Opinion | Twins fans, quit bashing the Pohlad family

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Years of claiming that the national pastime is baseball seems to have evolved into critiquing those who own major league sports teams. As a pair of longtime Minnesota sports fans, we’d like to put the evolution of sports franchise ownership — and the Twins in particular — into historical context.

•••

An evolving history of pro sports

By Brian Short

The Twin Cities’ only professional sports franchise early in our lives was the Minneapolis Lakers. Back then the owners of professional sports franchises also actively managed them and earned a living from the profits generated by those teams. Professional sports teams were just like any other small business. But by the time they left Minnesota, the Lakers were a little different. The last two ownership groups of that franchise had multiple investors who didn’t work for the organization.

The greatest challenge the Lakers faced in Minnesota was that they never really had a permanent home. NBA games were played in the St. Paul Auditorium, the Minneapolis Auditorium and the Minneapolis Armory — and the team often played in more than one facility during the same season. Practices were held in college gyms and, from time to time, in the gym of what was then the Minneapolis Catholic Boys Home.

But things were evolving around the nation, and those developments affected our local scene. In 1960, the ownership group of the Lakers, led by Bob Short and his lawyer Frank Ryan, acquired most of the shares of the Minneapolis Basketball Corporation from the minority shareholders (for about $50,000) and moved the team to Los Angeles. I recall the vitriol that followed. My mother received a phone call from someone who identified himself as a Minneapolis Police officer, informing her that her husband, Bob Short, had been in a plane crash, with the loss of all lives. Even back then fans saw sports franchises as community assets, not businesses.

Then in 1961 Calvin Griffith and his family, the majority owners of the historic Washington Senators baseball franchise, moved west. The Senators were interested in Minnesota because of the existence of the Metropolitan Stadium, built in 1955 to attract a major league baseball team. The original focus had been on the New York Giants, but the Twin Cities lost that franchise to San Francisco. So as fate would have it, Calvin Griffith took the plunge and moved his team to Minnesota as the Twins.

In the early years, the Twins struggled, primarily with the weather. Some may remember the first homestand at Met Stadium, where helicopters were employed to dry out the field, recently covered with heavy rain and snow.

The Twins soon enjoyed success, winning the American League Pennant and getting to the World Series in 1965, only to lose to Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. They also hosted the All-Star Game that year. But by the 1970s, Met Stadium was considered “outdated.” The results on the field were lackluster and there was talk about the franchise moving. In response, a group of civic boosters from the business community succeeded in getting the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome built for $55 million. It opened in 1982 without any air conditioning as the home of the Minnesota Twins, the Minnesota Vikings and the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team.

But as all Twins fans know, magic happened. In 1987, the Twins went from worst to first and by winning the seventh game of the World Series against the Cardinals, they brought the first major league championship to the Twin Cities since the early Lakers’ days. We had great players that year — Frank Viola, Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek and many more. The Griffith organization had been vilified; the media claimed Griffith’s “parsimonious nature” led to the departure of Hall of Fame players Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew. Pohlad was celebrated as the savior of sports in Minnesota, especially four years later when the Twins repeated, winning the seventh game of the World Series with a 10-inning shutout pitching performance by Jack Morris.

Since that World Series win in 1991, the Twins have delivered competitive teams in some years and struggled in other years, just like every other major league franchise. All would agree that management of a business, whether it is a major league sports team or a manufacturing company, is charged with delivering good results. But when the Ace Ball Bearing Company has a bad year, management does not find itself on the front page of the newspaper or at the top of Google search results. Sports franchise owners, not so lucky: One of the best sportswriters to ever grace the pages of Twin Cities newspapers bestowed his “Turkey of the Year” recognition on Pohlad in 1987, even as the Twins won the World Series for the first time. He was “honored” again 1998. Ouch.

Brian Short is president of First Farmers & Merchants Bank.

•••

The Minnesota Twins as an investment

If one looks at recent commentary, the Pohlad family is criticized for their 40-year ownership of the Twins for a couple of reasons. Either because they have made “too much” money owning the Twins or because they are trying to make money owning the Twins.

That first criticism centers on the supposed financial benefit they would receive because of the appreciated value of major league sports franchises that has occurred during their ownership. To summarize: Carl Pohlad bought the Twins in 1984 for around $40 million, and now 40 years later, it has increased in value to a rumored sale price of $1.5 billion.

That may seem like an extraordinary gain, but it is not. When a financial investment is made, whether in a small business or in the stock of one of this country’s largest corporations, the hope is that money is made.

Admittedly, both the purchase price and the supposed sale price of the Twins involve numbers beyond comprehension by most of us. But let’s put it this way: if Carl Pohlad had just invested the purchase price of the Twins in a Stock Index Fund, that investment today would be worth over $4 billion. If that analysis is correct, the Twins have turned out to be a rather poor financial investment. But, according to published reports at the time, financial success was not what motivated Pohlad in 1984; it has not likely been the motivation of the Pohlad family in the decades since.

We think it is fair to say that if Carl Pohlad had not stepped up in 1984 and bought the Twins, more likely than not we would not have seen the World Series wins in 1987 and 1991. In addition, we might not have seen the construction of Target Field, championed by the second generation of Pohlad ownership. The Twin Cities might not have a Major League Baseball franchise at all today. For all of those things and many more, true baseball fans owe Pohlad and his family a lot.

During the Pohlad ownership era, we have enjoyed a number of favorites who played their entire careers with the Twins. Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek and Joe Mauer each stayed with the Twins, according to published reports, because the Pohlads found ways to keep them here. But that is not the nature of professional sports today. We hear that it is “a business,” and part of that business involves the movement of players from one team to another.

Curt Flood, a courageous star with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1970s, challenged the old rules of baseball which forced players to stay with a team unless traded by that team’s ownership. As a player, Flood was forced to sit out for a year and took his winning case all the way to the Supreme Court. And as fans we have benefited from that movement of players. We were thrilled that Paul Molitor, Jack Morris and Bert Blyleven were all Twins. Jim Thome, Nelson Cruz and Carlos Correa also all played for the Twins at Target Field after All-Star careers elsewhere.

The “business” of major leagues sports now involves levels of investment that make it hard for most of us to relate to the decisions being made. We like to think of our teams as “ours” — community assets. And we want the owners to invest in ways that serve our desires as fans to win. Our players and their clubs rely on our enthusiasm and our patronage. So perhaps there will always be some healthy tension. However, we would hope that the media and the other filters of public sentiment would occasionally offer perspective.

We are grateful that Carl Pohlad stepped up and purchased the Twins, with his own money, which could have been invested elsewhere for greater profit and helped retain the franchise for the Twin Cities and all of “Twins Territory.” It is fair to criticize baseball decisions that don’t work out on the field. It is not fair, in our view, to criticize the Pohlads’ stewardship of the Twins by complaining that they made “too much” money from their investment. The math and the facts tell a different — and more accurate story.