Metrodome Week

[CaliforniaCheez]

It is Metrodome week. Time to tell your favorite Metrodome stories.

It was divided between a personal favorite when the Metrodome collapsed under it's very first snowstorm on November 19, 1981 or the swastika dome.

So I went with the swastika dome.



"Sure enough, right over second base, a massive symbol of Nazi propaganda appears to be etched into the roof."




Read about it here:

http://www.citypages.com/2005-05-18/news/the-final-ballpark-solution-does-the-metrodome-roof-contain-a-giant-swastika

Other good ones are
Mike Ditka called it a barn and the Vikings brought in fake animals.

The time they failed to sell out a playoff game against the Bears.

Brett Favre setting the TD record and Dan Marino's taped congratulatory message is played at the Metrodome.

Go ahead and tell your favorite Metrodome story!

[mngolf19]

Sitting in the sports bar at the Mall of America. Packed. Used to be a Packer, Bear, Viking hangout on game day. Got about 200 Packer fans giving the Vikes fans crap as they were about to win by 1 or 2 pts. Then with 5 seconds left McMahon hits Leo Lewis on a hail mary to the Packer 5yd line. Somehow he was uncovered and the pass led him out of bounds but they easily kicked the winning field goal. Never seen 200 screamers go to dead silence and the other 300 Vikes fans start the screaming back in such a short time. Very surreal to be there. It was played at the Metrodome, does that count?

[mngolf19]

Also the game where Ditka called it the Rollerdome, they had the cheerleaders come out in Rollerblades. I worked for Rollerblade then and sent those skates out for that event.

[HarveyWallbangers]

Sitting in the sports bar at the Mall of America. Packed. Used to be a Packer, Bear, Viking hangout on game day. Got about 200 Packer fans giving the Vikes fans crap as they were about to win by 1 or 2 pts. Then with 5 seconds left McMahon hits Leo Lewis on a hail mary to the Packer 5yd line. Somehow he was uncovered and the pass led him out of bounds but they easily kicked the winning field goal. Never seen 200 screamers go to dead silence and the other 300 Vikes fans start the screaming back in such a short time. Very surreal to be there. It was played at the Metrodome, does that count?

I was at this game. I think McMahon hit a guy named Eric Guliford--who up to that point hadn't had a catch on the season. Buckley didn't think McMahon could throw it that far. I was with all Vikings fans (mostly relatives), and most of them had left already and missed the end of the game.

[3irty1]

The last time I was at the Dome was during a Twins game. For those who have never been, The whole thing is pressurized so while everyone is leaving you are basically getting sucked out. Well just as I was getting to the door someone opened a set of doors that had a big garbage can in front of it. The plastic garbage can full of trash was sucked out and thrown about 20 feet into a big group of fans.

[MadtownPacker]

My fav metrodome moment:

Jan. 17th, 1999

[CaliforniaCheez]

That rates right up there Madtown!!


Here is another:


November 2002 Iowa fans tear down Metrodome goal posts

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2002-11-18-celebrations_x.htm

"where fans of visiting Iowa came out of the stands after the Hawkeyes clinched a share of the Big Ten championship by beating Minnesota 45-21. Three arrests were made, one by campus police and two by Minneapolis police. Fans toppled one goal post but were prevented from taking the second down. The goal post had to be replaced for a late Saturday small-college game."

Minnesota coach Glen Mason didn't seem to mind the postgame celebration by opposing fans.

"They won a Big Ten championship," Mason told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "That doesn't happen every day. Heck, they won them (the goal posts). They deserve them. Take them home."

[KYPack]

The pressurization is a bitch. It blows in your face on the way in and you do get sucked out when you leave.

I don't know if I'm always in a bad section, but you had to go upstairs to go to the can.

Been there once in the mid 90's. The Pack lost. Lot's of stupid drunk Queen fans. On one of the final plays, Sean Salisbury threw a TD pass to Mike Tice.

That was enough to make ya sick!

Missed the swastika. Never heard that one before.

[CaliforniaCheez]

Click this link for a local look at they consider the 10 worst moments in the history of the Metrodome.

http://www.citypages.com/2007-09-26/news/hubert-h-humphrey-metrodome-10-worst-moments/

Some I didn't remember!!

[DonHutson]

The pressurization is a bitch. It blows in your face on the way in and you do get sucked out when you leave.

That's funny. The team folds under pressure, and the stadium folds without it.

[Zool]

The pressurization is a bitch. It blows in your face on the way in and you do get sucked out when you leave.

I don't know if I'm always in a bad section, but you had to go upstairs to go to the can.

Its really the least pleasant place I've watched a pro sporting event. The Target Center is bad, but the dome is worse.

[mngolf19]

Click this link for a local look at they consider the 10 worst moments in the history of the Metrodome.

http://www.citypages.com/2007-09-26/news/hubert-h-humphrey-metrodome-10-worst-moments/

Some I didn't remember!!

I couldn't get the page to come up. Can you post?

[Cheesehead Craig]

Oct 15, 2005

The Badgers block the punt against the Gophers to win the game. I was seated by the endzone and the place went absolutely nuts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfIA7lhsSKs

[CaliforniaCheez]

http://www.citypages.com/2007-09-26/news/hubert-h-humphrey-metrodome-10-worst-moments/

It spoils it cutting an pasting without the pictures.

City Pages 10 worst Metrodome moments

10. Tore up from the floor up

When the Dome hosted the NCAA men's basketball tournament in 1989, officials were eager to make a good impression in the hopes of landing the Final Four within the next few years.

