Twins Territory got hit with a double whammy this past season.
The first “whammy,” if one can say that, was the team’s terrible second-half play, including an August collapse that caused the Twins to go from a sure fire thing to undeniably out of the picture. The second was the announcement that the Pohlad family, the longtime owners of the team, are exploring a sale of the club.
The Pohlads eventually bought the Twins in 1984 from former longtime owner Calvin Griffith. But before the deal closed that year, there were offers for the Twins from various parties and various parts of the country. That’s right: Hold on to your hats, Twins fans, because if the current sale goes anything like the last one, it could be a season of distraction and disappointment for many of us.
A check of newspapers.com shows that the Star Tribune covered the last sale quite closely. The news sometimes made the front page, frequently appeared in the sports pages and also touched the editorial page and letters from readers.
“If the Twins stay in Minnesota, I will be forever grateful to those who worked so hard to keep them here,” wrote Joyce E. Hanson of Herman that season. “If they leave it will be like part of my family moving away. I look forward to baseball season every year.”
Joyce was right to be concerned. The first offer for the Twins didn’t come from the Pohlad family, but from a group of Tampa, Florida, businessmen in April 1983.
Other out-of-area suitors who took an interest in the Twins: Buyers from British Columbia, Canada, visited the Twins’ spring training site in March 1984, followed later by offers from groups in Indianapolis and Minneapolis-based real estate developers.
Perhaps the scariest moment was when Twins executives had to shoot down rumors that Donald Trump — yep, that dude — had made a $55 million offer to buy the Twins. Can you imagine? Good God.
Meanwhile, a parallel process played out to prevent Griffith from moving the Twins. The 30-year Metrodome lease had an escape clause that stipulated that if the Twins didn’t reach certain attendance benchmarks, he could move the team in 1986. A Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce task force set out to sell enough tickets to meet the threshold or to match the offer made for the Twins by the Tampa group. Carl Pohlad was a member of the task force.
The Tampa Baseball Group buys a stake in the Twins, only to be told later by the American League that their offer will not be approved.
Back to the attendance goals: the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission steps into the fray and “pledges to contribute $2.5 million to a ticket buyout plan,” the Star Tribune reported.
Then, patriarch Pohlad emerges again and meets with Griffith in early May, late May and finally in June a deal is announced.
“Griffith and (Thelma) Haynes (Calvin’s sister) sign a letter of intent to sell their 52 percent to Pohlad for an estimated $32 million. Pohlad will pay $10 million down and the balance over as many as 20 years.”
A change of ownership likely was welcome news to letter-to-the-editor writer A.T. Hennek of Prior Lake.
“Calvin has done everything possible to alienate and insult baseball fans of the area since the day he came to town. To make the Twins succeed again we must get rid of Calvin.”
Meantime, the Twins, who were terrible in 1982 and 1983, showed signs of life in ’84 and would have won the AL West division, if not for a final week of bad baseball. That effort did not go unnoticed.
“Thanks a million to the Minnesota Twins for a season that brought both joy and a few tears to so many fans,” wrote Ardyce Harms of Shafer. “They have some great young players and they are all No. 1 in our hearts. No matter what the final standings, we thank them for much more than was ever predicted earlier in the year. Congratulations!”
The editorial page jumped on the bandwagon.
“The essential point is that the 1984 Twins made a race of it. Playoffs and World Series are wonderful, but what Twins fans needed most was a belief in The Possibility. They needed to see enough good, sound baseball to know that with a break here and an extra effort there, the Twins could be in the thick of the divisional race. And good baseball is what fans have gotten.”
But what about soccer? At least one sports fan that season wanted someone to save the short-lived Minnesota Strikers of the North American Soccer League.
“It is amazing to me how Minnesotans can sit idly by and let our truly amazing Minnesota Strikers bite the dust. All we hear is Save the Twins. I have seen enough pictures of Carl Pohlad and Calvin Griffith to paper a room. I think the Twins are great, but let’s do our fair share for the Strikers,” wrote Andy Dorsey of Edina.
And by December 1984, someone was already calling the Pohlads cheap. Some things never change, I guess.
“Where was Carl Pohlad when five other American League team owners were offering Andre Thornton more than the Twins offered? Sid Hartman had been telling us that Pohlad and Fox were going to spend money for world-class baseball players, but it appears that Pohlad has long pockets and short arms just like Calvin Griffith. My guess is that he is more interested in owning the Twins as an ego builder and cocktail-party-conversation topic than he is in winning pennants,” wrote John E. Miller of Hutchinson.
Source: Newspapers.com.