I covered the minor league game in St. Paul and now I’ll get to the rest of my time in Minnesota. Besides layovers in the airport, my only previous times in Minnesota were ten years ago. I went to mark the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers beating the Twins in the World Series. Actually, it was a coincidence, but the Twins were celebrating the 50th anniversary of winning the American League that year and they played a message from Vin Scully. By the way, that was a great World Series and I’ve watched all of the Dodgers’ wins from the series. I was back in Minnesota a few months later for Dennis and Courtney’s wedding. This year I was back for the 60th anniversary of the 1965 World Series. I had been wanting to get back to Target Field because it’s really good. I had it ranked ninth of all the Major League stadiums I’ve been to (and third out of current American League stadiums). Besides getting to Target Field again, I got to a minor league game at a great stadium, and I got to see Dennis and Courtney and meet their kids for the first time.
Dennis picked me up at the airport and we went to the Blue Door Pub. It was featured on Man v. Food. The Jucy Lucy is Minnesota’s specialty version of the cheeseburger. It has the cheese stuffed inside the burger. I had the Blucy, which had bleu cheese inside. It was very good. After lunch, I checked into my hotel and relaxed for a bit before we met up for the Saints game.
The next day the plan was to go to another Man v. Food spot, the Seventh Street Truck Park. It’s an indoor spot with all these different food trucks. Google said it didn’t open until 3:00. We checked the website and it said it opened at 11:00. It turned out that Google was right. So instead we did another Man v. Food spot, Mickey’s Diner. We went there ten years ago before it had been featured on Man v. Food. It’s just a little train car that’s been made into a diner. It’s probably really busy for breakfast, but we were there around lunchtime and it was not crowded at all. It was Friday and I wasn’t eating meat so I had blueberry pancakes. It had been a long time since I had gotten pancakes anywhere. These pancakes were very good. Then we went to Cossetta’s, which is this big Italian market. I got a small strawberry gelato. It was a reminder of my trip to Italy last summer, but they didn’t have the same wide variety of flavors that I saw in Italy.
That night, Dennis and I went to the Twins game. They were taking on the Royals. The Twins were wearing their city connect uniforms. They were the Royals’ colors. Nike is so stupid. They’re destroying the identity of teams with all these silly uniforms. It’s especially bad in basketball when I’ll see a team wearing a uniform that I’ve never seen before on a regular basis. I can put a game on TV and if I don’t immediately see who’s playing on the score bug, I won’t know who the team is based on their uniform.
As for the game, it was Joe Ryan pitching for the Twins against Seth Lugo. Ryan is having an excellent year, but he got off to a rough start, giving up a lead off home run to Mike Yastrzemski. But the Twins struck back quickly. Matt Wallner hit a home run and then an RBI single and a fielder’s choice made it 3-1 Twins after one inning. The Twins scored two more on RBI singles in the second and they were in control of the game. Kody Clemens (son of cheater Roger) hit a home run in the fourth to make it 7-1. And it never really was interesting as the Twins ended up winning 9-4. Joe Ryan pitched five innings and gave up one run. The Twins had five players with two hits and Ryan Jeffers had three. Attendance was 28,242. It was 88° and the game lasted two hours and 33 minutes.
This was our view for the game. This was my third game at Target Field. There are only ten Major League stadiums where I’ve attended more games.
It was a little bit of a challenge to find something to eat since I wasn’t eating meat. We took a lap around the lower concourse. The Twins’ website had a lot of information about what was available. I knew they had walleye sliders, but it was hard to find them. Walleye are freshwater fish native to Canada and the northern US. I remember having walleye the last time I was in Minnesota (not at a Twins game). We found the sliders at Hrbek’s, a bar that was kind of hidden in a corner on the lower concourse. They came with fries. I’m usually skeptical of fries at a sporting event, but these fries were actually really good and the sliders were good too. I wouldn’t have gotten them if it wasn’t a Friday, but they got the job done on a day when I wasn’t eating meat. To drink, I had an Extra Pale Ale from the Summit Brewing Company in St. Paul. It was the best beer that I’ve had at a baseball game this summer. I don’t know what the range of the Summit Brewing Company is, but sadly it’s not big enough to find on Long Island. I checked their website and there were no results available for where to find Summit beer within 50 miles of me. I would definitely get some if I could. After the game, they had fireworks. There is a pretty good chance that it was my last baseball game of the season so it was cool to go out with fireworks.
I hope I get to see fireworks at some baseball games next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
The last day I was in Minnesota was Saturday. We didn’t really have anything planned. The weather was really bad early in the day so after checking out of my hotel, Dennis picked me up and we hung out at his house. The last time I saw Dennis was 2018. I think the last time I saw Courtney was when they got married ten years ago. I got to meet their kids. Winnie is almost three and a half and Beatrice just turned one a couple months ago. Winnie can already sing the Notre Dame Victory March so Dennis and Courtney are obviously doing a good job as parents. Dennis and I were playing around on the Alexander Bess Notre Dame Football Database. I think I might have found mistakes on there in the past, but it’s an excellent website. According to the database, we are undefeated all time in August games (8-0). Hopefully we will keep that going with our game at Miami on August 31. We also discovered that Notre Dame has not played Minnesota since 1938 (we’re 4-0-1 against them all time). That provided the inspiration for my next blog post so stay tuned for that.
To finish my Minnesota trip, I went to the vigil Mass that night and then Dennis drove me to the airport for my late flight. My best case scenario was getting home around 1:15. But the trip ended the way it started. The flight was late, there was a delay getting into the gate after we landed, I had a long wait for the Air Train, and then I had a long wait for the Long Island Railroad at Jamaica. I got home at 3:00 in the morning. It was a good thing I didn’t have to worry about getting to Mass in the morning. But it was good to see Dennis and Courtney and to finally get to meet their kids. I remember staying with Matt for the Navy game the fall after I graduated (2007) and then I didn’t see him again until the championship game in January of 2013. The next time I saw him was for the Oklahoma game in 2013. Those three games were all losses. I am not superstitious (unlike Michael Scott, I’m not even a little stitious), but we were getting close to being able to never hang out for a Notre Dame football game ever again because there would be too many bad memories (but I think Notre Dame is currently on a four game winning streak when Matt and I are both in attendance). I bring that up because a little over five years seemed like such a long time to not see one of my good friends from Notre Dame. It had been seven years since I had seen Dennis. Hopefully I’ll see Dennis again before the 70th anniversary of the Dodgers winning the 1965 World Series. Maybe it will be for a Notre Dame football game.
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