The Metrodome’s Dave Kingman Rule
An IBWAA member examines a unique rule to a former Minneapolis ballpark
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . Dave Kingman finished a 16-season MLB career with 442 home runs and a career bWAR of just 17.4 due to his poor batting average, high strikeouts, and poor defense. Of the 58 players who have amassed 400 or more home runs in their careers, Kingman has the lowest career bWAR. Adam Dunn is the closest to Kingman with 18 career bWAR, then it’s another 10 WAR to the next player, Paul Konerko with 28.1 career bWAR.
. . . The Metrodome had many unique aspects, even in an era with multiple domes in the game of baseball. It was the first domed stadium to host a World Series game in 1987 and would host four games of one of the greatest World Series ever played in 1991. The Metrodome also remains the only athletic facility to host a World Series game, an MLB All-Star Game, a Super Bowl, and an NCAA Final Four.
Leading Off
The Metrodome’s Dave Kingman Rule
By Paul Jackson
Did you know that shuffling a 52-card deck into a random order produces a sequence that, per math, is likely to be brand-new? With each card having a one-in-52 chance to show up in any of 52 positions, there are more than 80 quintillion (eighteen zeros) possible outcomes to a concerted shuffle.
Baseball is a little like this, isn’t it? Part of the fun of watching any game is enjoying a sequence of outcomes that are both entirely random and yet familiar. Despite all their differences, most games end up feeling comfortingly similar. But there’s always a chance - many tiny chances, in fact - that your baseball shuffle will produce something impossibly unique.
If you were among the 10,155 people at the Metrodome on May 4, 1984, you know how it feels to see something like that.
That evening, the Minnesota Twins hosted the Oakland A’s. Lefthander Frank Viola was on the mound for the Twins when, in the fourth inning, the A’s designated hitter, Dave Kingman, stepped in to bat.
Viola threw Kingman a low fastball, and the dangerous all-or-nothing masher did what he did when he saw a pitch he liked, unleashing his tremendous uppercut power. “He golfed it up like a drive off a tee,” Viola said.
The ball shot straight up; a towering fly ball destined to land in one of the Twins infielders’ gloves - if they didn’t lose it in the roof’s white background.
“It was like a rocket going off,” second baseman Tim Teufel said. “I was waiting for it to come down through the atmosphere. I knew it was around the pitcher’s mound somewhere.”
Minnesota shortstop Houston Jimenez called for the ball. “I thought it was going to be between the shortstop and the pitcher’s mound, so I kept my eye on it. But then it got so high, I lost it. I hoped I could get it on the way down, so I kept my eye on the spot I thought it was at.”
As a group, the infielders looked the way you look when an expected sneeze is delayed in arriving. “It was the most helpless feeling in the world,” third baseman John Castino said. “We just waited and waited and waited for three, four, five seconds.”
One after another, they lowered their gloves. The ball was not coming back.
Two of the umpires, Jim Evans and Ted Hendry, conferred. There was no ground rule covering this situation. The architect of the Metrodome had assured officials that this would never happen. “You try in batting practice and nobody’s been able to hit the roof,” Viola said. The roof was 186 feet above the playing area, and while there were obstacles up there that players might hit, the balls were supposed to come down.
Twins first baseman Mickey Hatcher had an idea. He took a ball out of the umpire’s bag of spares. “I threw it down - ’Boom!’ like that - and I grabbed the ball to tag Kingman. I was out there going, ‘It’s right here, guys!’ They didn’t go for it.”
Kingman was awarded a ground-rule double. Evans had made a similar call in Seattle’s Kingdome when a ball lodged in a roof-level speaker there. A’s manager Steve Boros was understanding. “Evans made a common-sense judgement. Kingman has his own ground rules.”
Kingman stood on second base, smiling faintly. “That’s never happened to me before,” he said afterward. “I’ve never had one that didn’t come down.” The inning ended with the next batter.
Weird things like this had happened to Kingman before.
In Montreal’s Olympic Stadium he once hit a ball so high and deep that it hit a ceiling overhang beyond the left field fence. The ball was ruled foul, but that was a guess, and the team spent $30,000 painting red lines up on the roof to avoid similar guesswork in the future.
Plus, Kingman added, “I was the first to hit the Astrodome roof in 1972 or 1973.” The Astrodome roof was 208 feet high. “They had me sign it. I think they sent it to Cooperstown.”
Dick Ericson, the Metrodome superintendent, knew what had happened. Dave Kingman had somehow hit a foul ball high enough to reach one of several drainage holes in the lower fiberglass portion of the roof, used to help drain off water during heavy snow events. Kingman had put a 3 and ½ inch baseball through one of these 7-inch holes. “That’s got to be a million-to-one shot,” Ericson said.
Ericson considered sneaking up to try and retrieve the ball during the latter half of the game and to throw it down to a waiting Mickey Hatcher to retroactively record the out. “Or I could have dropped three balls through [the hole] and really shook the place up.”
The superintendent said he thought the ball could be retrieved. The dome roof consisted of two layers, one Teflon, one fiberglass, separated by a six-foot gap filled with warm, pressurized air. The ball should have been resting on the bottom layer. He went up after it the next day, with Hatcher gamely waiting below. But Ericson couldn’t find the ball. Instead, he dropped a backup that he’d brought up.
Hatcher made a game effort, but backpedaled too hard and fell over. “Hit my leg,” he said. “I didn’t even get any glove on it. I feel so dumb.”
The players knew something sublimely improbable had happened.
“Never in my life have I seen anything like this,” Jimenez said. “It was amazing.”
“It’s like a triple play,” Teufel said, “something that you would tell your grandchildren, about the ball that went up and never came back down.”
Until February 2, 2014, when demolition crews took down the steel cables that had kept the Metrodome roof–and Dave Kingman’s double–suspended in air.
Paul Jackson writes about baseball, history, and culture on Substack at Project 3.18 and on Instagram. He has previously written for ESPN.com. Paul can be reached via email at pjacks2@gmail.com.
Extra Innings
Looking at the “born on this day” on Baseball-Reference is always a fun trip down memory lane. However, Monday has a quirk that is not common - three players who won a World Series….together! Add in that one of them was a Hall of Famer, and it gets even more unique.
Tom Browning (65 today), Luis Quinones (63), and Barry Larkin (60) were teammates on the 1990 Cincinnati Reds who stunned the “powerhouse” Oakland Athletics in a four-game sweep.