Instead, it was a near disaster. On the morning before the game was to begin, NCAA reps were having a look-see on the condition of the temporary court installed for the tourney. What they saw wasn't good.

"The varnish on the court was coming up all over the place, peeling like an onion," says Lester. "We mopped it with just about any substance we could find. I don't think it helped much."


9. The Sweatrodome

In a moment of true Scando-Minnesota frugality, the Dome opened without air conditioning. While attendance was already nose-diving during the pathetic 1982 Twins season, the notion that fans would have to sit in what amounted to a Teflon sauna didn't help ticket sales.

By July 1983, air conditioning came into use, leading to an endless supply of conspiracy theories that the staff flips a switch to benefit the home team: blowers on when the opposing team bats, blowers off when the Twins are at the plate.


8. Burning Man

During its second year of operation, the Dome was already holding monster-truck rallies and tractor pulls, but nothing quite like the Motocross event that saw a man catch fire. "There was this kid from Argentina who was going to do a major jump over something, off a ramp," Lester says. "They were going to light him on fire and send him through the air."

Unfortunately, crews had built a safety wall out of cardboard boxes and hay. "So he goes to the top of the ramp, gets lit, makes the jump, crashes right into the boxes, which catch on fire, everything's on fire," Lester says. "They put it out, and he was fine, but they were going to have him speak to the crowd afterward, and all he could really do was wave a little bit and say, 'I gotta go.'"


7. Gophers' less than golden moments

With the exception of some Wisconsin and Iowa rivalry games, Gopher football at the Dome has nearly always been a losing proposition—both on the scoreboard and in the stands. But one moment during the disastrous second season stands out. The Number one-rated Nebraska Cornhuskers came to the Hump and squeaked by our Goofers by the razor-thin margin of 84-13.

Nearly 20 years later, the 2003 squad started the season 6-0, giving fans a reason to believe that the chronically underperforming Gopher football program was finally on the rebound. Then Michigan came to town. Initially, the Gophers were on the march, building a 21-point lead going into the fourth quarter. But in the biggest gridiron meltdown in Dome history, the Gopher defense gave up 31 fourth-quarter points, eventually ceding victory to the Wolverines 38-35. The Gophers dropped two more crucial games and ended the season 10-3, leading no less a Gopher apologist than Sid Hartman to concede that the staggering loss prevented "the Gophers from creating the interest needed to fill the Metrodome and stop fan apathy."


6. Dylan and the Dead

It had all the makings of a historic show: Two of the biggest names in 1960s rock, pairing up and coming to the Dome for the venue's inaugural concert in 1986. To top it off, Dylan was backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Problem was, nobody thought much about the acoustics of the stadium. As it turned out, unless you were on the field directly in front of the stage, all you could hear was screeching, gelatinous noise.

"Oh God, after the complaints about the acoustics, we didn't think we would ever have a show here again," Lester recalls.


5. Vikings stink up the field, Dome stinks up the stands

The debut of Coach Brad Childress came to an anticlimactic halt at the end of the 2006 season with a loss to the St. Louis Rams. Then the Dome registered its displeasure: The toilets in one men's room backed up.

"Not only did our team complete the season with 8 out of 10 losses in an uninspiring pounding by the Rams," says Lester Bagley, the Vikings' vice president for public affairs and stadium development, "but there was a flood in the concourse where water was running into and down the steps of the press box, and into the suites on the east side of the Metrodome, including the owners' suite."


4. Tear down that wall

At one point, home runs were so frequent that the stadium became known as the Homerdome. Part of this was the rarified air, of course, but another factor was that the facility was really designed for football. Outfield walls were built short to provide better sightlines of a rectangular field.

To remedy this, Dome staffers have tinkered with various incarnations of a right-field wall—raising it, lowering it, cursing it. For a few years in the early 1990s, six-foot-high Plexiglas ran atop the left-field and part of the center-field walls. When the Twins hit a weak period in the 1990s, displaying a team-wide lack of power, the Plexiglas came down.

The right-field wall is still doctored, of course, with what is disparagingly known as "the Baggie." The only thing more dispiriting than watching a long fly ball ricochet off Plexiglas is watching it sink into a giant plastic tarp.


3. The deflations

All told, the Dome has collapsed three times. The first was on November 19, 1981, six weeks past its official "Inflation Day" and after a 10-inch snowstorm. Following the initial "deflation"—as operations director Alfton calls them—the Dome again sagged in December 1982. "Actually, a snow melt meant that snow slid down and pulled the fabric away from the structure," recalls Lester. Then the following April, a tear caused the roof to deflate. "That was one where we had guys up there shoveling, and they moved a piece of ice and it tore a hole in the thing," says the Dome's director of engineering, Steve Maki, adding that a heating scheme has been implemented to melt snow as it falls on the Teflon. "We very rarely have people up on the roof anymore."


2. Dave Kingman's Dome-rule double

On May 4, 1984, the Oakland A's Dave Kingman hit a monster pop-up high above the infield. Twins fielders watched it, and waited, and waited, and waited...for a fly ball that never came down. In a one-in-a-million shot, the baseball got lodged in a drainage hole in the Dome's roof. Umpires chatted for several minutes before ruling that Kingman be awarded second base, as a sort of "Dome-rule double."

Baseball purists scoffed, but the next day, wacky Twins utility player Mickey Hatcher rigged a scheme whereby a Metrodome worker would dislodge the ball from the roof, and Hatcher would catch it for the out. Hatcher, of course, dropped the ball, and the Kingman rule stood. Though some insisted at the time that Hatcher was using the actual ball, others believe it was never found, and it could very well be stuck in the roof's fabric to this day.

[mraynrand]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b_wdRsnoog

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