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Metropolitan Stadium /
Minnesota Twins / 1961-1981
Metropolitan
Stadium was dedicated in September 1955 and opened on April
24, 1956 as the home of the Class AAA Minneapolis Millers, but
it was never built to be a minor-league stadium. In the
mid-1950s, the Twin Cities civic leaders considered themselves
ready to enter the "big leagues" and launched a
pursuit of major-league football and baseball teams. To
further these efforts, the Baseball Committee of the
Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce paid $478,899 for 164 acres of
farmland in rural Bloomington, to be used to build a baseball
stadium for a major-league ball team. Minneapolis's
pursuit of a team predated this commitment to a stadium,
however. This
was an era when local sportswriters acted in several different
capacities, and one of the leaders to bring baseball to
Minnesota was Charles O. Johnson, the executive sports editor
of The Minneapolis Tribune (now the Minneapolis Star Tribune).
On the behalf of local business leaders, Johnson made
inquiries at the baseball commissioner's office in New York in
the early 1950s about possible expansion plans. At the same time the Boston
Braves of the National League moved to Milwaukee, which opened
the possibility that other franchise shifts could be
forthcoming. With a new stadium -- one that Horace Stoneham had
personally advocated to Minneapolis leaders, incidentally,
saying that he wouldn't consider a move to Minnesota until a
new stadium was constructed -- the New York Giants then negotiated a move to
Minneapolis. The Giants knew the area well (it owned the
Minneapolis Millers of the American Association, who would be
the initial tenant of the Met) but at the last minute Horace Stoneham
spurned
both the Twin Cities and the borough of Manhattan -- which had
proposed a new 110,000-seat stadium over the New York Central
railroad tracks, on a 470,000-foot site stretching from 60th
to 72nd streets on Manhattan's West Side -- and accompanied
the Dodgers to the West Coast, setting up shop as the San
Francisco Giants. Next on the suitor list was the Cleveland Indians. Nate
Dolan, the majority owner of the Indians, wanted to move the
team, but the team's long-term lease for Municipal Stadium
made a move unfeasible. Finally, the Washington Senators were in play. Although the late
Clark Griffith supported efforts to bring baseball to
Minnesota, he said that he would never move the Senators from
Washington. The feeling was not shared by his nephew Calvin
Griffith, who (along with his sister Thelma Haynes) assumed
ownership of the Senators when Clark Griffith passed away in
1955. Griffith was unwilling to move the Senators during this
time, but something pressed his hand: Branch Rickey's Continental League
which was being taken seriously as a competitor to the
American and National Leagues. There were some big names
involved with the Continental League -- its chairman was
William Shea, for whom Shea Stadium was named -- and
ironically it was formed because both the Giants and the
Dodgers moved away from New York City, prompting civic leaders
there to declare that the need for baseball in the five
boroughs. By July 1960 the Continental League had awarded
franchises to New York, Houston, Toronto, Denver, and
Minneapolis/St. Paul, but two weeks later the Continental
League died when MLB said that it would expand into four new
territories in an orderly fashion. (That's how the Mets and
the Houston .45s came to be.) Since MLB had basically promised
a team to Minneapolis/St. Paul, this made it safe for Calvin Griffith
to seek a move to the area. Griffith's demands were not
unreasonable: $250,000 in moving expenses, financial
help from the banks, a guarantee of a 40,000-seat stadium,
and 750,000 paid fans for each of the first three years. These
terms were accepted by Twin Cities civic leaders, and the team
move was announced on October 26, 1961. At the same time,
expansion franchises were awarded to Los Angeles and
Washington. The team moving from Washington was originally to be called
the Twin Cities Twins, and original logo and uniform designs
reflected these plans. When Minnesota leaders persuaded
Griffith to use the Minnesota Twins name (which was unheard of
at the time; up until then team names reflected metropolitan
areas and not entire states), Griffith decided to keep the
original designs, which is why Twins caps have a "TC"
as the logo. Because of the open design, the Met was regarded as a
hitters' ballpark because of the many wind-aided popups that
ended up as home runs. While sluggers like Harmon Killebrew
and Bob Allison didn't need any help in getting the ball out
of the yard, others did -- most famously Orioles pitcher Mike
Cuellar, a career .089 hitter whose grand-slam home run in the
league championship series in 1970 was certainly aided by the
wind. The left-field bleachers were added by the NFL's Vikings
and were on a different scale than the rest of the park (the
grandstand was cantilevered; the left-field bleachers were
not). It was difficult to move between different sections of
the park; more often than not you were forced to actually
leave the stadium if you wanted to go from the bleachers to
the grandstand, and there was a never a clear path when you
wanted to move from Point A to Point B. When the Metrodome was announced as the future
home of the Twins, a "Save the Met" organization was
formed, but to no avail (the group was really pro-outdoor
baseball; saving the Met was an afterthought). Part of the
fondness of the Met was really a fondness for the Twins teams
of the 1960s and early 1970s, when stars like Killebrew, Jim
Kaat, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Bert Blyleven, Zolio Versalles
and Bob Allison thrilled Met Stadium crowds, and the other
part of the fondness was for the expansive parking lots
surrounding the stadium -- perfect for tailgating before and
after games. Most folks attending Twins games remember the multi-story
scoreboard in right-center field. By today's standards, it
wasn't much of a scoreboard: it combined ads, batting lineups,
and a Longines clock on the top. (However, by comparison, this
scoreboard was more informative than the skimpy scoreboards in
the Metrodome.) For most of the Met's history the bullpens
were located in front of the scoreboard. The final game played at
the Met was on Sept. 30, 1981 (the Twins lost 5-2 to the
Kansas City Royals, by the way), with the Twins moving to the Metrodome
for the 1982 season.
