U.S. Bank Stadium switches to baseball for Gophers spring season

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - It’s the start of a new chapter for spring baseball for the University of Minnesota.

Friday marked the first time U.S. Bank Stadium counted balls and strikes inside its glass walls.

After a supercross event wrapped up on Saturday, workers switched the field to from its football configuration to a baseball diamond. This involved retracting 36 rows of seats the make up the outfield and installing dugouts, a pitcher’s mound and home plate, and painting the foul lines.

“I think it’s the closest you can get to being indoors, but it feels like you are outdoors in some respects,” said John Anderson, the Gophers baseball head coach.

It’s always tough to tell the personality of a ball park, the speed of the surface, the temperament of its bounces - that all comes with time.

Whether you’re the head coach, a player, or a fan, one thing is pretty obvious - there’s a lot of stuff to break. There’s already one report of a piece of broken glass.

It has been over three years since Gophers baseball last played inside. The aging walls of the Metrodome are a far cry from the sheer glass doors of U.S. Bank Stadium.

But when it came time to play baseball, it was both different and thankfully the same.