Apr 4, 2022
Baseball historian, Minnesota
Twins official scorer and
Episode 114 guest Stew Thornley ("Metropolitan
Stadium: Memorable Games at Minnesota's Diamond on the
Prairie"), returns for a fond look back at the
semi-iconic structure that helped secure "major league" status for
the Twin Cities in the early 1960s.
Known simply as "The Met" by
area locals (or even the "Old Met" to distinguish from the downtown
Minneapolis Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome that effectively replaced
it in 1982), Bloomington's Metropolitan Stadium opened in April of
1956 with the stated hope of luring a Major League Baseball
franchise to the region - just as the sport was beginning to chart
its modern-era manifest destiny.
While ultimately luring Calvin
Griffith's Washington Senators to become the Twins in 1961 - as
well as the expansion NFL football Vikings that same year - the Met
was mostly the exclusive home of the minor league American
Association Minneapolis Millers for its first five years of
existence, save for a handful of annual NFL preseason exhibition
games and two regular season Chicago Cardinals matches in
1959.
In 1976, it also became the
popular outdoor home of the North American Soccer League's
Minnesota Kicks - and its legions of young tailgate-crazy
fans.
Ahead of its time in the
mid-50s, Met Stadium was nearly obsolete by the end of the 70s -
decent for baseball, not so much for football - and rumors of at
least the Vikings absconding for another to-be-built stadium in the
area (including concepts for a domed enclosure or a new
football-only facility between it and the nearby indoor Met Center)
swirled around the community as early as 1970.
Alas, after only 21 seasons each
for the Twins and the Vikings (six for the Kicks), Metropolitan
Stadium succumbed to poor maintenance and the allure of a new,
winter-proof Metrodome. Demolished in 1985, the Met gave way
to what is now the country's largest shopping center - the Mall of
America.