Seating:
30,637 (1961), 40,000 (1964), 45,919 (1975)
Original cost: $8.5 million
The first target was Bill Veeck, who had decided that
competing with the deep pockets of Anheuser-Busch was too much
and wanted to move his St. Louis Browns. Veeck wanted to move
the Browns to Baltimore -- which was indeed where they ended
up -- and pretty much ignored all requests to meet with Twin
Cities officials. However, the play for the Browns caught the
attention of other owners. Overtures were made to Horace
Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants, and the creditors of
the Philadelphia Athletics, who controlled the franchise. The
deal with the Athletics fell through when Twin Cities leaders
decided to focus on building a stadium and then attracting a
team after failing to raise $1.6 million as a down payment on
the team. Arnold Johnson ended up buying the Athletics and
rebuilding Kansas City's
Municipal Stadium for the 1955 season. It was then that the
Baseball Committee of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce
decided to go ahead with a ballpark construction. However, the
ballpark almost did not come to be, as initial efforts to
raise $4.5 million in private capital for the ballpark fell
short. Only after a concentrated effort by 50 business leaders
was the necessary money raised. Still, the committee was
living a hand-to-mouth existence: the groundbreaking was
initially delayed because the committee had not paid Paul
Gerhardt, a farmer who had grown onions, melons and sweet corn
on the 50-acre parcel he was selling to the committee, his
$122,000. Gerhardt lined up his farm machinery in protest
along what would become the first-base line and refused to
move until he had a check in hand.
In the meantime, the stadium was occupied by the
Minneapolis Millers, who moved to the Met from the team's old
Nicollet Park location. The first game at the Met was played
on April 24, 1956, with the Millers taking on the Wichita
Braves. Over 18,000 fans showed up in 45-degree weather to see
the new park. It was a unique stadium at the time: the main
three-decked grandstand was complete and wrapped from third
base to first, but there were only temporary bleachers down
the third-base line and only fences in the outfield. The
grandstand would be extended down to the outfield when the
Twins moved in 1961, and in 1965 the left-field pavilion was
build by the NFL's Minnesota Vikings. At the time, its
cantilever design was considered revolutionary, with no poles,
or pillars to obstruct any views.
Metropolitan Stadium became a major-league stadium on April
21, 1961, when 24,606 fans showed up for the Twins' home
opener. It took some time for Metropolitan Stadium to make the
40,000-seat level promised to Griffith -- 1964, to be exact --
but at the beginning the Met was regarded as one of the
nicest stadiums in the major leagues. Still, it was never
really beloved by Twins fans. Part of the reason was the
hodge-podge design: it was built in sections and it showed.
Some of the sections were three decks, some were two decks,
and some were a single deck. It was perhaps the most open-air
stadium ever construction, as the only sheltered part of the
stadium were the back rows of the grandstand, covered by the
cantilevered deck above them.
Today, there are a few markers to commemorate Met Stadium
at the Mall of America, which eventually went up in the same
site. Killebrew Drive runs along the south side of the Mall. The location of
the Met's home plate is marked in Camp Snoopy,
while a marker in Camp Snoopy's northern wall marks where Killebrew hit the longest home run in Metropolitan
Stadium history: 520 feet on June 3, 1967. (No marker to
commemorate Killebrew's 500th home run, hit on Aug. 10, 1971
to the left-field bleachers.) Interestingly, some
local business leaders (goaded on by influential Star Tribune
columnist Sid Hartman) floated the idea of putting a new Twins
stadium in the former Met Center location north of the former
Met Stadium site and connect the new stadium to the Mall of
America, but there was a clause in the land sales agreement
that prohibited the use of the land for a stadium. In
addition, with the expansion of nearby Minneapolis-St.
