September 30, 1981: Twins close Metropolitan Stadium with a loss

It was a bad day.

The weather was drab, home plate was missing, and the Minnesota Twins lost their last game ever at Metropolitan Stadium.

When the grounds crew reported for work they discovered that vandals had gotten into the ballpark and had sliced through the rubber tarpaulin that covered the home-plate area and removed the plate. Fortunately, the grounds crew supervisor, Ed Weller, had a spare plate installed before the game.1

Twins manager Billy Gardner, reflecting after his team’s 5-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals, suggested it was the Royals who had swiped the base. “They stole everything else,” the skipper said.2

The date was September 30, 1981, the final scheduled home game for the Twins, who were moving to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in 1982.

Twins owner Calvin Griffith was not excited about the end of Metropolitan Stadium, claiming that if the first and second decks had been completed down the third-base line to the left-field corner, he would never have agreed to move his team to a new ballpark.3

Griffith asserted that Met Stadium was one of the best parks in the country to watch a ballgame.4

While history treats Met Stadium well, the ballpark was not without its detractors.

Calvin’s son, Clark, was a vice president at the time. “The ballpark was never really completed,” he said. “There were some bad design decisions made back in 1955-56.

“They should have made the stadium eight feet deeper to accommodate more box seats between first and third base. Major parts were cracking. It wasn’t a question of making repairs. We would have needed to tear it down and start over.”5

Team management, despite a disappointing season, expressed optimism about the final game at the ballpark that greeted the team on its arrival from Washington in 1961.

A players strike had wiped out the middle two months of the 1981 schedule, and the season was divided in half. The Oakland A’s had won the first-half title in the American League West Division, and the Royals were in first place in the second half when they met the Twins that day.

Although the Twins, who finished the first half with a 17-39 record, were 23-26 in the second half, they still had an outside chance of winning the division and making the playoffs. Expectations were for a crowd of 25,000 to 30,000, but only 15,900 showed on a damp and rainy day with a high temperature of 56 degrees. It was a time before metal detectors, but many in the crowd came armed with hammers, screwdrivers, and shovels … intent on taking souvenirs home with them.

Fernando Arroyo delivered the first pitch at 1:24 P.M., and Willie Wilson hit a grounder to shortstop Roy Smalley, whose long throw from the hole was high. Wilson was on with a base hit and stopped at second when Frank White dropped a single into left with the dangerous George Brett coming up. However, Brett fouled to third baseman Gary Gaetti in foul territory, and Willie Aikens grounded into a double play to end the threat.

The bottom of the Kansas City order got a rally going in the second. With one out, Hal McRae singled to center and, one out later, went to third on John Wathan’s single to right. Wathan was running on a pitch to U L Washington, who grounded a single inside third to score McRae and send Wathan to third. Wilson dropped a Texas Leaguer into left to drive in Wathan and give the Royals a 2-0 lead.

Lefty Larry Gura retired the first five Twins batters before giving up a single to Gaetti. Pete Mackanin hit the next pitch to left and was credited with a game-tying home run, although it appeared that a fan had reached over the fence and touched the ball. According to Dan Stoneking in the Minneapolis Star, Wilson, the Royals left fielder, decided not to argue with second-base umpire Joe Brinkman, explaining after the game, “You think they are going to take away a home run from the home team on the last game ever in their park?”6

Kansas City knocked Arroyo out of the game in the fourth. After McRae led off with a single, Clint Hurdle lined a 1-and-1 pitch into the bleachers in right. The ball caromed off one of the wooden slats and back onto the field. Dave Engle picked it up and disgustingly heaved it back into the seats. Wathan singled for the second time but was thrown out trying to stretch the hit by left fielder Mark Funderburk. After giving up his fourth straight hit, a double to right-center by Washington, Arroyo was relieved. Wilson singled on Bob Veselic’s first pitch to bring home Washington.

Gura had all the runs he needed. After Mackanin’s home run, he gave up an infield single to Ron Washington with two out in the third and then retired the next 16 batters.

As the day wore on, the skies got darker and the mood gloomier, not so much because the Twins were losing 5-2 as because each out was a step closer to the death of baseball at the Met.

In the middle of the ninth, the fans perked up, perhaps helped by the organist playing the Minnesota Rouser, the fight song for the University of Minnesota, and a fan in a Richard Nixon mask danced on top of the Royals dugout.7

Gary Ward responded by lining the first pitch in the bottom of the ninth to right for a single, the Twins’ first baserunner since the third. Ron Washington flied out. Dave Engle, with a 15-game hitting streak on the line, hit a grounder off Gura’s glove that deflected to White at second. As White flipped to shortstop U L Washington to force Ward, it appeared that this could finally be it. However, Engle beat the relay to first, giving the ballpark one last reprieve.

