Don't you believe it!

Just returned from a short, very short, walk with the "kids". It's cold as all get out, so I thought I'd check it out for wind chill number. I could see on my thermometer that it's 50. Weather.com tells me it's 50 and "feels like 50" HA! Somehow they ignore their own statement that wind is 15 mph with gusts to 21 mph - that give us a wind chill and having been out in it, I say that wind chill is about 30. Meteorologists practicing, no doubt, for next year when they will have to waffle the figures to trap people into attending outdoor baseball in October or April. Wonder if they'll get a kickback from the stadium management.

So here I am once again wasting time talking about the weather, in part because I'm a Minnesotan, and we're coming into the season when that's about 80 percent of all conversations for the next six months. We're also still playing baseball, and for the next few days we'll be playing for the last times in the indoor Metrodome - that much maligned field where we have played in an 'unnatural' baseball environment for about 27 years. All I can think is, "Who in their right mind is going to attend a game on a day like this in our greatly touted wonderful new place to play baseball 'like it's meant to be played'?" What is so incredibly shortsighted is that we didn't even pop for a stadium to which a retractable roof could be added later, so when in years to come we are hearing complaints about this stadium, the only alternative will be to build a new one with a retractable roof.

Oh, I can hardly wait to hear Bert and Dick (our Twins broadcasters) extolling the joys of baseball in the snow, wind, sleet and cold. No baseballs lost in that miserable Teflon ceiling, but some may return from the heights covered in a sheet of freezing rain or snow. Oh what fun it is to catch a baseball coated in snow!