The Twins win, and we’re stuck with more games in that horrid dome

Twins win

The Minnesota Twins defeated the Detroit Tigers 6-5 in 12 innings Tuesday night to win the American League Central title, and I’m not happy.

Not because the Twins won per se. They’ve been a terrific story this season, charging from behind to tie the Tigers and force the one-game playoff for the division title.

What irritates me is the prospect of at least one more baseball game being played in the  abomination that is the Metrodome. Although I’ve never set foot in it, I’ve loathed that dome for years.

When the Brewers were in the American League and played there, I hated it on general principles.

When Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek and that generation of Twins were in their heyday, I hated it for the homer hankies the fans waved. (I’ve always hated any team whose fans in an act of mass silliness wave hankies or towels or – please, God, no – thundersticks.)

I even hate the dome in football season, as in the past two weeks when the 49ers and Packers lost in succession to the Vikings.

Why do I find the dome so revolting? I don’t begrudge the Twins and Vikings fans a warm place to sit when it’s freezing outside. But the Metrodome is an over-the-top artificial environment, a chamber of Nordic screams designed to rile and rattle the opposing team. The building is a huge advantage for the home squad, and unfairly so.

There are other domes in professional sports. I’ve been in Skydome or whatever it’s now called in Toronto and the old Kingdome in Seattle (inset), for which I had a minimal, grudging tolerance. I’ve also been in Miller Park in Milwaukee, with the roof open and closed. None of those parks approaches the Metrodome in affecting the outcome of a game.

Quirky differences among ballparks parks add to baseball’s appeal — the Green Monster at Fenway Park, the ivy at Wrigley Field, McCovey Cove in San Francisco, the arches at Yankee stadia, old and new. Those features constitute charm and give the home team a bit of a boost. But they don’t loom oppressively over the game as does the Metrodome.

That the Twins are moving to the new Target Field next season is good news. It can’t come soon enough.

For most of us, it’s ‘Wait Until Next Year’

Playoffs notwithstanding, for most baseball fans today is the first day of the long winter. The season is over, the concession stands are empty, the lockerrooms bare as the players have packed up to go fishing or hunting or whatever they do in the off-season.

For followers of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, another year has passed without post-season play. We small- and mid-market fans will watch glumly as the Cardinals, Dodgers, Phillies, Rockies, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers or Twins stretch their seasons.

For those teams, hope remains for October glory, a pennant, a World Series champagne spray. But for most of us — like this crushed Cubs fan — our refrain is “Wait until next year.”

Spring training can’t come soon enough.

Don’t knock the Rock!

By happy chance, I stumbled tonight onto a story on Cleveland.com about one of the great occasions in Cleveland Indians’ history, the night 50 years ago when Rocky Colavito slugged four home runs against the Orioles in Baltimore. That was June 10, 1959.

I wish I could say I remember the game, but I was only two years old at the time. The Rock’s performance is legendary in Cleveland history, and it was part of the Gospel of Baseball my father imparted to me.

The names Colavito (Rocco Domenico), Francona (Tito) and Minoso (Minnie) were among the first I learned after “Mommy” and “Daddy.” For years, Mom would laugh recalling my efforts to pronounce Minoso, which apparently came out something like “Mimoso.”

Colavito was my favorite player, always. I have no doubt that I cried, as many Clevelanders did, when Rocky was traded to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn. But the Tribe got Rocky back a few years later, an event I still count among my greatest sports memories. (We post-’48 Clevelanders have to grab on to what we can, understand?)

The NFL draft 2009, and the new look of the Detroit Lions

 

Matthew Stafford

The Detroit Lions are feeling mighty pleased today. They chose Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford as the No. 1 pick of the NFL draft. He’s shown at right, sporting the new Lions’ logo on his cap.

The Lions made a big fuss the other  day in announcing the logo, which is supposed to represent a fiercer look. Maybe, maybe not. They couldn’t do any worse than they did last season with the old logo.

As for Stafford, I know nothing more than that he was touted as the catch of the draft. All I can say to that is, “Good luck, Mr. Stafford, and good luck, Detroit.”

My years as a football fan are littered with busted first-round QBs. Exhibit A is Mike Phipps, for whom the Cleveland Browns gave up wide receiver Paul Warfield in a move stunning in its stupidity, even by Cleveland standards (See, Colavito for Kuenn). Farther west and more recently, the San Francisco 49ers put all their draft eggs in the Alex Smith basket, and that, to say the least, has not been a picnic.

If any NFL team wants to pay me what Stafford is reportedly getting – $41 million, give or take a few thou – my services are available. But I’d settle for $1 million and a couple of ball caps.

A very cool baseball uniform database

With my limited attention span and not contradictory ability to lose myself in any deep well of data on subjects dear to me, a friend forwarding a link to a baseball uniform database tempted me severely today.

The database is part of Dressed to the Nines, a section of the Baseball Hall of Fame Web site devoted to the history of uniforms. What a treasure trove it is. The uniform history of each club – National League, American League, Federal League — is presented in graphic form. At top right is a side-by-side panel of the Detroit ballclub’s home and road uniforms from 1905, the first year the fabled gothic “D” graced the front of the Tigers’ jerseys.

Some of the styles are classic, others – shall we say? – misguided. Get a look at the crazy window-pane plaid uniforms the New York Giants wore in 1916.

If you want to find out when the Houston Astros switched to their mustard-in-a-blender-accident double-knit softball uniforms (1975), the database will let you figure it out. The database will also show you the franchise’s cool original Colt .45s uniforms, which were worn from  1962-64.

The site is also instructive on changing cap styles. The first thing I did upon entering was to trace the evolution of Cleveland’s caps, noting that the primitive Chief Wahoo first appeared on jersey sleeves in 1947. Restyled to what became his traditional look in 1951, he moved up onto the cap inside the wishbone “C” logo in 1954.

Maybe that’s what doomed the Tribe in the World Series that year.