Koch Diamond

All photos of University of St. Thomas and Koch Diamond available on Flickr.

There's arguably never been an easier time to be a baseball fan due to the overabundance of analysis, data, and streaming options available, and it's this media saturation that has allowed me to get into college baseball these last few years.  I would say even as recently as 10 years ago, I would have found college ball to be pretty inaccessible outside of the College World Series, at least in this part of the country.  It's with this newfound fervor in mind that I have really started to look forward to my first live college game and ballpark every spring after the adrenaline rush of Opening Day has worn off.  A couple of weekends ago, I took the kids down to St. Paul for the day, and our first stop was to watch a few innings of a St. Thomas Tommies game.  We arrived just before first pitch, and had some trouble locating how to get to the ballpark on foot since the campus is so dense and the ball field is in the middle of a block.  Molly and Elliot were troopers as I dragged them around seemingly the entire field looking for a way in, which we finally found in the form of a parking lot wedged between two dorm towers.  Koch Diamond was nestled just beyond that parking lot, and we grabbed a picnic table in the sliver of sun we could find on a cold day where almost all seating areas were completely blanketed in shadows.

St. Thomas' athletic claim to fame occurred in 2021 when they became the only university in the history of the NCAA to jump directly from Division III to Division I.  In doing so, the Tommies became just the second D1 baseball team in the entire state of Minnesota, so I knew I had to get down there at some point if only for posterity's sake.  This sudden jump is certainly noticeable in their athletic facilities.  I would have considered Koch Diamond to be a more than adequate D3-level field, but it now pales in comparison to a place like Siebert Field or any other D1 field.  St. Thomas is in the process of constructing a new hockey arena and I'm sure in time the baseball program and other sports will follow as the university and recruitment grows, but for now, the appeal of going to a St. Thomas game is really just an excuse to watch ball and to see a beautiful Collegiate Gothic campus.  The park has 250 fixed purple seats spread between 3 small grandstand sections which are shoehorned between a couple of dorm buildings as I eluded to earlier.  This site positioning results in a unique leftover plaza space where the kids and I sat that is flanked by a couple of 10-story buildings, the field on its third side, and the parking lot on its fourth side, so had the weather been a bit nicer it would have been a really cozy little enclave.  There was a constant flux of students popping in and out as they passed by and even some watching from their dorm windows, so it was pretty active considering it was early April and so tucked away.  Every foul ball was also an adventure is this silo-like space, and the kids and I got a kick of trying to chase down every ball that careened off of walls and windows behind us.  We eventually got a ball and the kids kept themselves occupied playing catch in the back corner of the plaza, while Dad watched a few innings next to the radio guy calling the game from a folding table.

We only made it into the 4th inning and St. Thomas was losing 2-1 at that time.  The box score tells me that they ended up coming back for a 5-3 victory in just a shade over 2 hours.  Starting pitcher Walker Retz did not have stuff that will wow any scouts, but he gutted out 7 innings of 3-run ball in one of his better outings of the year.  Anyone who comes to this park will immediately notice the 465' dimension to centerfield, and I was expecting to see a lot more doubles and triples due to that anomaly, but there were only 4 total extra-base hits in the game.  Incidentally, that is the deepest centerfield dimension in all of college baseball, but it did not tire out CF Joe Vos of the Tommies, as he went 3-3 on the day with 2 doubles, 2 RBI, and a stolen base, and not to mention the go-ahead RBI bunt single in the 6th.  Trevor Landen struck out 3 over 5 for Northern Colorado and was in line for the win until the bullpen surrendered 4 runs in the final 3 frames.

After leaving the game, we spent the afternoon at the Science Museum (which was the main reason for our excursion to the Cities), but I was grateful as always to tally another ballpark and to share my love of baseball with Molly and Elliot for a short while.

park rankings and statistics:

aesthetics - 1
views from park - 4 (residential)
view to field - 2 (really difficult to see from anywhere outside bowl, lots of obstructions and pinched)
surrounding area - 9 (beautiful campus!)
food variety - n/a
nachos - n/a
beer - n/a
vendor price - n/a
ticket price - 10 (free)
atmosphere - 5 (unique shoehorn site created opportunities for passersby and to watch game from other buildings)
walk to park - 8 (through campus and football field)
parking price/proximity - 7 (adjacent street for free but kind of a hoof)
concourses - 3 (there isn't really a concourse but I appreciated the picnic table area)
team shop - n/a

kids area - n/a

best food - n/a
most unique stadium feature - shoehorn site, deepest centerfield in all of NCAA
best jumbotron feature - n/a

best between-inning feature - playing catch with my kids with the foul ball we caught

field dimensions - 320/465/320

starters - Trevor Landen (UNCO) v. Walker Retz (UST)
opponent - Northern Colorado Bears
time of game - 2:12
attendance - 250
score - 5-3 W

Brewers score that day - 11-7 L

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 4/14/25:
Brewers 8-8, -2.0; 3 v. Tigers, 3 v. Athletics
Twins 5-11, -4.5; 4 v. Mets, 3 @ Braves
Athletics 6-10, -3.5; 3 @ White Sox, 3 @ Brewers

2025 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 0
Peter - 3

My First Twins Home Opener!

