Young219 thought he was seeing his first major-league game outdoors on Friday. He's 20. And he doesn't remember when I took him to a game in Fort Myers when he was a toddler. I remember mostly because Tom Kelly's mother came over to make sure I had sunscreen for the little guy. I did. He had on a hat and sleeves too.
The youngster likes baseball, which is one of the best gifts he could give me. He likes baseball enough that he and a friend are making a 1,400-mile round trip this weekend to sit in the upper reaches of Target Field.
I promise this will not be a blow-by-blow account of our visit.
We entered Target Field on the Warehouse District side -- by the light-rail station and the left-field corner, which means we missed the street scene of the area around the plaza. That put us in the left-field corner. His job dropped and he moved toward the seats to get a look at the playing field, acting like someone half his age. That was as much fun to watch as anything else that happened on a pretty great day.
We wandered around the ballpark for about a half-hour, taking things in from various points between the foul poles. A lot of other people were doing the same and yet there was more than enough room to navigate. We stopped at the Section 219 seats to check out the view with more than just grass on the field, and it was very good.
Then, because we are men of the people, we went to our seats halfway up in the corner of the third deck.
Much if the excited cooing about Target Field has come so far from people who will rarely, if ever, experience the place from beyond the ballpark's sheltered comforts or on guided tours. (I had been fortunate enough to tour the park several times before it opened, and I give credit to my colleague Joe Christensen for breaking away a few times on one of the tours and checking things out from less-than-prime views.)
I needed to see the place from Section 327. That's the last fair-territory section in the third deck, next to (and higher than) the Budweiser Party deck. Tickets are $13-$18 depending on the game -- the cheapest in the park except for the area from Sections 301 to 307.