Sam and Nathan Skaff were ecstatic to land tickets to Tuesday’s tiebreaker between the Minnesota Twins and the Detroit Tigers. The bad news is that work commitments mean they’ll be making three 250-mile road trips in 24 hours to see some bonus baseball.

The father and son from Moorhead joined other fans angling Monday for tickets to Game 163, which will decide the AL Central champion. One ticket broker said the Metrodome’s 55,000 seats for baseball were going for as much as $500.

“The roof is going to blow off this Dome in the next two days,” Nathan Skaff said, referring to Monday night’s Vikings-Packers football showdown — the original reason he and his dad came to Minneapolis in the first place.

“Now we’ve got to drive to Moorhead so we can turn around and come back. But we’ve got to wait for the game to get over tonight,” Sam Skaff said. “How do you sleep?”

That the Twins were even on the brink of the playoffs was hard for some fans to grasp. Minnesota trailed Detroit by seven games in early September and by two heading into the final weekend. The Tigers lost twice and the Twins swept the Royals to force the tiebreaker. The Twins are hosting because they had the better head-to-head record.

Many fans had written their Twins off.

“I didn’t think there’d be any chance,” said Derek Wennerberg, of Blaine. “I did not expect them to come back.”

Tickets went on sale immediately after Sunday’s game and 50,000 had been sold by Monday morning, said Twins spokesman Kevin Smith. Sunday was supposed to be the final baseball game in the Dome ahead of next year’s move to the open-air Target Field.

“This is the Dome saying goodbye to us,” Smith said. “I hope we don’t disappoint.”

The remaining hope for those without tickets was that some season ticketholders would take a pass on the game. A throng of fans waited outside the team ticket office, but few were finding tickets.

TicketKing co-owner Brian Obert said Tuesday’s Twins game was proving a tougher ticket than the Vikings-Packers game, in which Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre was making his first start against his old team. His company was selling upper deck obstructed view tickets for Tuesday’s game for $45 and had top tickets priced at $500.

Twins first baseman Michael Cuddyer expects an electrified crowd and hopes that will give the team the boost it lacked last year when the White Sox took the division in game 163 in Chicago, where fans added to the hostile atmosphere by showing up in all black.

“Chicago last year had a blackout,” Cuddyer said. “Maybe we’ll have a whiteout in the Dome.”

Jim Smallwood, a longtime Tigers fan, watched on TV as his team’s AL Central lead evaporated thanks to losses to the White Sox on Friday and Saturday.

Smallwood, of Birmingham, Mich., said despite the lackluster play down the stretch he was confident in the Tigers heading into Tuesday’s big game.

“I’m optimistic,” he said.

Jeff Feinstein, of Oak Park, Mich., also was willing to set aside Detroit’s late-season stumble.

“They got tired and fell apart,” he reasoned. He too predicted a Tigers win, pointing out that the team led the division all year.

Tuesday’s winner is bound for a first-round series with the New York Yankees.

Wennerberg was taking it one step at a time.

“After tomorrow I’ll try to order some playoff tickets,” Wennerberg said before catching himself. “I hope.”