Twins owner Calvin Griffith was under siege after his infamous address to the Waseca Lions Club near the end of the 1978 season. Apparently, Calvin had a couple of Dubonnets in him, drew laughter with his first impolitic remark, and kept rolling.
Bad luck was following Calvin at that time, and he ran into more that night: Nick Coleman, a Minneapolis Tribune reporter, happened to be in the audience and wound up writing a summary of Calvin's comments for the Trib's front page.
All Hades busted loose. The racial insensitivity in his remarks led to editorials calling for Calvin to turn over control of the organization to others. Calvin wavered for a time, finally just stayed put, and the editorialists became fixated on other issues.
My favorite response from Mr. Griffith came as he tried to defend his position on race and baseball.
"When we sign a player, I don't ask what color he is,'' Calvin said. "I only ask, 'Can he run? Hit? Throw?' After this season, I'm going to ask one more question: 'Can he field?' We made so many errors … ah, never mind.''
Most appreciated by me in that great quote was Calvin's use of the proper baseball terminology: "Can he field?"
We are two weeks from spring training and again I'll be cringing when the words "offense'' and "defense'' come out of the mouths of Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, his players, and even his boss, Terry Ryan.
That's when I decided all was lost: When Ryan, a traditionalist at heart, joined the masses in using those football terms — offense and defense — to describe key elements of the Grand Old Game.
