From Ballpark Roadtrip
Metrodome
Minneapolis, MN
Toronto Blue Jays vs. Minnesota Twins
Date: August 11, 2000
The Road Trip
We didn't know whether to dread or look forward to going to Minnesota. A seven hour drive is always a daunting prospect when you've just come off of a 14 hour stint a couple days before. We got a reasonably early start Friday morning for our trek to Minneapolis. We drove up through Milwaukee stopping at an A&W fast food joint outside the city. Let's just say it was an interesting place. We would soon come to realize that there is a whole lot of nothing between Mlwaukee and Minneapolis. Jane, the person Lumpy's girlfriend (Kim) babysits for, gave him "Rubberneckers" as a gift when she left the country as a thank you for helping Kim watch her kid. I don't know if it's a thing for foreigners, but Rubberneckers is great for these road trips! It's this retarded game where there are objects and actions drawn up on cards and you have to find the objects or execute the action while in the car. Dauber was always drawing the "make the 'okay' sign to the guy in the next car" card. I thought someone would have reached behind them and grabbed their twelve gauge off their gun rack and blown a hole in my engine. The game is designed so the items are commonly found along a highway. Well, we ended up with a soccer (futbol) score in our game since there was very little to see along this ride. Sure they've got 10,000 lakes but not much else to speak of.
Flume ride inside the Mall of America
We rolled into Minneapolis around 5:00 PM and for some reason we weren't sure what time the game was, be it 7 or 8 or somewhere in between. So where would you go to find out? The Mall of America, of course! We just had to ride the roller coaster in the middle of the mall and grab some food court dinner. It was here that Lumpy's biology background kicked in. He asked Mike and Dauber what they noticed about the crowd in the mall. They didn't know what he was getting at so he explained to them that when we take mice in the lab and keep inbreeding them certain traits are lost and others become dominant in the colony. They'll all get a certain color coat and eyes, etc. As soon as Lumpy mentioned that, the guys realized we were sitting among a slowly evaporating gene pool. We were surrounded by hundreds of blonde-haired, blue-eyed locals. It appears that as the traits for brown hair and eyes was lost, a gene coding for the word "Yawh!" We would find out that the game was at 7:00 and head out for the Metrodome in a hurry.
The Stadium
We were eager to see our first domed stadium. Isn't the Metrodome is one of those domes that's held up by air pressure? That's just the coolest thing in the world! We was very impressed with the park! Mike and Lumpy were talking about how they wouldn't mind living around here and getting season tickets to the Metrodome. Good seats, not so crowded, cheap. The winters would be tough, but the Vikings would also make it interesting in the off-season!
We found out the coolest thing about the Metrodome as we were leaving. Mike, a Yankee fan, wanted to try and seek out the Blue Jays as they were leaving to see David Wells and Graeme Lloyd. We cam upon some sort of organized line of people and nothing draws a crowd like a crowd so we hopped in line to see what it was all about. Apparently the there is a tunnel coming out of the stadium with
Christian Guzman sigining Lumpy's bucket
an exit right near the players parking lot. There were barricades set up forming an alley between the tunnel exit and the parking lt entrance with some stadium security guards standing around. Soon, all the Minnesota players would come out of the tunnel and walk this "gauntlet" and talk to the fans and sign autographs. It was amazing how friendly they were. Most players would just walk a slow pace and sign a few things along the way but these players stopped at each and every fan who wanted something signed and gave their autograph. It took them each at least 15 minutes to make it out. We immediately wanted to find something to have signed. We didn't have a ball, we thought about Dauber's program but that's way too conventional. We were trying to think of something a little on the ridiculous side to see how much friendly sarcasm these players could tolerate. What we did have was a plastic souvenir popcorn bucket with the Twins and Vikings logos on it. Perfect! We got a Sharpie from Dauber's backpack and set Lumpy to work. He was able to get David Ortiz and Christian Guzman to sign it. Here he is with Guzman and the bucket
The Game
Dauber missing another homer
Early in the game, Dauber would take a trip to the concession and stand to get a program and guess what? Jacques Jones goes deep to center field. That's 2 games in a row that someone hit a bomb while Dauber was looking for a program. In one sense, we were disappointed that Dauber missed out on the action, but in another sense, maybe Dauber has some special karma that we might be abe to harness...
The most memorable event of this particular game didn't occur on the field. We were sitting in our seats, watching the game when one of the stadium vendors strolled down the aisle shouting "COKE-POP!" What the hell is Coke-pop? We weren't paying attention until around the fourth time she yelled out "COKE-POP HERE!"Mike must have been curious from the first shout because as Lumpy turned around he saw Mike clinching his teeth trying not to laugh. As soon as Lumpy saw what was going on, he knew why Mike was trying not to laugh; he knew Lumpy was going to make some comment. It looked as though the woman was having a stroke.
Doesn't this guy look like Rick Aguilera?
It seemed like the whole left side of her face had been paralyzed! We couldn't help but stare but she could indeed move her whole face, she was just trying to make her voice sound deeper and louder by yelling through the corner of her mouth. We had never been so fascinated by a stadium vendor in our whole life. It turns out that "coke-pop" was actually Sprite. Later some wise locals informed us that it could be any type of carbonated soft drink. Lumpy asked his friend, Vincent, a professional sketch artist, to reconstruct the image of the coke-pop vendor.
Pretty accurate. I'm sure the quote "coke- pop" will become very popular in our travels. Now this wasn't the only interesting vendor at this park, it took a couple glances to convince us that this Coke-pop vendor wasn't Rick Aguilera:
