Uncovering the Dome by Amy Klobuchar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book because I wanted to get a sense of what Amy Klobuchar's writing and thinking were like before she entered the national political stage. This book is a beefed-up version of her senior undegraduate thesis at Yale. It tells the rather dry story of how the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrdome was built by the people and government of Minnesota.

The story unfolds in a pretty straight-forward manner. The governor recognizes that the Twins and Vikings might leave for sunnier climes if they do not get a new stadium (or two) but no one wants to commit tens of millionis of public dollars to subsidize two particular private corporations. Eventually the state legislature appoints a seven person commission to study the issue and to decide where such a stadium should be built. The result was the HHH Metrodome, a functional but unloved stadium that served as home to the Twins and Vikings for 30 years.

As prose, the writing suffers a bit from the hallmarks of undergraduate research. There is a lot of exposition and the drama is light, although the future Senator does an admirable job of describing the motivations of the various pols with sympathy. The books feels like it was written by someone who already knew it was a good idea not to step on anyone's toes.

She dodges ansering the biggest question teased by the book, whether it serves the public interest to build such stadiums with tax payer money. Her pragmatic conclusion seems to imply that probably isn't, but at least these particular public servants did it in a way that was on time and under budge and that prevented the Vikings from having to change their name to something more tropical for a spot in the sunbelt.

The Metrodome was an exotic part of baseball to me as a kid. In the conclusion of the book she quotes Yankees manager Billy Martin as saying the dome should be banned from baseball. As I recall he lamented that the people of Minnesota had plastered the name of a great man on a dump such as this unattractive stadium on the edge of downtown Minneapolis.

Battlin' Billy was a lot less kind than Senator Amy Klobuchar. The book is forgetable. But I left with the impression that I hope some day a stadium in the Twin Cities is named for her too.


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