years, Wild are not much better. I have a friend who just took some pictures from within TF and it shows the grounds crew spraying water to help remove the snow in the stands and also work being done on the Batters Eye. I am unable to post the pics, but I am guessing the Twins may do so later today. "I would not feel any better if the Twins won two games out of the five, but still got knocked out." Please tell me you were not serious when you wrote that, AJ. A more absurd sentence was never written. AJ - What, exactly, are the Twins due for? A playoff game win? They're just as "due" to finish third in the division this year. It's this lame kool-aid crap that I just don't get in rubes. It's not pessimistic to be REALISTIC. Speaking of... I hope I'm wrong, but I think the Twins are hard pressed to open Target Field with a plus .500 record this year. Romero is a stud pitcher for the Jays so I wouldn't be shocked if the Twins start 0-1. And then there is the 4-game series in the Bronx. Oh wait, I forgot to wave my pom poms...7-0 start, baby!! Your saying the Twins might not be at .500 for the opener!! Oh no not that, anything but that! Do these first 7 games count for more than the next 155? If not it might be a little early to start fretting over the teams record. On the Souhan piece (and ensuing discussion), I think it's more interesting to ask whether the Twin Cities are becoming a baseball town. (Note: It's possible to be both a baseball and a football town -- and a basketball and hockey town, for that matter.) All those years in the Dome pretty much sucked the baseball life out of this town, and yielded all of the energy to the Vikings. TF has, if nothing else, started a revival of the baseball culture here. But where are we now? Are we still a bunch of kool-aid-drinking rubes? And can the damage done by the Dome ever be completely undone? Posted on March 28, 2011 at 4:10 PM by Rick 334 Rick, 1. For many, yes. 2. Eventually, yes. It takes time, but winning helps. I don't care much how many red division pennant flags fly over the left field stands at TF (I'll take more white and blue ones, thank you). But there is something to be said about flags rippling in a breeze overlooking a grassy diamond. Outdoors is where the essence of "pastime" takes place. Not under a catwalk. I have to agree with Rick's assessment. Mainly because none of our other teams have given us anything to cheer about. At least the Twins kept it interesting and competitive last year - in a kick-ass new ballpark. If the Twins had gone 60-102 last season, (as they did their first year in the Dome), I'm not sure people would be as excited about the Twins this year, albeit still having the kick-ass new ballpark. I for one started liking baseball again last year, and that was just after the Open House. Incidentally, I've finally gotten my tickets from my ticket group for this year! Got a couple nice summer games to look forward to. Badjuggler- TTT- The Twins are due for anything more than they've been getting. Their due to win a playoff game, they're due to win a playoff series, they're due to win the World Series. All of them they are due for. And yes, like you said, they are just as due to fall down on their asses. I didn't say they weren't. The Twins are one of the lucky teams that makes the playoffs more often than not. You can say that it's because they play in such a crappy division, but you can also say that they are actually a good team. Both of those things help the Twins win the division, not one or the other. And right now, with the wild card always going to the ALE, that's the team's only shot at the playoffs. I'm not a fan who's only happy to make it there. I want to go further, but if you give me the option of playoffs or no playoffs then I will choose playoffs every time. It wouldn't even take me more than two seconds to answer that question. I don't think I've seen any Twins fan say that the Twins are going to start the season 7-0, not even the fans you call kool-aid drinkers. You think you're being boxed into a corner and labeled a pessimist and in fact you are doing the same to people who are optimistic. You prefer to call yourself a realist, but you consider anyone who is more optimistic than you a kool-aid drinker. Like ole said, we're a pretty spoiled fan-base right now. So many fans would kill to be in our position. We're demanding more in the playoffs while most teams fans are just demanding playoffs. Like I said, I'm not satisfied with just making it, but I'd take that over shittier options. Personally, I would be a thousand times happier