AM.MN: Take me out to the U.S. Senate race…

Minnesota may have hosted the decade’s best regular-season baseball game, but according to The Fix the state can also lay claim to two of the decade’s best U.S. Senate races, including one that went beyond the regular season. Both involved Norm Coleman, defeating Walter Mondale in 2002 and losing to Al Franken in 2008 (or was that 2009?).

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

ST. PAUL: And then there were seven. The DFL now says it had designated four more donations to House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s gubernatorial campaign in addition to the three revealed last week, but the party chair calls it a “blunder, not a conspiracy.” [Star Tribune; Pioneer Press]

NEW BRIGHTON AND NORTH BRANCH: No wonder they’re leaders on energy. The combined ages of Kate Knuth and Jeremy Kalin, the two Minnesota legislators in Copenhagen for the big climate-change conference, is 60. [MinnPost; ECM Publishers]

CHISHOLM: Let the Iron Range research re-commence! Iron Range Resources will spend $450,000 to keep the heat on and research center open at the recently shuttered Minnesota Discovery Center, formerly known as Ironworld. [Duluth News Tribune]

ST. PAUL: Governor rejects racino. There goes Tim Pawlenty’s chance to make his own video for Racino Now! [Polinaut]

ST. CLOUD: A noble experiment. Removing parking meters downtown netted the city $60,000 less in small change. [St. Cloud Times]

WILLMAR: So cold the wind froze. Two new municipal wind turbines haven’t turned in a week and a half because they lack heaters. [West Central Tribune]