College Baseball Games Played At Minnesota Vikings Stadium Spark Confusion Over Strange Field Setup
College baseball being played at an NFL stadium makes for an unusual scene, which is exactly what is happening in Minnesota this weekend. The Cambria College Classic is underway at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, which is home to the Vikings.
Here is a look at the setup:
Dimensions for the field are as follow:
It's strange, to say the least, but Minnesota will play every home game until March 24th inside the NFL stadium because of the weather. College baseball in the Land of 10,000 lakes can't be played on an outdoor field until things warm up.
This weekend, the Golden Gophers are hosting a tournament. Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, Hawaii, Maryland and Nebraska are in town.
Visuals from the gridiron-turned-diamond are unlike any other in the sport.
Home runs inside of a 73,000-foot football stadium look different than most.
Here's an on-field look:
There is also debate over what is and/or isn't a home run.
The host team faced Ole Miss on Saturday night and lost 9-7. Prior to the game, fittingly, the Rebels were tossing a football around to get warmed up.
6-foot-3, 250-pound outfielder Kemp Alderman also did his best fullback impression and barreled through the Gophers' catcher during the fifth inning.
And then, in the seventh, college baseball controversy struck. Kind of.
Catcher Calvin Harris (no, not the D.J.), crushed a deep fly ball to right field. It hit the outfield wall, above a painted yellow line. It certainly looked like a home run, based on where the ball connected with the wall and where the line — which seemingly served as a boundary marking — sat on the wall.
However, it was instead ruled a live ball and Harris went for a double.
While it certainly looked like it should have been a dinger, the line is apparently useless. Its exact purpose is not definitively clear, but apparently it does not have any correlation to the college game.
There is some belief that the line exists for Division II and Division III games. Others have suggested that it is in place for the high school level, even though the high school season has yet to begin and will see very few games played at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Nobody really knows, except for the on-field umpiring crew and the teams involved. Some how, some way, a ball that was hit over a yellow line on a large outfield wall is not considered a home run.
That's college baseball!