Do Twins fans travel well?
We’ll have a rare chance to travel to a home game outside of Minnesota next April, when the Twins face the Cleveland Indians in Puerto Rico.
Major League Baseball announced Wednesday that the games on April 17 and 18 will be played in San Juan. Those are officially home games for the Twins, so that means there will only be 79 games at Target Field next year instead of the usual 81.
But the return of big league baseball to Puerto Rico will be a big deal on the island.
Twins President and CEO Dave St. Peter says the Twins are “honored to visit Puerto Rico and represent Major League Baseball in this international showcase.”
The Twins have four players who are from Puerto Rico: Hector Santiago, Jose Berrios, Kennys Vargas, and Eddie Rosario.
The #MNTwins are headed to Puerto Rico in 2018!
We're excited to play the @Indians for a two game series in San Juan. https://t.co/YoOtwFNwE2
— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) June 21, 2017
The last Major League game in Puerto Rico happened in 2010, when the Mets and Marlins played a three game series in San Juan. A few years earlier, when it was clear that the Montreal Expos were shopping for a new home, they played parts of their ’03 and ’04 seasons in Puerto Rico.
The stadium
The games will be at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, which hosts all of Puerto Rico’s big athletic events, no matter the sport.
Built in 1962, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Besides baseball and football, fans go there to see boxing, wrestling, car races and even outdoor basketball.
It holds 18,000 people, which is a lot smaller than any Major League park. The field’s dimensions are pretty normal, though. They were redone in 2003 to match the ones at the Expos field in Montreal.
It sounds like there’s plenty of room to catch foul popups. The Historic Register entry says there’s enough space to put a basketball court or boxing ring between home plate and the stands.
