Минесота штадының тарихы: Бейсбол және футбол аренасы

Baseball stadium in Minnesota, US
In the 1950s, major league owners Calvin Griffith and Horace Stoneham called the stadium the finest facility in the minors; Stoneham added that "there were not two better" major league stadiums of the time (although not specifying which specific two he thought were the Met's equal) The Millers were then the top farm team of Stoneham's New York Giants, and there was some hope or expectation that the Giants might relocate there. However, the Giants chose to follow the Brooklyn Dodgers to the west coast at the urging of Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley, who owned the Millers' crosstown rivals, the St. Paul Saints. San Francisco had long been home to the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals, the top farm team of the Boston Red Sox. As part of the deal, the Millers' parent team then became the Red Sox, who had no plans to move anywhere in the foreseeable future. Multiple exhibition games featuring Major League teams were held at the Met at this time; a game between the Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati Reds was held at the Met in 1957, and a matchup between the Senators and the Philadelphia Phillies was held shortly after the 1958 All Star break. The latter game brought 15,990 fans to the stadium, including Calvin Griffith, who described the stadium as "terrific." During the Twins' first ten seasons at the Met, they outdrew the average American League team each year. and New York Giants (November 22) (att: 26,625) to Bloomington. A preseason football game was held each September at the Met for its first five years, 1956 through 1960:

September 15, – Pittsburgh Steelers 14 Philadelphia Eagles 12 (att: 14,742)
September 21, – Green Bay 10 Pittsburgh 10 (att: 17,226)
September 21, – Chicago Cardinals 31 Green Bay 24 (att: 18,520)
September 20, – Green Bay 13 Pittsburgh 10 (att: 18,018)
September 11, – Green Bay 28 Dallas Cowboys 23 (att: 20,151)

The Met finally got a football team when the new American Football League (AFL) announced Minneapolis–St. Paul as one of its charter cities for the inaugural 1960 season. However, the NFL persuaded the team's owners to pull out of the AFL in January 1960 and join the NFL as an expansion team in , and was later named the Minnesota Vikings. As it turned out, the year's delay worked to the Vikings' benefit. By the time the Vikings played their first game, the Twins had moved in and the Met had been expanded to befit its new status as a big league stadium. (The Chicago Cardinals, after playing two games in Bloomington in 1959, announced in March 1960 that they were moving to St. Louis.) The park had a disjointed, skeletal feel; it was obvious that it had once been a minor league baseball stadium. For instance, when bleachers were erected to expand the stadium for the Twins, no concourse was built to connect them to the rest of the stadium. Due to this design flaw, fans in the bleachers literally had to leave the stadium to get to the grandstand. Unlike most multipurpose stadiums built during this time, there were very few bad seats for baseball. The stadium was built using cantilever construction for the overhanging decks, eliminating posts that blocked the fans' view. Met Stadium distance signs included meters 1974–77. The diamond was aligned southeast (home plate to center field); recommended alignment is east northeast. The Met was often considered less than ideal for football. The gridiron ran from around third base to right field (north south), with barely enough room to fit the playing field and end zones. Wooden bleachers were brought onto the field during football season to bring fans closer to the game. this location was prime sideline seating in the football configuration. This left the Met with the unique configuration of a double deck in left field, and bleachers behind third base. The left field grandstand was originally planned to be capable of sliding toward or away from the gridiron (as Denver's Mile High Stadium later would be), but that part of the project was never realized. The Met provided an overwhelming home field advantage for the Vikings late in the season and in the playoffs due to Minnesota's famously cold temperatures. The Vikings hosted ten playoff games at the Met and won seven of them. In the 1965 baseball season, both the All Star Game and the World Series were played at Metropolitan Stadium, one of the few times that coincidence has happened since the former event was inaugurated in 1933. (Game 7 of that year's World Series drew 50,596 fans to the Met, the only time a baseball crowd exceeded 50,000 and remained its attendance record for baseball.) the last NFL game prior to the merger.