if the Twins were actually competitive in a series instead of rolling over and getting swept again. It's night and day for me. Still a "loss", but much less of an embarrassment. And I would consider both to be an equal embarrassment. The only thing that would make me feel better is a series win, which hopefully wouldn't lead to a series loss in the ALCS...but even if it did, it would be better than a one and done series. "And no, Twins fans have not always traveled that well to Milwaukee or Kansas City...it has probably been in the last 7 years or so that the traveling has been so great and continues to be great to this day. Fans never traveled that well to KC or Milwaukee back in the days." This phenomena has taken place since, and in large part due to, the teams return to respectability and competitiveness as I wrote above - perhaps you missed it. Indeed, there is much greater interest in the whole package but I believe you are giving too short a shrift to the bandwagon aspect. You guys are too harsh on the Dome. I'll admit it wasn't the most optimal facility for watching baseball, mostly due to it being a football favored multi-purpose structure. But I don't think it turned folks off to baseball. In fact, if you look at attendance records the dome drew fairly decent crowds, better than the Met. Albeit two worlds series titles during its life helped. The WOW factor I got the first time I walked into the Dome and looked out over the field was unbelievable. My jaw dropped down to my knees. I did not get this same feeling when first entering Target Field, it was even close. Perhaps the difference can be chalked up to age, in 1982 I was a wide eyed 17 year old when I first went to the Dome with bunch of buddies. I had only attended two games at the Met with my father, both in the outfield bleachers. What I remember most about the met is my Dad let me have two (count em two) chocolate cups of ice cream. The Met itself did not leave any impression on me. The Dome however did. I will always have good memories of the Dome. Dave- While the Twins were playing in the Dome I went to Detroit and KC to watch the Twins play outdoors. That made my jaw drop. Real baseball, real ballpark. It was beautiful. Now I can do the same with TF. I'm going to about 25 games this year. It still hasn't sunk in that the Twins are playing in a real ballpark. Every game I attend I'm still amazed at it all. I'm just waiting for someone to take it away as if it's all a dream. AJ- I'm not saying the Dome was a good baseball park, it wasn't. I'm saying as a building it was jaw dropping impressive. I've been to all the A.L. ballparks but two (Tampa and Anaheim). Although some I went to were the older parks (Milwaukee, Detroit, New York). I would agree all those, even the older ones, were better baseball parks. Only exception perhaps being Toronto, but at least it has a retractable roof and a view of the CN Tower. The older ones from a not in your seat perspective (concourses, vending areas, bathrooms, etc.) were worse than the Dome however. Dave - you must have forgotten about the late 80s, early 90s at the Dome, when a crowd of 8,000 for a Twins game would have felt like a sellout. Tom Powers mentioned that the other day in his column "Deja Ew", of course, in reference to Minnesota sports teams' abysmal performance this past year. Low attendance was a huge red mark against the Twins in those days. Does anyone remember what the attendance was the first year in the dome? Admittedly the '82 Twins had a terrible record (although that team had a number of young players who made up the nucleus of the '87 championship team). With the novelty of a brand new climate-controlled domed stadium, the '82 Twins drew 900,000 for the full season. A far cry from the 3.2 million they drew last year. luke- You need to click on that attendance link I provided. The average per game attendance in the late 80's early 90's was 21,000 to 30,000 range. Heck, in 88 the year after the WS win, the average was 37,000. Oh, one other bad ballpark, Oakland. Which is an outdoor park but also a multi-purpose one. Just goes to show you it takes more than being outdoors to make a good baseball park. A crowd of two can be a sellout. There is a reason actual attendance is not reported. Count the empty seats at the next "sellout" (there is, by the way, no such thing unless you play loose and fast with definitions) of a game where the weather is iffy - see for yourself. Dave --- I bet you meant to say "malt cups" - they were the greatest! "Like ole said, we're a pretty spoiled fan-base right