OHMIDOG! : Today?s target: The Minnesota Twins

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Alright, Minnesota Twins. You don’t allow dogs in your new baseball park — named after the Target Corp. So who was that in the box seats behind home plate at your home opener?

Oh, it was Bullseye? The dog Target uses to advertise its chain of discount stores? The one with two*red circles painted around her left eye?

That makes it all ok.

NOT!

If dogs are banned, dogs are banned — and it shouldn’t matter how much money her corporate owners have, or even if the stadium is named after the corporation she represents.

If you’re going to allow Target corporate honchos to bring a dog in, you need to allow everyone else as well — and not just those who can afford to buy a $275 box seat behind home plate for their dog. Those in the right field bleachers should be allowed, too.

Bullseye “was there after the [military jet] flyover [and] through the bottom of the first inning,” Chris Iles, a Twins spokesman, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Iles took the opportunity to*caution fans against bringing their pets to a game.

“Any type of service animal is allowed, but no other animals,” he said. “That said, given the commitment Target has made to the organization, we made a one-time decision to allow Bullseye, a highly trained and constantly supervised dog, to sit in a seat for a half-inning.”

Baloney.

Lena Michaud, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based Target, said Tuesday that Bullseye was in one of Target’s corporate seats merely as “a fun element to commemorate the day. … That was the vein in which it was intended.”

More baloney. (I’d spell it correctly — bologna — but that is not the vein in which it is intended.)

The Twin/Target front offices*can spin the situation until the cows come home, but the message has already been received: Rules don’t apply to the very rich, especially those who help pay for your stadium.

On top of rising ticket and concession*prices, baseball continues to give blue collar fans, us average mutts,*the brush off –*becoming*ever closer to becoming a game played by*the rich*for the rich.

How do you think a fan who can no longer to afford to go to a game*might have felt sitting at home and seeing a dog in the*$275 box seats behind home plate? Sorry, the Twins seem to be saying, we welcome rich people, and their dogs, but you, Joe Sixpack, are just not in our league … And don’t even think of bringing your non-painted dog, that doesn’t have a corporate logo stamped on his eye, *in here.

(Actually, Bullseye’s bullseye is applied by a trainer and makeup artist –* Rose Ordile of Animals of a Different Color — using nontoxic red paint.)

Michaud said there was no commercial shot or marketing strategy surrounding Bullseye’s attendance. The dog sat in a custom-made Twins jersey with her name on the back as well as the number 10 to commemorate the Target Field opening in 2010.

The six-year-old miniature bull terrier’s presence at Monday night’s game was captured via television frame grab off ESPN.



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