Editorial: The Dome was home to great baseball

It is the end of era -- the end of Minnesota's professional baseball played in a football stadium -- this weekend barring a Twins sweep and Detroit being clipped by Chicago.

For 28 summers, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome has been the Twins home within a football stadium. The Dome certainly was not a good place for professional baseball -- for either the players or the fans.

As former Twin's player and manager Bill Martin, then manager of the New York Yankees, so aptly said, "This park should be barred from baseball." The majority of the rest of his Metrodome quote is not printable.

The Dome has a number of faults: no retractable roof, no air-conditioning originally, a grey roof where baseballs got lost, poor sight lines, a hard field and no baggie or Plexiglas, which allowed line-drive home runs.

- Yet the Dome was so perfect in so many other ways.

- The Twins were 8-0 in World Series games at home.

- Players could play and the fans could still see a game on a rainy day or night.

- Fans filled the Metrodome on a fall night to welcome the Twins home from winning the 1987 ALCS against Detroit.

- The 1987 season -- where the Twins won their first world championship. Minnesota native Kent Hrbek's grand slam in game six sending the series back to the Dome.

- The 1991 season -- Where the Twins won their second world championship. Kirby Puckett's game winning home run in the sixth game to send the series back to the Dome. Jack Morris' 10-inning pitching performance in game seven which won the series.

- A number of division championships.

- Most of all, a lot of young, scrappy teams that played the brand of baseball Minnesotan's could appreciate and learned to love.

Hopefully, this weekend will not be the end of Minnesota's 2009 season and that the team can pull off another fall miracle at the Dome.

Overall, this big white igloo in eastern downtown Minneapolis has been good to baseball in Minnesota.

In the end, the Dome era has been simply memorable in Twins baseball history.

Thanks for the memories.