now. So many fans would kill to be in our position. We're demanding more in the playoffs while most teams fans are just demanding playoffs." And that's why the Pohlads love you. "With the novelty of a brand new climate-controlled domed stadium, the '82 Twins drew 900,000 for the full season." I don't remember the exact date when they added air conditioning, but the entire year one at the doome was not a brand new climate-controlled stadium. I venture to say the heat and humidity at some of those games were worse than Miami without a roof, as was described earlier. You're right, the building was not air conditioned it's first year; there were some hot humid days in there. There were some chilly and drizzly days at TF last year. 3.2 M vs. 900K is a pretty significant statistic. That stat speaks to the increased interest in Twins baseball and to the allure of the Twins playing their home games in a ballpark for the first time in 29 years. What would people rather have, 7 out of 10 years of being in contention, or 1 World Series win in a 10 year span? Think about this, from 1990-2000, the Twins had a winning record only 2 out of the ten years, one that led them to a WS win. I was born in 83, don't remember a thing about 87, but remember every detail of 91, and the years that followed, and how bad it sucked watching the Twins play. From 2000-2010, they had a winning record every year but once in 2007, were in the playoffs 6 of those year, almost a 7th, and has been so much fun to watch. Am I sick of the losing in the post season? Of course. Could be worse, we could all be Cubs fans! terry- When looking at the impact a new stadium has it's probably more informative to look at the attendance before/after the stadium in question. So for the dome look at attendance for the Met in 80-81 then for the Dome in 82-83. The percent increase gives a good indication of the new stadium impact. Attendance roughly doubled with the Dome. Now for TF it's a bit harder to judge due to sellouts. Who knows how many tickets they could of sold if TF capacity was the same as the Dome. Ben- Yes I meant malt cups, they were the bomb! TTT- I spend money on a few things in life: The Twins and the occasional one to two Wild games a year and cable TV to watch both. The rest of my money goes the very few bills I have or into the bank. I can easily count how much money a year I spend on entertainment and it's slightly over $2000 a year. For entertainment the entire year, that's it. About half of that goes to the Twins. No movies, no going out to eat...none of the things that other people waste money on. If you think the Pohlad's hold onto money you should hang out with me. $8 for a movie? Ha. $10 for a burger? Ha. I'm one of the cheapest people you will have ever met in your life. I can buy food for three people for an entire month and have it be $100 or less. I'll gladly give the Twins a small amount of money for entertainment that lasts a little over half a year. Some people complain that they can't see the Twins because it's too expensive. I bet I can find a ton of things that they spend money on daily/weekly/monthly that is completely unnecessary. I'll gladly give the Twins my money because I'm a sports fan. I love the Twins. If they turn back into the 90's Twins, I'll still give them my money..it'll just cost me even less money. If you don't want to spend money on the Twins then don't. Spend it on other stuff. Haha, they aren't holding a "guy" to your head...obviously a gun would be scarier in most cases... I even proofread quickly, apparently too quickly. It was a "Frosty Malt," and if you got one you knew Dad really loved you -- or he really wanted you to be quiet for a couple of innings -- because they were 30 cents. They make my '100 Top Things About Games at the Met.' OK, here are the official attendance stats from the last 2 years at the Met and the 1st 2 years in the dome. In '80, the Twins averaged 10,537 per date; in '81, it was 7,951 but that was the year of the strike and all home dates from mid-June to mid-August were lost; in '82 (1st year in the dome), the average was 11,373; and in '83 it was 10,737. Not too conclusive either way. All four figures are far from sell-outs. This begs a couple of questions. If I watch the Twins at home on TV and I get up to do something else for an inning or two instead of sitting there with my nose against the screen, does that mean I'm not a real fan? If I don't completely shut out the rest of life to watch a batter engage in the sublime act of stepping in and out of the batters box for ten minutes at a crack to