The Wheelchair Softball World Series at Mall of America was a testament to the sport’s immense growth

[Minnesota Twins]

The Wheelchair Softball World Series at Mall of America was a testament to the sport’s immense growth

When my parents first signed me up for wheelchair softball in the summer of 2009, the Minnesota junior and adult Rolling Twins called the parking lot of the Brooklyn Park Library home. As you might imagine, this was not the most softball friendly location. Cracks in pavement made it dangerous for the players’ wheelchairs, and oncoming cars often got in the way of our practices and scrimmages. We eventually were able to move into our own facility three years later, but this year wheelchair softball would return to a Twin Cities parking lot, this time at the Mall of America for a historic Wheelchair Softball World Series. How did we get from playing in front of a library to hosting thousands at a venue that welcomes millions of visitors a year? To answer that, let’s take a trip through the last couple decades of Minnesota wheelchair softball history.

In my second summer playing wheelchair softball, Pepsi and Major League Baseball teamed up for the Pepsi Refresh Project, an initiative where 15 MLB teams competed to win a $200K grant for a charitable cause. The Twins partnered up with the Rolling Twins to help us try to get our own wheelchair accessible ballpark built. The winning team was determined by an online vote, so naturally my teammates and I got all of our friends and family to vote as much as they possibly could. I woke up one morning fifteen years ago this month to learn that the Rolling Twins campaign had won the grant. Michael Cuddyer will forever be one of my favorite Twins of all time for his work as our spokesperson.

Two years after we won the Pepsi grant, Todd Anderson Field was open for business. The grand opening of the field had a pretty significant Twins presence, with Cuddyer sending in a message from Colorado and TC Bear coming out to join the fun and even getting in a chair to play in the first scrimmage. I was terrified of mascots up to this point in my life, but then TC pitched to me at one point in the scrimmage and I hit a double off him. All of a sudden he didn’t scare me at all.

Todd Anderson Field has hosted multiple junior and adult Wheelchair Softball World Series since its opening. There are only 24 venues across the country dedicated specifically to wheelchair softball (partly due to the fact they typically cost over $400K to fund) and the Twin Cities now had a premier destination for major tournaments. Both the junior and adult Rolling Twins have won multiple national titles since Todd Anderson Field’s inaugural 2012 season.

Mall of America was built on the site of Metropolitan Stadium, home of the Twins (and Vikings and Kicks) until 1982. Ten years after the Twins and Vikings moved into the Metrodome, the mall opened its doors. There are a couple callbacks to the Old Met you can find in Nickelodeon Universe at MOA. The first is the exact spot of home plate, and the other is a single red seat that marks the location of the furthest home run (520 feet) that Harmon Killebrew hit at the stadium. (That seat overlooks the Log Chute ride now.) The Met hosted one World Series in 1965, when the Dodgers triumphed over the Twins in seven games. 60 years later, the same site would host another.

MOA’s North Lot holds events year round, and for the Wheelchair Softball World Series, five temporary wheelchair softball diamonds were constructed along with fences and bleachers for each field. I had signed up to volunteer with scorekeeping on championship Saturday, and I went into the day worried that the weather would play a factor. After all, the first few rounds on Thursday and Friday were played in the rain, with Friday’s later games being postponed because of severe storms. We got lucky, though, because the sun finally came out when it was time to play ball on Saturday. I was assigned to field 4, where I got to work the women’s game and a game between two teams from Nashville and Detroit. Both games were spectacular, with plenty of offensive firepower as well as some stellar plays in the field. I was sort of selfishly hoping I’d get to work the semifinal between the Rolling Twins and LWSRA, based out of Chicago, but the games I was assigned were a joy to watch too.

Aside from the play on the field, the main thing going through my mind while I was at the Mall of America on Saturday was how proud I was. Wheelchair softball has profoundly impacted my life and the lives of many others in Minnesota, and last weekend felt like a celebration of the profound growth this sport has made in this state and across the country even since I started playing it in 2009. From playing in a library parking lot, to the Twins helping us beat out 14 other MLB teams to secure funding for a field of our own, to that field opening and becoming one of the premier wheelchair softball venues in the nation. All of this led up to our program hosting the largest tournament in the sport’s history, at a site that has seen its fair share of historic sporting events. And while a huge part of the pride I felt last weekend at MOA was because I had seen the long road it had taken to get to this point, part of me was also looking towards the future. After all, if this sport can grow this much in such a short time, who knows where it’ll be headed next?

Source: https://www.twinkietown.com/minneso...-was-a-testament-to-the-sports-immense-growth