Oh, so now they like it.

After whining, bitching and moaning about the place, after calling it a revenue-draining dump, a Teflon-roofed tomb and a competitive albatross with an inflated roof, after demanding a $350-million or more taxpayer-funded retro-stadium with marble-tiled luxury suites and exclusive restaurants, now all of a sudden the Twins have gotten weepy-eye nostalgic for 1987 and 1991 while looking toward the Metrodome to provide the needed competitive advantage in their first postseason series in 11 years.

	“	We've stood on a lot of airport tarmacs and that doesn't compare to how loud it was. The best way I can put it, is that you and I couldn't talk like we are now. We wouldn't be able to hear each other. We had to shout at each other just to be heard, even in the dugout. And we had to be leaning over, shouting into your ear. ”
		— Al Newman, Twins 3B coach, on playing in the Metrodome

Suddenly, the old girl isn't so bad.

"We scared people in there,'' Hall of Fame outfielder Kirby Puckett said. "It was to our advantage to play there. Teams were scared to play us there.''

For good reason. The Twins have played 12 postseason games in the Metrodome and they've won 11. Only Juan Guzman and the Blue Jays in Game 2 of the 1991 playoffs were able to silence the Twins bats and their fans. With that dirty Teflon ceiling, fast, bouncy artificial turf field and eardrum challenging noise, the Dome is baseball's biggest home-field advantage in October. And the Twins are counting on it to help them as their division playoff with Oakland resumes Friday in Game 3 with the series tied at 1-1.

Funny how attitudes change about the Metrodome in the postseason. The Twins have spent most of the past decade claiming that the Dome is a terrible place to play or watch baseball, that it is the biggest reason the Twins played so poorly for so many years and that they would never be competitive without a new stadium. Commissioner Bud Selig even said it was better for the Twins to cease to exist rather than continue playing there.

Not surprisingly, fans listened to all this and decided to spend their money elsewhere rather than watch the Twins lose. Attendance plummeted so low that for much of the past decade, the Metrodome was as quiet as a cabin in the North Woods during a mid-winter snowfall.

"We could hear conversations in the stands,'' Twins veteran Denny Hocking said. "Somebody would cuss in the dugout, and we'd joke, 'Shhhh. Some little kid might hear you in the stands.' "

Despite not being able to sell season tickets last year during the whole contraction mess, the Twins regained many fans with this year's first-place season. There were even nights when fans filled the Dome without the Twins giving away another Puckett artifact. And now with the postseason returning, the Twins expect the Dome to be filled and as loud as in 1987 or 1991 when networks compared the decibel level to jet airplane engines.

"We've stood on a lot of airport tarmacs and that doesn't compare to how loud it was,'' Twins third-base coach and '87/'91 veteran Al Newman said. "The best way I can put it, is that you and I couldn't talk like we are now. We wouldn't be able to hear each other. We had to shout at each other just to be heard, even in the dugout. And we had to be leaning over, shouting into your ear.''

It isn't just the noise, though. The turf turns routine grounders into speeding, bouncing hits -- suitably matching the Twins fast and slick-fielding team -- while the dirty white teflon ceiling is the approximate color of a baseball, providing a terrible background to track fly balls. If outfielders aren't losing baseballs against the ceiling, they're being blinded by the banks of lights or losing sight of the ball in dark patches of bad lighting. Time after time, outfielders wind up staring up helplessly, their arms outstretched while the ball lands dozens of feet behind them.

Former outfielder Dave Henderson had so many problems in the Metrodome that then-Oakland manager Tony La Russa eventually stopped playing him there.

"I'd go, 'Try my glasses, they might help,' " Puckett said. "He'd try them and it wouldn't help and I'd say, 'Try these.' Hendu tried like 10 different glasses and they didn't help. They didn't help me, either, but I just wanted to mess with his head.''

And it isn't just opponents. "We've had trouble in the Dome, too,'' Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "The roof keeps getting darker because they can't wash the doggone thing. If you take your eye off the ball in certain spots, you've got a chance to lose the ball. Our players know that but we still lose balls. But we are there a lot more than other teams so we have a little bit of an advantage there.''

It usually takes a day or two for a team to get used to the Dome each series and the Athletics didn't get much chance to adjust -- workouts were short and limited on Thursday because the ground crew had to get it ready for a Minnesota Gophers football game that night. The crew will also have to make a quick switch to get it ready again for Friday's baseball game. They've done it before though -- the Dome remains an economical, multi-purpose facility, a symbol of a more sensible era of publicly-funded stadiums.

The Twins don't have any active players left from either World Series team. Oakland outfielder David Justice, however, remembers what it was like in 1991 when he played with Atlanta.

"The important thing is for us going out on the field during the workout and saying to each other, 'OK, anything hit over here, I'll take it,' " Justice said. "Because when the ball goes up and people are screaming, we won't be able to hear each other call for the ball. That's important. We didn't do that before the games in 1991.''

Oakland can prepare all it wants though, but it still will come down to its outfielders playing well. And Twins broadcaster Dan Gladden, who played left field five years in the Dome, doesn't think they will. "Terence Long will lose a couple balls,'' Gladden said. "And David Justice won't be able to get to the fly balls to make a mistake.''

Of course, Justice has played in Yankee Stadium, SkyDome, Jacobs Field and Turner Field during postseasons past and he says the Domefield advantage can be overblown.

"We were equipped to handle the noise in '91, we just didn't have Jack Morris,'' Justice said. "Jack Morris is the one who did the damage to us, not the Metrodome.''

Indeed, the Dome won't make much difference if the Twins open Games 3 and 4 as they did the first two when they dug themselves into deep holes by allowing six runs combined in the first inning of both games. If the Twins pitch or field poorly again and the Athletics get an early lead, the Dome will get quiet awfully fast.

"This A's team is very good,'' Gardenhire said. "We aren't going to just be able to throw the Metrodome at them and think that's enough to win. We're going to have to play our best.''

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.