scratch his nuts and stare at the third base coach, am I not a true fan? With plenty of input from posters here as to who is and who isn't a real fan or a Kool-Ade drinker, there seems to be a dearth of advice from them on how to change for the better. Dr X, you would be a real fun if you had a DVR and paused it during commercials to do your stuff, and then came back and caught up on the game when you were done. Dr. X- Geez, JC, that would make me an obsessive-compulsive before it would make me a real fan. I would weigh in here on the Metrodome's effect on the culture of baseball in this town, but I already have. And I stand by it. Posted on March 28, 2011 at 8:46 PM by Rick 361 From the 15 or so games I saw at the ballpark in 2010 I think a lot of other people stood by you too! It looks like the Twins are going to use dynamic pricing after all. Only in two sections, but it seems that when extra tickets were released last year, Home Plate Box was where tickets were available. Says it will start 3/31. The wave is alive and well in TF Rick. And as far as fans not watching the game, I think TF has more of that than the Dome did. I move that we retire the phrase "kool aid drinkers" and all variations. It has gone beyond cliche and adds nothing to the conversation. The negativity is amazing. Here we are, the greatest sport about to begin again after a long winter. We have a team picked by the NYT to go to the ALCS in as beautiful new park as you could hope for, but it sounds like it's never enough for some. I know that I'm going to be happy to see a ballgame on April 8 with a team whose personality and play I enjoy. Pass the kool aid, boys! PS--by the way, TTH, the red pennants are the World Series ones. Yes, more red flags, please!! Now Fiesta -- that is way too happy. I predict the boys will go 0-162, mostly because of the starting pitching, the Twins Tower, Mauer not play DH on a full time basis, ticket pricing of some sort, and food options. I'm sure they will fix all of this for 2012. Nice find by FD by the way on dynamic pricing. They will go there all the way in 2012 is my prediction. I don't have a lot of problem with it when they are selling out. They will have a harder time with it when there is excess inventory. Thanks for reminding me way I HATE the wave with the blast from the past Metrodome article. My bad. I got my blues and reds mixed up. Or maybe that was TTT. I only think somebody is a real fan if they run out onto the field. As for superfans, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. And that's AJ. TTT- Thanks for posting FD, I did not think they would do it this year, as I assumed the Twins would have "sold" all their tickets during their pre-sales and public sales. I wonder how many tickets have been held back for the release of dynamic pricing, especially when at this time last year we were advised how much "limited" availability was left. I can see the PR now, want tickets, we have them now! They are just going to cost you more! I am not in favor of dynamic pricing. Let's say I want to buy Yankee tickets in March. August 20 comes around and it is 65 and hailing, I paid 30% more and now the tickets are worth the paper they're printed on. Also, with dynamic pricing, it is easier for the Twins to show little "availability" and charge a high price, only to have hidden inventory. There is no real way to tell how much is available. I too wonder how this will work - when supposedly everything is sold out. Here is information from the web site of the company that the Twins have contracted with to provide the dynamic pricing: No More Empty Seats!!! Employing a client customizable approach, SEATS makes use of dozens of parameters to calculate the best price for event tickets to… Increase revenue with more accurate pricing over a ticket's life cycle From what I have read in other venues, it appears this is done to attract clients/fans, not to milk them like a secondary market. Looks like milk is low this week, we are doubling our price this week! The Twins are going to become the OPEC of ticketing. Well, if the Twins do this, when times are good, I will be able to sell to people my tickets at higher prices and say, you can either buy from me at 15% over face or from the Twins 25% over face. When times are bad, I might as well donate to charity and take the write-off. The high % of tickets under the control of scalpers has to throw a wrench in there somewhere. If anyone needs dynamic pricing, it is the Timberwolves. I thought I had a parking ticket on my car last month, nope, just court-side seats to the