Finally....Target Field!

If you've seen my facebook page, you know I finally worked my way into Target Field. One of the cool parts of being a reporter is you get to see the underbelly of things and how places operate. I get a much bigger kick out of the back tours of factories, the basements of important places or hobby workshop spaces than I do interviewing important people. As I walked off the field and had to stomp the dirt off my shoes, I thought, "how many people get to dust the dirt from a major league baseball field off their shoes on an average workday?"

Working at a hyper-local station, we seldom travel outside our nine cities radius and if we do....even if it is to St Paul or Minneapolis...we have to have a local nine city connection. Yes, five miles over our imaginary like might as well as Spain because we aren't going to go there. As frustrating as this sometimes can be, it's part of our mission and part of what makes our little place very special in terms of original content. So, to get to Target Field, I had to find an ultra-local angle and it took me a few years to do it.

I found the story by way of a local source I've gotten to know who is a stay-at-home dad and got a summer gig working on the grounds of Target Field. He's one of those great neighborhood sources that reporters crave. He calls me when he sees a SWAT team, and I call to find out why they were there. He calls me when the kids are doing fun, unusual things at school and I see if we can cover it. These everyday people are usually the ones who really have their fingers on the pulse of the community and I wish I knew more of these people.