I said I'd be back with a weekend recap today, but since the Twins essentially got the weekend off (not playing either Saturday or Sunday) I've decided to take the day off as well. Plus, I'm kinda lazy like that :).
One interesting tidbit of news did emerge over the weekend, however: the Twins and Hennepin County came to an agreement on a stadium deal, which will be officially announced this afternoon. Now before you get too excited, just remember that we've gotten to this step like a half dozen times before, and funny, we're still playing in the big concrete bowl downtown.
With that being said, I'm actually fairly optimistic about this latest plan. The sales tax is miniscule (you'd be hard-pressed to complain about $.03 on every $20, or about $30 extra on a brand-new car), Smilin' Carl has decided to pony up his dough with no strings attached, the site is absolutely perfect (especially from a logistics point of view), and there is absolutely NO state money required for anything. I would hope that the state would consider the $100 million investment in the roof a worthwhile thing, but if they don't, that's their perogative.
All in all, it just seems too damn good to be true, so there is naturally no way it will actually be approved by the Legislature before they run out of time this session. Our state legistlature takes for frickin' EVER to do ANYTHING (even by legislative standards) and they've got about eight gazillion things to get done in the next month. I desperately hope they do get it done (I'm someone who went in on season tickets 8 years ago in hopes of getting priority at the new digs) but I can't be anything more than cautiously optimistic at this point.
Shane from Greet Machine, our resident stadium expert among Twins bloggers, actually expresses many of these same sentiments in his entry for today, which I encourage you all to read for more in-depth analysis.
The Twins Chatter early betting line on this stadium plan actually going through? 4-1 (against). Any takers?
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