Jesse Johnson – US Presswire
Regardless of team affiliation or even of sport, almost all fans enjoy following their team on the road. One of the nice things to do in the close season is to plan road trips for the upcoming year. The MLB schedule has actually been released since the end of last year and although there will occasionally be some minor revisions for matters such as rain outs, there is no reason not to spend the period following the start of the New Year looking at possible road trips and trying/hoping to find a way to budget for them.
One at which most Kansas City Royals fans will really want to look is Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins. As far as regular opponents go, the Twins are actually quite close and any Royals fan who has been to a home game against the Twins will have seen how many Minnesota fans come the other way. For years this has been in part due to the Metrodome being an utterly unsuitable place to spend a summer evening, but now the Twins have a lovely looking outdoor stadium in Target Field.
In theory, it should also be fairly easy to find a time to go to Target Field; it is relatively close and being in the same division the Royals play there ten times this year. But despite the number of fans who go both ways, the schedule setters have been very poor in the last several years about actually putting the series on the weekend. This year there is one weekend series out of three in Minnesota and none in Kansas City for the Twins fans. So unless one can get a week off work, the best time to drive up I-35 to watch the Royals will be for the four game series from 27-30 June. It’s nicely situated over the weekend and in mid-summer so if the weather co-operates it could be a pleasant break from the Kansas City heat.
Of all the possible road trips, this one always looks the most enticing for me. If the Royals have a rivalry against the Twins it is a very friendly one; I have always got on very well with the vast majority of Twins fans I have met and although I don’t get a lot of chances to go up to Minnesota I have thoroughly enjoyed it every time. The drawback recently is that the Royals do tend to lose most of the time they play in Minneapolis, but that may change next year.