Metropolitan Stadium was the home of the Minnesota Kicks soccer team from 1976 until the team folded in November 1981. The Kicks, members of the North American Soccer League (NASL), were highly anticipated in Minnesota and had to delay their first game at the Met by fifteen minutes to accommodate the large crowd waiting to buy tickets. To help speed things along, the Kicks' owners let two thousand fans enter the stadium for free. The size of the field for soccer games was 100 by 72 yards 1976–78 and 104 by 72 yards 1979–81.

Numerous wrestling matches were held at Metropolitan Stadium, including contests featuring Hard Boiled Haggerty, Bob Geigel, Wilbur Snyder, Kay Noble, Lord Littlebrook, Verne Gagne, Gene Kiniski, Rene Goulet, Larry Hennig, Hans Schmidt, Mad Dog Vachon and Dick the Bruiser.

Although the Met was responsible for bringing MLB and the NFL to the Twin Cities, it had not aged well. By the early 1970s, the Vikings were making noises about moving out. For instance, there was no prospect of building permanent seats along third base. The Vikings weren't willing to pay to build seats in an area that would have been in the end zone in the football configuration, and the Twins couldn't afford it. At one point, there were plans to place a dome over Metropolitan Stadium, or build a new football stadium located between the Met and the Met Center, which had opened in 1967 just north of the Met. It soon became apparent that, at the very least, the Vikings would need a new stadium. As part of the AFL–NFL merger, the NFL declared that stadiums with less than 50,000 seats were inadequate for its needs; at its height the Met only seated 49,700 people for football (48,400 at the time of closure) and any expansion would have resulted in seats that would have been of no use for baseball. However, the Vikings would not even consider playing at the University of Minnesota's Memorial Stadium even on a temporary basis. Discussions for a new stadium actually began in 1970, with six years remaining in both the Twins' and Vikings' leases. While the initial talks focused on a stadium for the Vikings, the Twins quickly joined the discussions. The idea of a dome was particularly appealing to Griffith given the bitterly cold weather that is common in the Twin Cities early and late in baseball season. Additionally, players had begun to complain about the quality of the field; the infield in particular was considered the worst in the majors. Rumors abounded that the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, which by then had taken over the stadium from the city of Minneapolis, had deliberately let the Met go to seed in order to aid the push for the Metrodome. By this time, the Vikings had been eliminated from playoff contention, meaning that this would almost certainly be the final event of any sort at the Met. Knowing that fans would be more determined to claim souvenirs, the Vikings tripled their security force for the contest. Met Stadium was officially abandoned when the Vikings and the Twins moved to the Metrodome in January 1982, and the Kicks folded after the 1981 soccer season. For the next three years, Met Stadium sat unused, decaying, and highly vandalized. Demolition kickoff for Metropolitan Stadium started in 1985 on January 28, and continued for the next four months. After the rubble was cleared, the lot sat vacant for several years, although the nearby Met Center continued to provide entertainment for NHL hockey fans for another decade.

The Mall of America, which opened in 1992, stands on the site of what is now nostalgically called "the Old Met." A brass plaque in the shape of home plate, embedded in the floor in the northwest corner of Nickelodeon Universe, commemorates the site's days as a sports venue by marking where home plate once sat. Near the opposite corner, mounted high on the wall, is a red stadium seat denoting the precise landing spot (including elevation) of Harmon Killebrew's 520 feet (158 m) home run, a blast to the upper deck in deep left center field on June 3, 1967. This was the longest homer of Killebrew's career, and the longest ever hit in Metropolitan Stadium. The Met's outfield seating featured green bleacher style benches and seats, yet the seat the ball hit was painted red and could be seen from all other seats in the stadium. For a time, there was talk of building a new park for the Twins on the old Met site that would be connected to the Mall of America. However, the terms of the agreement in which the land was sold to Triple Five Group, owners of the Mall of America, do not allow another stadium to be built on the site. Even without this to consider, the site is now directly in a flight path for Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport. The old flagpole at the stadium was purchased by the Minneapolis/Richfield American Legion Post when the stadium was razed. The pole was sold back to the Twins and restored in ; it was then placed in the plaza at Target Field.

A series of photographs taken in the mid 1980s during Metropolitan Stadium's abandonment.