Minnesota Twins!

Like many companies, my company has busy and less busy times. During our 'quarter launch' times my department likes to provide incentives to help get us through the craziness that can ensue. This quarter one of those incentives was free Twin's tickets... and I was the lucky one to win them. The best part was that the game was in the middle of the day and I wasn't required to use any of my paid time off to go to it. Oh, and not only that, but these were pretty awesome seats too.

When the email went out announcing that I won the tickets I received a flurry of emails from other people in my department congratulating me. People stopped me in the halls and I was even told “It’s kind of exciting to know the person who won instead of it being someone from Marketing or something”. I felt a little like a celebrity. When I left work that day my teammates said goodbye to me as if I was headed out to Fort Myers. It was all pretty exciting.

My husband's company is also going through a busy time of the quarter, but he knew it was a great opportunity to spend some alone time with his wife (and thousands of other people) so he took some time off of work to join me. He's not really a baseball fan so he wasn't as excited as me (especially since he did have to use PTO), but he did look forward to having some 'us' time without the kid.

This was earlier on in the game when we were probably losing 6 - 0... and you can see the disappointment in Jesse's face.

I guess I should back up and say that I used to love baseball when I was younger. It was really the only entertainment in the town I grew up in. But as I got older I seemed to lose interest in it (and start to watch football instead - what happened? I have no idea). I have to admit that the last Twin's game I went to was in 1987. Yeah, that's 25 years ago. Of course, the last game I went to was game 6 of the World Series so it was a doozy of a game, but certainly too long ago.

I'd been wanting to check out the new Target Field as everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, seems to think it is the bees knees, but we just hadn't gotten around to it yet. And then this opportunity came along. I work on a team that has some serious Twin's fans so I felt a little guilty about going to this game instead of them, but I figured I deserved it for a number of reasons (Hello! I haven't seen the Twins play live in 25 years!).

One of my co-workers, Maggie, has gone to the home opener every year for 8 years where she has received the promotional magnet schedule, but she wasn't able to do so this year. This was game three of the series, but they were still handing the magnets out to the first 20,000 people. She really wanted one so I was on a mission to get one for her. I was a little worried I'd be able to accomplish this task since we were late to the game, but I got her one... and, hopefully, that void in her is now filled.

The game at first wasn't too exciting. It was going pretty fast because we'd get up to bat and pretty much 1 out, 2 out, 3 out... done, but mid game we started fighting back and in the end won 10 - 9. We had to leave at the top of the 9th to pick our kid up from daycare, but this also allowed us to miss most of the end of the game congestion. 

Bases loaded!... which then became a blown opportunity. But we fought back shortly after this.

One of my favorite parts of the game was when a couple fouls balls came down near us... not close enough to catch, but close enough to see how people rejoiced and responded. The first one came down, bounced off some people, rolled around on the ground, and was snatched up by a guy who jumped up triumphantly displaying the ball. Most people clapped and let him have his moment, but I heard a few murmurs of "he didn't even catch it" as if his excitement was a little too much for what it was. Only moments later another foul ball came down on the other side of me where it was caught by a guy who turned around and handed it to a little boy. That is apparently how you catch a ball with style and class and everyone acknowledged it. And the look on that little boy's face was priceless.  

As far as food goes there were waitresses in our area, but we went inside and ordered food at one of the many counters. I had the typical hot dog even though I had some pretty awesome stuff to choose from inside the Legend's Club. It just seemed right, although now I wish I had tried the shrimp sandwich for $11.00... or something that isn't probably offered elsewhere in the stadium. Chances are I'm not going to sit in this area again anytime soon (oh, how I loved the cushions seats). At any rate, I only shelled out $9.75 for my hot dog and water... and the water cost more than the hot dog. Wah, wah...

Inside the Legend's club you could still watch the game and eat at the window. I expected to use this area to warm up since it was a little chilly out, but our seats were in the sun and we were hot (I even got a bit of a farmer's tan)! We actually had to come in here and cool down. 

In the end we had a great time and Jesse even wants to come back and check out an evening game. I guess I won't have to wait another 25 years to see another game live. That is if we can get a babysitter...