All photos of 2025 Twins Home Opener available on Flickr.

I didn't want to admit it at the time, but part of me always knew when we moved to Minnesota that at some point it would no longer be feasible to make it back to Milwaukee for Opening Day every year.  We made it work last season since it lined up so perfectly with Easter, but schools don't really have a Spring Break where we live, and the weather is always so unpredictable in March and April, so I mentally prepared myself that 2024 may have been my last Brewers opener for awhile.  Sure enough, it just wasn't in the cards this year with how the schedules lined up.  However, I did manage to keep my streak of 16 consecutive non-Covid home openers alive this past Thursday by attending the Twins opener at Target Field.  The weather was not that different in Minneapolis than most openers were in Milwaukee in all the years since 2008 - the temp was 42° at first pitch with partly cloudy skies.  Megan and I arrived downtown bundled in layers around 1:30pm for a 3:10pm first pitch, and were greeted by something unfamiliar to a couple of AmFam Field veterans - completely sold out parking lots.  The 3 main ramps that service Target Field were full, as was my usual "secret hack" spot by the library, so we snagged the first available spot we could find in a garage for $38.  I've always found the parking situation to be atrocious at Target Field, but I wasn't about to let that get me down on Opening Day.  We still arrived in plenty of time to procure some beverages and take a lap around the stadium before settling in to our usual favorite standing room bar area.

When Megan and I go to Twins games, we generally just buy the cheapest tickets available and spend time at various bars and social spaces or just walking around, and Opening Day was no different.  We made a bee-line for what was formerly the Summit Brewing Pub on the 2nd level in the left field corner, only to find it had been renamed the "Surfside Iced Tea & Vodka" bar for this year.  After the initial shock of Miller Park becoming American Family Field wore off, I've learned to not get too attached to corporate sponsorships, so this didn't really faze me so long as they still sold Summit beer, which they did - and now with the added bonus of hoagie-sized cans of Surfside for sale, for which we had to procure a special larger sized can koozie.  The other very welcome part of being up on this level was all the heat lamps suspended from the ceiling and structure above.  They had these strewn about on the 1st level as well, but they really had a tangible impact up in the tighter quarters of this level.  I'm not sure if these are new or if I just never noticed them before, but they were amazing and the Brewers should absolutely install these in the concourses.  Despite the 40-degree temps and not wearing a jacket, between the heat lamps and the direct sunshine, very rarely did I feel cold unless I purposely chose to be in an area without these two things.  I was expecting to see more of a standing patio heater situation, but these lamps were a much more efficient way to heat while not taking up precious aisle space at a park that is already quite congested.  The third of what I would call "new things" at Target Field that we experienced (or at least new to us) was the Cutwater Cocktail Bar, which is located in dead center directly above the batter's eye and the Delta Airlines suite.  This reminded me a lot of the center field bar that Erik and I were at last year in Seattle (T-Mobile 'Pen), except it's a level above the field so the vantage point is much better.  There was a Red Cow burger stand, a Pizza Luce stand, and of course the cocktail bar in this area, along with a variety of seating types and drink rails, all open to and facing the field.  I'm not a big fan of the Cutwater canned cocktails, but that aside, I liked this bar even better than the Summit/Surfside bar.  We crushed some pie here and had a couple drinks, and this was the closest we came to actually being able to watch the game in the near-capacity crowd.  The pizza stand we ate at here sold a new pizza slice featured at the park this year that has pickles on it, which sounds super weird but don't knock it 'til you try it.

The attendance was just shy of a sellout at 36,783.  It's very foreign to me that a team would not sell out a home opener, but it was still an impressive total given the weather.  A packed and loud house witnessed the Twins drop their opener to the Astros by a score of 5-2, which put their record at 2-5 and dead last in the AL Central as of that game (they have since crawled above the lowly White Sox).  The game got off to a promising start in the bottom of the 1st, when Matt Wallner crushed the 4th pitch of a game for a triple and came around to score on a Carlos Correa ground out, followed by Trevor Larnach singling in Byron Buxton later in the inning for a 2-0 lead.  That lead was short-lived, however, despite the excitement from my father-in-law watching at home on a tape delay.  The Astros would tie the game in the top of the 2nd with back-to-back homers from Christian Walker and Jeremy Pena, and then take the lead in the 4th and never look back.  Joe Ryan was about as serviceable as you can be for an April start, giving up 4 over 5 and striking out 6.  Former Brewer Josh Hader nailed down the save with just 13 pitches to seal the victory.

It was not quite the same energy as a Brewers home opener, but nothing beats Opening day no matter where it is, and Megan and I had a fantastic time as always.  Game #1 of the season in the books!

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 4/7/25 (this year's over/under pari du jour is the A's):
Brewers 5-5, -1.0; 3 @ Rockies, 3 @ Diamondbacks
Twins 3-6, -2.0; 4 @ Royals, 3 v. Tigers
Athletics 4-6, -4.0; 3 v. Padres, 3 v. Mets

2025 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 0
Peter - 2