wolves. Sorry, I don't get fired up very often, but this dynamic pricing gets me going... Settle down TK. The Twins will have us all thinking it's the best thing since cherry pie in no time. This process will look a lot like airline ticket pricing. There will ultimately be good days of the week to buy, and a sweet spot before each event (perhaps a month or so out). If I'm the Twins, and I see a seat that I sold for $40 being resold for $120, I'm going to expend a lot of energy trying to figure out how I could have gotten that price. Conversely, if I've got a day game against Kansas City in April, I'm going to want to dynamically test pricing to see just how low I'm going to have to go. As a business approach, I like it a lot because you are constantly testing and revising. If the algorithms are good, the potential profits are off the charts. As a fan, I think it stinks. It's just one more way to shoehorn the fan on a budget into the least attractive seats for the least attractive games. Clearly, I'm going to need more money. Posted on March 28, 2011 at 11:41 PM by Rick 381 The Twins state on their web site that the Demand Based Pricing will "mitigate the impact of ticket scalpers" Am I missing something here? How will this happen? It would appear to me that it will just add one very huge ticket scalper to the market place. Stub Hub, Ticket King and the guys on the street have been practicing Demand Based Pricing from day one. Dang it! That included pop and hot dog is costing me $30 more tonight for the kids! Should have gone to the Holiday ;) This page was last modified on June 9, 2011. |
"You talk about the magic, the aura, but what really makes a stadium is the fans. Concrete doesn't talk back to you. Chairs don't talk back to you. It's the people who are there, day in, day out, that makes the place magic."– Bernie WilliamsExplore the SiteHere are 50 images chosen randomly from the 3046 found on this site. Click the image to be taken to the original post. A new list is created every 10 minutes.
You'll be able to park here for a quick stop at the Pro Shop or ticket window. Here's a correction: The LRT platform will actually be able to load outbound trains from both sides. Looking across the top of the B parking ramp. Notice that signage will block any attempts at seeing the game from up there. Also take note of the glassed in area which is part club and part office space for the Ballpark Authority. No admittance -- yet! Note that you can see the seating bolts which are in place already. What has been actually built so far is only a tiny subset of this vision. Standing, standing, standing. Click to enlarge End of the line. Steps, skyway, and plaza intersect. 7:42 PM It moves to the left in the image and begins to blossom. The canopy as viewed through the outfield stands. The lighting approach, despite what you may have heard, is actually very traditional. A view straight on of the Pro Shop area and ticket windows (just barely visible). The piers you see beneath the plaza are already almost completed (see final photo). Ballpark elevation viewed from the promenade (HERC plant) side. (Click to enlarge.) Here's a quick look into the layout of the Metropolitan Club. Viewed from another angle, you can see that the bullpens now sit beneath the upper deck outfield seating. The Northstar station at night (Click to enlarge.) Work in progress. OK, just how many servings per container? New Concept Drawing - No Roof For reference, here's that spot on the model. Greatest spot in the city for cooking up some hot dogs. And would you kill for that grill? Boston Main concourse, looking south toward the area behind home plate. For some inexplicable reason, a lot of the new parks being built these days feature grand staircases like this one. 8:32 PM The glare is gone. Elapsed time: 1 hour (approximately 3 innings). Citi Field as viewed from Shea. Welcome Visitors From Two Men On (Accessiblity) Glossary BPM - Ballpark Magic BRT - Bus Rapid Transit DSP - Dave St. Peter FSE - Full Season Equivalent FYS - Fake Yankee Stadium (see also: NYS) HERC - Hennepin Energy Resource Company (aka the Garbage Burner) HPB - Home Plate Box HRP - Home Run Porch LC - Legends Club LRT - Light Rail Transit MBA - Minnesota Ballpark Authority (will own Target Field) MOA - Mall of America MSFC - Minnesota Sports Facilities Commission (owns the Metrodome) NYS - New Yankee Stadium SRO - Standing Room Only STH - Season Ticket Holder TCFBS - TCF Bank Stadium TF - Target Field Selected Bibliography - Analysis Selected Bibliography - Surveys
Selected Bibliography - Nostalgia |