Twins and Vikings Make Metrodome a Two-Sport Star in a Hurry. The Metrodome stadium will host the Vikings-Packers game Monday night before bringing back the Twins on Tuesday.
In the American League division series, Minnesota Twins and the Detroit Tigers, by the time finish their tie-breaker game Tuesday to decide the Yankees’ opponent. Sure, stadium workers at the Metrodome might be snoozing wherever they can lay their heads.
In this three days, that game will be the third that requires converting The Metrodome Stadium one of three multipurpose stadiums still serving as home to a an N.F.L. team and Major League Baseball, from football to baseball and back again.
To decide the A.L. Central Division champion, The Twins and the Tigers will play at 4:07 p.m. Central time Tuesday, about 17 ½ hours after the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers were to conclude their “Monday Night Football” game.
The executive director of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, Bill Lester, which operates the Dome, said workers would pull an all-nighter getting it ready for baseball.
“We’ve done this hundreds and hundreds of times,” Lester said. “We told the Twins we’ll start working on it after the game at midnight, or as soon as the Vikings get off the field.”
The Dome, which opened in 1982, featured three games of such importance in two sports in such a short span of time. It could also be the last, because the Twins will move to a new outdoor stadium next season.
Sunday, in what was supposed to be the Twins’ last regular-season game at the Dome, Minnesota beat Kansas City, 13-4, to maintain a share of first place and require the tie breaker. Monday night was the former Packerquarterback Brett Favre’s first game for the Vikings against his old team, a matchup that was expected to draw one of the largest crowds in Metrodome history. The building seats about 64,000 for football.
It should have been Monday for the tie-breaker game, but the Vikings’ lease gives the team priority over the Twins on all conflicts, except for World Series games. So the baseball game was pushed to Tuesday.
Lester said it takes four to five hours to convert the stadium from baseball to football. The switch back, however, can take up to 12 hours because workers must scrub the football lines off the field. That means scrubbing latex paint off artificial turf. “No matter how many people you throw at the project, it takes the same amount of time to dry,” Lester said.
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