The HHH Metrodome

The Outdoor Sports Home of the Twin Cities–The Metrodome

The Minneapolis Metrodome is the home of the National Football League (NFL) team the Minnesota Vikings, the Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Minnesota Twins, the football and baseball teams of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, and was the home of the National Basketball Association (NBA) team the Minnesota Timberwolves until the Timberwolves constructed their own stadium, the Target Center, in 1990.

The Metrodome is an outdoor stadium that is covered by a dome made of Teflon fabric.  The dome itself consists of over twenty acres of Teflon, making it the largest single Teflon based object in the world.  The playing field is covered by a material called field turf, which is an improvement over the Astroturf, which was used until 2004.  The stadium can handle large crowds on game day and can accommodate 64,000 fans for football games and 48,000 fans for baseball games.  The difference in capacity is caused by the fact that baseball is requires more of the surface area to be used for the game surface, which means that fewer seats are made available for baseball games.

The Metrodome was designed to be primarily a football venue, and many fans complain that it is far from the ideal location in which to hold baseball games.  The seating is such that many fans have a difficult time seeing home plate, and some seats have obscured lines of site onto the field.  Perhaps the biggest problem with the Metrodome for baseball use is the fact that the Teflon ceiling happens to be the same color as a baseball, which means that many more errors occur in the Metrodome than occur at other baseball venues.