Farewell Dear Friend

It's taken me awhile to process the fact that I won't ever watch the Twins play in the Metrodome again.

I'm not quite as ecstatic about this as I thought I would be. Perhaps it's because all of my fondest baseball memories happened there -- I'm not old enough to have experienced the old Met Stadium. The Metrodome was a dump, but it was our dump. I think I grew to love its quirks and being able to bash it and talk about how weird of a place to baseball it was. (Even writing about it in the past tense feels odd.)

Oh well. I know I'll always remember that amazing win over the Tigers in game 163. I almost wish our season could have just ended after that game so we didn't have to experience the stark reality of facing the Yankees and being supremely overmatched.

This weekend I watched the final game up in Boston in a whole city full of people pulling for us. Too bad it didn't help. I wore my Twins gear to a Bruins/Islanders game Saturday night and got some high fives from Boston fans -- much more congenial than Yankee Stadium was.

I'm done talking about our woeful exit from the post-season. For the next few months I'll focus a little bit on the Vikings and Timberwolves, but I'll do some thorough examination of Twins offseason topics, in addition to continuing my "Twins Bloggers: Get to Know 'Em" series. Check back Friday for the next installment, where Seth Stohs answers my Twins survey.

Speaking of Seth, he and the other group of Twins Bloggers at Twins Centric, have published an amazing book which should help you get your Twins fix throughout the offseason. Some of you may have read their Trade Deadline Primer and hopefully all of you have read Seth's Prospect Handbook he publishes, so you should all know what great writers they are.

They've all contributed very hard to put this book together, and for all the free content they publish for us, I think it's only fitting we help support their work and buy a copy of this book. If you're still not convinced, you can download 1/3 of it for free on the website! Need I say more?!?!?

*Also, interesting article on Nick Punto over at Andrew Kneeland's new website. Definitely check it out, he makes some great points.