Sid Hartman: From traffic to food, stadium's a winner

We had all heard the great things about Target Field before Saturday's dry run, when the baseball field was being used for the first time and fans got acquainted with the traffic and parking, the concessions were being operated initially and the fans had to find their way around.

There were a lot of questions about how the fans would react to getting to the new park, and that's why the Gophers-Louisiana Tech game had been scheduled. To make sure everything works right once the regular season starts, there are also two exhibition games scheduled with the Cardinals next Friday and Saturday.

Everybody wondered how things would work when more than 37,000 people approached the Target Field for the first time.

Well, if you want my opinion, I would give the city of Minneapolis and the Twins an A-plus for the way things were handled.

The city did a great job of directing people to parking locations and letting them know what ramps were full.

The result was there wasn't any type of traffic jam.

People could move around in the park in the large concourses. They are so much larger than those at the Metrodome. The accessibility to the concessions was so much better than anything the fans had experienced at Met Stadium or the Metrodome -- it was unbelievable.

As for the baseball game, the field and the seating were what was expected: fantastic. And so was the great scoreboard that told you everything.

Some of the fans took advantage of the Budweiser Section in deep left field, where they paid $10 to stand and $30 to sit.

All you heard was good things from the different fans who asked about their reaction to the stadium.

So again you had to pay tribute to Jerry Bell, Dave St. Peter and other Twins officials who played a part in the architecture of this great stadium and to the Pohlad family for coming with the extra money to make sure that nothing was missed in making Target Field the equal to or better than any other major league stadium.

Gophers rank high Yes, the Gophers winter sports teams didn't seem to do very well, but as it turned out, they actually scored 293.75 points in the winter season to rank fifth in the country in the midseason Learfield Sports Director Cup standings.

Even though Stanford scored only 189 points this winter, it remains first overall for all sports seasons to date. It was followed by Florida, with 280 winter points, Penn State in third with 203 winter points and Virginia in fourth place with 181 points.

Minnesota made its first appearance in the top five because of three top-10 NCAA finishes: women's hockey was third, wrestling was seventh and men's track and field was eighth. The U also placed 12th in women's swimming and 39th in women's track and field.

U's Ness honored Four-time Big Ten wrestling champion and this year's NCAA champion Jayson Ness was awarded the Dan Hodge Trophy, the greatest honor in college wrestling, by the Wrestling Insider News Magazine (W.I.N).

The award, considered the Heisman Trophy for wrestling, has been presented to the best wrestler since 1995. Ness, a four-time all-America who went to Bloomington Kennedy, also was named Big Ten Wrestler of the Year and the Most Outstanding Wrestler at the NCAA tournament by the National Wrestling Coaches Association after compiling a 31-0 record this season.

Jottings There's little doubt that Joe Mauer mentioned in his contract negotiations with the Twins that he wants to make the future decision over changing positions from catcher to third base or some other position. At least he mentioned at his news conference that he wanted to continue to catch until he can't do it physically.

Rest assured that if Eagles coach Andy Reid decides to trade Donovan McNabb, he would give Vikings coach Brad Childress the first shot at making the deal if Childress had interest in the veteran quarterback. Childress worked six years for Reid and they are very close friends. Furthermore, McNabb might prefer the Vikings because Kevin Rogers, his former coach at Syracuse, is the Vikings quarterbacks coach.

Gophers football coach Tim Brewster is impressed with junior college transfer Tiree Eure, a tight end who is enrolled in school and taking part in spring practice. "He's a kid that came in from Lackawanna [College], he's been here all semester," said Brewster. "He is a 6-foot-6, 245-50-pound kid, runs extremely well, catches the ball very well and is a strong guy. I think he's going to really help our running game blocking at the point of attack on the edge. So I really think he's going to do a good job for us, I think he'll come in and make an immediate impact."

Former Gophers basketball coach Dan Monson took his Long Beach State team to the finals of the Big West Conference Tournament last Saturday before losing 69-64 in the league championship game to UC-Santa Barbara. ... James Ware, Monson's former assistant at Minnesota, is now an assistant at Santa Clara. Ware, here to scout the state basketball tournament, reported that ex-Hopkins player Ray Cowels averaged seven points a game this year for Santa Clara as a freshman.

Ex-Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz has left the Dodgers camp after being told by manager Joe Torre that he wasn't going to make the team.

Northern Iowa, the team that beat Kansas and was eliminated from the NCAA by Michigan State and has two Minnesota players on the team, has already offered scholarships to two Chaska juniors, Jake White and Ross Travis.