Paul International Airport, the site would probably not pass
muster with federal aviation authorities, as it's directly in
a flight path.
STATS
| Dimensions | |||||
| Year | LF | LC | C | RC | RF |
| 1961 | 329 | 402 | 412 | 402 | 329 |
| 1962 | 330 | 402 | 412 | 402 | 330 |
| 1965 | 344 | 435 | 430 | 435 | 330 |
| 1968 | 346 | 430 | 425 | 430 | 330 |
| 1975 | 330 | 410 | 410 | 430 | 330 |
| 1977 | 343 | 406 | 402 | 410 | 330 |
ATTENDANCE
| Year | Attendance | Average | Rank in League | Record | Standing | |
| 1961 | 1,256,723 | 15,515 | 3rd out of 10 | 70-90 | 7 | |
| 1962 | 1,433,116 | 17,477 | 2nd out of 10 | 91-71 | 2 | |
| 1963 | 1,406,652 | 17,366 | 1st out of 10 | 91-70 | 3 | |
| 1964 | 1,207,514 | 14,726 | 3rd out of 10 | 79-83 | 6 | |
| 1965 | 1,463,258 | 18,065 | 1st out of 10 | 102-60 | 1 | |
| 1966 | 1,259,374 | 15,548 | 2nd out of 10 | 89-73 | 2 | |
| 1967 | 1,483,547 | 18,315 | 2nd out of 10 | 91-71 | 2 | |
| 1968 | 1,143,257 | 14,114 | 4th out of 10 | 79-83 | 7 | |
| 1969 | 1,349,328 | 16,658 | 3rd out of 12 | 97-65 | 1 | |
| 1970 | 1,261,887 | 15,579 | 3rd out of 12 | 98-64 | 1 | |
| 1971 | 940,858 | 11,910 | 5th out of 12 | 74-86 | 5 | |
| 1972 | 797,901 | 10,782 | 7th out of 12 | 77-77 | 3 | |
| 1973 | 907,499 | 11,204 | 10th out of 12 | 81-81 | 3 | |
| 1974 | 662,401 | 8,078 | 12th out of 12 | 82-80 | 3 | |
| 1975 | 737,156 | 8,990 | 12th out of 12 | 76-83 | 4 | |
| 1976 | 715,394 | 8,832 | 12th out of 12 | 85-77 | 3 | |
| 1977 | 1,162,727 | 14,534 | 11th out of 14 | 84-77 | 4 | |
| 1978 | 787,878 | 9,727 | 13th out of 14 | 73-89 | 4 | |
| 1979 | 1,070,521 | 13,216 | 11th out of 14 | 82-80 | 4 | |
| 1980 | 769,206 | 9,615 | 14th out of 14th | 77-84 | 3 | |
| 1981 | 469,090 | 7,690 | 14th out of 14th | 41-58 | 7 |
Trivia
First MLB home run hit in Metropolitan Stadium: Dale Long,
Washington Senators, 4/21/1961
Last MLB home run hit in Metropolitan Stadium: Clint Hurdle,
Kansas City Royals, 9/30/1981
Player who hit the most home runs hit in Metropolitan Stadium:
Harmon Killebrew, 246 (244 as a Twin, 2 as a Royal)
Total home runs hit in Metropolitan Stadium: 2,866
Related Books
Uncovering the Dome. Amy Klobuchar (now county attorney in Hennepin County) asks whether the public interest served in Minnesota's ten-year political brawl over the Metrodome. This case study tells the story of how a $55 million domed stadium called the Hubert Humphrey Metrodome came to be built in Minneapolis. More importantly, it offers an opportunity to explore the way things work in American politics: the shifting coalitions and uncertain outcomes; the scattered interests and chaotic atmosphere; the differing conceptions of what serves the public interest.
Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles. Jay Weiner details the 50 years of behind-the-scenes maneuvering associated with Minnesota stadiums. Some of the outrage is undeserved -- any multimillion-dollar project involves winners and losers, and a ballpark is no exception -- but the level of detail is outstanding.
The Ballpark Book : A Journey Through the Fields of Baseball Magic
Blue Skies, Green Fields: A Celebration...
Take Me Out to the Ballpark: An Illustrated Guide to Ballparks Past and Present
Storied Stadiums: Baseball's History Through Its Ballparks