As the Longines clock atop the scoreboard in right-center field crawled past 4:00, Smalley swung at a 0-and-2 pitch and hit a soft popup to the left side. U L Washington moved a little to his right and gloved it for the final out.

Asked about the final game, Smalley laughed and said, “I made the last out. That’s what a lot of people remember.” Nearly 40 years after that, game Smalley admitted he wanted to go out with a bang.

“I can admit now that I was trying to hit a home run,” he said, “but the best I could do was a fly out to left field. It was a great hitter’s ballpark, but the field could get really tough from being used by the Twins, the Vikings, and Kicks and Minnesota weather.”8

Smalley’s teammates shared his mixed emotions for their home field.

Reserve catcher Sal Butera said that moving downtown might end a bad era for the team. “The new domed stadium might create new interest and excitement for the fans,” he said.9

Laurel Prieb, Major League Baseball vice president for special projects in 2020, was a Twins public-relations intern to Tom Mee at the time and said he had fond memories of Met Stadium. “I remember that even though it was a crummy day a lot of fans stuck around after that last game,” he said. “There were a lot of great memories in that ballpark.”10

Indeed. The Twins had hosted both the All-Star Game and the World Series in 1965 and won the American League West Division title in 1969 and 1970. The Twins had the best overall attendance in the American League in their first decade in Minnesota.

If nothing else, the loss to the Royals ensured that there would be no playoff games at the Met. The Twins were formally eliminated from the race while the win clinched a playoff spot for Kansas City.11

Minneapolis Star columnist Doug Grow in a farewell to the Met recalled that in 1956 Commissioner Ford Frick said to Minnesota sportswriter Halsey Hall of Met Stadium, “Damn, what a beautiful park.”12

Praise had flowed when the ballpark opened. National League President Warren Giles said of the Met, “It’s out of this world. I always wanted to sit in a ballpark that didn’t have a post. Now that I’ve seen it, it’s really something.”13

His American League counterpart, Will Harridge, also was impressed. “You haven’t overlooked a single detail to make this the last word in stadium construction,” he said.14

By the end, however, Metropolitan Stadium was running down. Plagued by mostly noncontending teams since they won a division title in 1970, the Twins drew more than a million fans only twice in their final 11 seasons. They drew only 469,090 fans at home in the strike-shortened 1981 season, worst in the major leagues.

The Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League had been the catalyst for a new stadium, and the Twins went along with them for a new multipurpose facility that would have its roof inflated for the first time only two days after the final game at the Met.15

TWINS TOPICS:

Two members of the Twins 1961 starting lineup, Gardner and Jim Lemon, were also on the field for the final game at Met Stadium. Gardner, the original second baseman, was the team’s manager, and left fielder Lemon was the first-base coach.

The Twins finished their 21 years at Met Stadium with a record of 910-759-5.

Seating capacity for the 1961 opener was 30,637. It was 45,919 by the time the team left. The team led the American League in attendance in 1963 and 1965 and finished last in both 1980 and 1981.

The location of the Met’s home plate is marked in Nickelodeon Universe in the middle of the Mall of America while a seat on the northern wall represents the spot where future Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew hit the longest home run in Met Stadium history, 520 feet, on June 3, 1967.

Fans attending the final Twins game did relatively little damage in their search of souvenirs in contrast to what happened after the last Minnesota Vikings home game later that year.

Met Stadium stood empty for more than three years before being demolished in January 1985.

Sources

Baseball-Reference.com

Retrosheet.org

retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1981/B09300MIN1981.htm

baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN198109300.shtml

Notes

1 Dan Stoneking, “Baseball at the Met: History Comes to Bat – and Humbly Flies Out, Minneapolis Star, October 1, 1981: 1A, 4A.

2 Joe Soucheray, “Between the Rain and the Rain, the Met Was Good Place to Be,” Minneapolis Tribune, October 1, 1981: 1A.

3 Conversation with Calvin Griffith, circa 1983.

4 Associated Press, “Twins, Fans Say Good-bye to Met Stadium,” St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times, October 1, 1981: 1D.

5 Telephone interview with Clark Griffith, June 2020.

6 Stoneking: 4-5A.

7 Stoneking: 5A.

8 Telephone interview with Roy Smalley, June 2020.

9 St. Cloud Times.

10 Telephone interview with Laurel Prieb, June 2020.

11 The win did not clinch first place for Kansas City, which had a 1½-game lead over Oakland at the end of the day. However, if Oakland had won the second-half title in addition to the first-half title, the Royals, as the second-place team in the second half, would have made the playoffs.

12 Doug Grow, “Met’s Farewell: Twins’ Home Went from the Best to an Anachronism in 25 Years,” Minneapolis Star, September 30, 1981: 14B.

13 Grow.

14 Grow.

15 Ron Meador, “Stadium’s First Big Fans Give Shape to Downtown Dome,” Minneapolis Tribune, October 3, 1981: 1A.