Feeling Minnesota

Following the lead of my favorite Soundgarden song, I am in sunny Minneapolis this week for work. A group of us are visiting Target for work, our biggest client. I say sunny, because it's been in the mid 70's since my plane landed Monday morning. Weird, I know. Below, I'll give you the highlights from my trip so far.


It gives me the butterflies, gives me away
Till I'm up on my feet again
I'm feeling outshined

Monday night, I was able to rendezvous with Dave "Soup" Campbell for dinner and catch up on life. Half of the Lodge know Soup from fantasy leagues... little update, he lives a short bikeride from downtown, he is still an AP Sportswriter in the Twin Cities, and he's still pretty bad at fantasy sports. Good writer, though.

Dave filled me in on the very interesting backstory and inside information on the Steve Hutchinson & Nate Burleson situations from a downtown Minnesota perspective. Soup even said he'd be happy to make a Lodge post with the behind the scenes story on the past month. So Jimbo, you should email Campbell an invite to join the Lodge. I'll sponsor him as my #3 draft pick this year. We've done well so far with the first two draft picks, although The Duke has been pretty weak sauce the past week or so.

Tonight, after dinner on Target at a local hotspot, I headed down to the Twins 2006 Home Opener at the Metrodome. Some highlights of the 7-6 Minnesota victory over my pick to win the AL West pennant, the Athletics from Oaktown:

• Scalping a $18 2nd deck ticket, behind home plate, during the top of the 3rd inning, for only 5 bucks.
  
• A fight broke out in the 2nd deck along the 3rd base line, apparently it was 3-on-3 brawl and it took 10 minutes for security to come over and drag the guys out of the Stadium. Play continued during the maylay. So yeah, Twins' fans must feel safe in the Dome.
  
• 5 Home Runs in the game, including 2 bombs from the always solid Oakland 3B Eric Chávez.
  
• During the 7th Inning Stretch, after Take Me Out To The Ballgame, the Twins honored the late Kirby Puckett with an emotional rendition of Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World along with a video montage. I'll be honest, it got a little dusty in the Dome for a few minutes.
  
• There was a large, red #34 painted in centerfield on the turf. Classy gesture.
  
• And last, but certainly not least, the bathrooms in the Metrodome had the classic trough urinals. Bringin ya back to the ol' Kingdome days. Nostalgic.

You can read Soup's wrapup article on the game to get the "media" spin on the matchup. Oh, and by the way, I asked him if he had an AP vote for the Player Of The Year voting for College Basketball, and he said he did not. The last two awards he was able to vote on was AL Rookie Of the Year a in 2003 and 2004.