Dick Wilke has been a beer vendor at the Metrodome for 28 years. After years of watching Minnesota teams come in second, he worked the 1987 World Series with excitement, but also with dread. The Twins beat the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. These are his words:

It was kind of amazing, really, because the season started kind of slow. It was really toward the tail end of August that they were moving toward first place. You've got to remember they won the division with an 85-71 record, which was the second-least amount of wins since they started doing division playoffs.

The series started here and we won the first two games in the Metrodome. That's when the crowds were really loud. Al Michaels was doing the broadcast for ABC-TV, and I remember him talking about the decibels. I've never used earplugs or anything like that and I remember after one of the games, my ears felt kind of plugged up, like after you go swimming. Maybe that was when Dan Gladden hit a grand slam in game one.

Then they went to St. Louis and lost all three games and I thought, well, we'll at least have game six here. That's when they crushed the Cardinals. Kent Hrbek, the Bloomington boy, had a grand slam in that game.

As I recall, we did good business. In game six, I was covering the upper decks in the left outfield, and that was pretty good because up there, the fans are kind of away from the action. They're watching the game, but also enjoying the night out with friends.

In game seven, I had just cashed out and another vendor and I were up around section 117, 118 at the top of the ninth, when it happened. We kind of gave each other a big high five. We had been beer vendors since 1982, so it was real exciting.

What made it kind of special was that we had been developing this image of being a bridesmaid in this area.

The Vikings had gone to four Super Bowls and lost, and the North Stars in 1981 lost in the Stanley Cup finals. Hubert Humphrey had lost the presidency to Richard Nixon in 1981 and then Fritz Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan, so we were kind of grasping at straws. So '87 kind of got the monkey off our backs.

After the game, people stuck around, but several vendors and I went off a ways to a restaurant about a mile from the stadium and sat out in the parking lot in folding chairs, drinking beer and eating peanuts. Even from a mile away, we could still hear the cheers and revelry at the Dome.

Dick Wilke's comments are edited from a longer interview with staff writer Kim Ode.