New outfield seating debuts at Target Field for its earliest-ever Twins home opener
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The Minnesota Twins regular season is just 485 hours away. That's about 20 days.
The folks over at Target Field are getting ready to welcome the Twins home from spring training. They took the tarp off of the infield last week, and they'll have a new seating arrangement waiting for fans out by the right field foul pole, below the big entrance plaza.
Twins spokesman Kevin Smith says the Twins have reconfigured about 200 seats, from traditional stadium seating to something a little more casual:
"It used to be three sections of bleachers," says Smith. "We took those bleachers seats out and rebuilt them to be more like a drink rail. It's a standing area. Each seat's numbered, and has a ticket assigned to it. There'll be tall stools that you can sit on. It's more of a group-gathering type area, kind of a different way to watch the game."
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The changes involve sections 139, 140 and 141, on the map below:
They also added more concrete on the concourse level, to improve a "pinch point" in the southeastern corner of the stadium, in section 141, meant to improve the traffic flow between Gate 34 and Gate 29.
That area will look a little more like this, with a canopy over the eastern row of seats. You can see all the details here.
The Twins are also, for the first time, opening their regular season at home. They'll be playing the Detroit Tigers on April 1 in Minneapolis. Smith says they've opened previous Target Field seasons on April 12, 10 and 8th. "We used to open up the season on the road for the first couple of series, then have the home opener the second week in April. This is the first time we'll open the season at home, at Target Field, anyway."
They're tempting fate, as the State Climatology Office can remind you:
That's a photo from Maplewood of what was left by the snowstorm that hit over March 31 and April 1, 2008 and left 9.4 inches of snow in New Hope, two years before Target Field opened.