The pocket schedules announcing home dates for the Minnesota Twins 2002 season carry an unintentionally ominous message.
“Get ’em before they’re gone.”
The reference was to season tickets for Twins home games, not to the Twins themselves. But after Commissioner Bud Selig’s announcement that baseball will contract by two teams next year, it appears likely the Twins are as good as gone.
That’s why baseball fans in the Twin Cities are sniffling into their Homer Hankies, wondering how it got to this point.
After years of being berated as the “Twinkies,” Minnesota seemed to turn the corner in 2001, finishing in second place in the American League Central and increasing attendance 732,927, the largest hike in the AL. Now no one in the Twins organization can be certain they still will be employed at Christmas.
“The events of the last week and half, especially [Tuesday], have put our front office in a real challenging spot,” said David St. Peter, the Twins’ vice president of business affairs. “Certainly there is a feeling of limbo we’re dealing with. That said, there’s also a feeling there appears to be a window of opportunity for us to continue to play, based on that fact that they’ve not named the [contracting] teams. There’s still a possibility that we will continue to play, so it’s business as usual.”
The Twins were flooded with phone calls from concerned and angry fans Tuesday and Wednesday. St. Peter said they actually sold eight season tickets Wednesday to fans wanting to show their support.
Players and coaches aside, the Twins have 70 full-time employees who work year-round, not including scouts and other baseball operations personnel.
There are also an estimated 600 part-time workers employed during the season, including ushers, ticket takers, phone answerers and security, not to mention a few hundred more who clean the stadium for the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, which owns the Metrodome.
“It’s a third of my yearly living,” said Duane Foss, 59, who helps clean the field and the dugouts after Twins games. “We’re the ones hurt most of all. If I can’t get by with two-thirds of my income, I’ll have to go job hunting. It’s the worst thing I can imagine right now. It’s a nightmare.”
Twins owner Carl Pohlad, who reportedly is worth $2 billion, purchased the team in 1984 for $38 million and claims to have lost over $100 million since. Baseball may offer Pohlad about $250 million to fold the team, leaving Minnesota baseball-free for the first time since the Washington Senators relocated here in 1961. The franchise is 100 years old.
While Walter O’Malley still is reviled in Brooklyn for moving the Dodgers to Los Angeles, fans in the Twin Cities compare Pohlad with Norm Green, the former Minnesota North Stars owner who took the hugely popular hockey team to Dallas.
“If Pohlad loses the Twins, he might as well leave town,” Foss said.
Minneapolis also lost the NBA’s Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960.
According to Forbes magazine, the Twins generated revenues of $58 million in 2000, second lowest in baseball to Montreal’s $53.9 million. In comparison, the top two teams in terms of revenue were the New York Yankees ($192.4 million) and New York Mets ($162 million).
The Twins receive almost no parking revenue and control less than a handful of the luxury suites in the Metrodome in a deal former owner Clark Griffith made with the MSFC when it was built two decades ago.
Near the entrance to the Twins’ offices, a few feet from the world championship trophies from 1987 and ’91, is a 1997 rendering of an open-air ballpark near the banks of the Mississippi River. But that stadium effort failed, as did one from last summer that died on the floor of the Minnesota legislature.
Gov. Jesse Ventura is opposed to any taxpayer money going toward a new ballpark. Ventura’s spokesman told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune the contraction effort amounts to “extortion” by baseball owners.
“[Ventura] said Major League Baseball won’t tell us the teams so they can continue their extortion,” spokesman John Wodele said. “He said, `What a bunch of cowards.'”
The Twins had little to say about Ventura’s lack of effort to try and save the Twins.
“The governor is entrenched pretty deeply on the issue,” St. Peter said.
A Hennepin County district judge issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday barring the team and Major League Baseball from breaking their Metrodome lease and a hearing was set for Thursday on a MSFC request for a permanent injunction to prevent the dissolution of the Twins.
Moreover, Minnesota Atty. Gen. Mike Hatch plans to file a federal lawsuit claiming owners are folding two teams illegally to increase market share for the rest and U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) said he would introduce legislation to revoke Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, hoping to use it as leverage in preventing the elimination of the Twins.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis attorney Mike Ciresi continued his attempt to assemble a group that could buy the team from Pohlad and save it from elimination, though that appears very unlikely.
The Twins players are upset about the possibility of being split up and relocated.
Top prospect Joe Mauer, a catcher who grew up 10 minutes from the dome and was the No. 1 pick in the 2001 draft, told the Orlando Sentinel he’s considering giving up baseball and taking the football scholarship offer from Florida State. Mauer was one of the nation’s top-ranked high school quarterbacks last year.
News of the impending death of the Twins has spurred sales of caps at Nick’s Sports World on 7th Street in Minneapolis, according to salesman Jim Cosgrove.
“It’s still a Vikings’ town though,” Cosgrove said. “The Twins’ problem was the stadium. By the time you realized they were competitive, it was June, and everyone goes outside in June. Who wants to be indoors in the summer?”
At the Loon Cafe in downtown Minneapolis, where Twins players often congregate after games, twin brothers Dave and Daniel Duddingston fretted during lunch Wednesday over the possible loss of their team.
“Last season was a building process and people were excited again,” Daniel said. “For it to die now, it would be like getting the rug pulled out from under us. It’s not a major-league city without a major-league team.”
“It would be like living in Omaha,” Dave added. “Think about the legacies of Kirby Puckett, Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew. . . . Without a team here, the legacies will die.”
Twins history
1960: Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith announces that he will move the team to the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
1965: Twins win their first American League pennant. Shortstop Zoilo Versailles is named AL MVP and outfielder Tony Oliva leads the league in hitting. Twins lose to Dodgers in World Series.
1969: Harmon Killebrew (below) wins MVP honors after hitting 49 home runs and knocking in 140 runs. Killebrew, perhaps the greatest of all Twins, ended his career with 573 home runs and become the first Twin to enter the Hall of Fame.
1977: First baseman Rod Carew hits .388 wins AL MVP for fourth-place team.
1981: Twins play last game in Metropolitan Stadium before moving into the newly contructed Metrodome for the 1982 season.
1984: After Griffith threatens to move the team to Tampa, local banker Carl Pohlad agrees to purchase the team, ending the Griffith family’s 72-year control of the club.
1987: Minnesota experiences its first World Series championship when the Twins beat St. Louis in seven games.
1991: The Twins win another dramatic World Series. Jack Morris pitches brilliantly in Game 7 and the Twins beat the Braves 1-0 on Gene Larkin’s pinch single in the 10th inning.
1996: After being diagnosed with glaucoma, popular Twin Kirby Puckett (left) retires and is later named a team vice president.
1997: The Minnesota Legislature votes down several public funding proposals for a new Twins stadium. Pohlad reaches an agreement with North Carolina businessman Don Beaver, who intends to move the team out of Minnesota. The deal is never finalized.
2001: Twins stay in contention until midseason but fade. Longtime manager Tom Kelly, who guided team to two titles, quits.
Twins attendance
HOME
Scale in millions
`90-’00
Chicago Tribune.
– See microfilm for complete graphic.
