Target Field: Sweet Dreams or Field Named for Bigots

I was lucky enough to win a drawing for a couple of tickets to last Sunday's Twins game. Better yet, the tickets were for one of the stadium's luxurious corporate suites. As my beautiful and bright daughter got passed over for last year's final regular season Twin's game and the fact that she leaves for London in less than a month to study abroad for her degree in finance, she got the nod over her brother.

I must say that the experience was the most pleasurable one I have ever had at a baseball game in terms of creature comforts. The new Target Field is a perfect example of why the best art, or architecture for that matter, is not the product of a committee but rather is the fruition of a dream from an individual.

From the moment you step into the stadium, the suite dwellers are treated to the separate and definitely unequal world of the Richistans. From the attentive staff, who whisked us up to the suite level on the human operated elevators to the wide corridors in neutral tones bathed in natural light from the many windows, one would think he or she were in the toney, corporate world of an upscale office tower. But fortunately no such luck because when you finally get to your suite, right behind and slightly to the left of home plate, you realize for the first time that you are at a baseball stadium.

In fact, the only time you ever see the great unwashed (our term for the regular ticket holders) is in your peripheral vision when you are in a suite looking out at the field. I found this to be a little more than ironic, but rather emblematic for our times. The rich have become so grotesquely bloated and used to their separate and superior treatment, the rest of their fellow country men and women have been relegated to their peripheral vision, a mere afterthought.

So it is with that notion in mind that I awoke last Monday morning to reports emanating from my clock radio concerning the fall out for Minnesota corporate giants Best Buy and Target and their tone deaf, six figure contributions to some right wing, Tom Emmer-supported, Defense of Marriage organization whose only reason for being is to promote their bigoted and degrading belief that their version of marriage is superior to others. I guess I really shouldn't be surprised by this but it just somehow tarnished the really good impression I had a mere 24 hours earlier which went from Sweet Dreams to a Field Named for Bigots.