Olson: More extra innings in the Pohlad family/Twins fans stalemate

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That was a collapse even the most pessimistic Minnesota sports fans didn’t see coming.

The Pohlad family announced Wednesday morning that after 10 months on the market the Minnesota Twins were no longer for sale. Instead, the family will retain majority control of the team and take on two new groups of minority partners.

“There is alignment on how we see the Twins moving forward, and also in our belief in the future of baseball in Minnesota,” Chairman Joe Pohlad said in an interview.

Chairman Joe, grandson of Carl Pohlad, who acquired the team in 1984, declined to identify the new partners. Not a stellar start, Mr. Chairman, after a busted promise of a season and sale.

That promise of alignment is the deflated life raft of an offering that Chairman Joe opted to toss fans who remain dazed and confused by the team’s trade deadline talent sell-off.

This friend, a schoolteacher, had for years used the Twins players’ performance as a means to coax students into a season-long competition in which they’d delightfully engage with her, one another and practical math.

Back in the naive times of one week ago, I assured my friend that the shiny new chapter of team ownership would soon begin and we would all have new hope.

Now we won’t even get that.

It’s like we were on the verge of a divorce, but the judge forced us to remain in a cramped house with our estranged, angry spouse. We’re keeping all the unfortunate baggage of the past and losing the wide-eyed hope for a better future.

The Pohlad family has had a long history in Minnesota. Born poor in Iowa, Carl Pohlad accrued a fortune as an Edina banker and iron-willed dealmaker. He bought the Twins in 1984, and when he died in 2009, a former Pioneer Press reporter then writing a column for ESPN colorfully noted Grandpa Pohlad’s baseball legacy.

I got a look at Grandpa Pohlad’s dealmaking tactics in 1997 when he and his emissaries led State Capitol reporters at a St. Paul news conference to believe the owner would make an $82.5 million cash contribution to a new ballpark when, in reality we learned days later, Pohlad was proposing a loan to the state.

That balky rollout did not build trust with the legislators or pave a path out of the Metrodome. When that taxpayer-funded ballpark wasn’t immediately forthcoming, Grandpa Pohlad did, unsuccessfully, offer to allow the team to be contracted out of existence.

The misdirection, intentional or not, was one of many lessons repeatedly relearned about trusting the powerful. Clearly I was wrong in thinking subsequent Pohlad generations could be more forthright.

I know baseball is a business and the Pohlads are in it to make money. But show some respect for the customers who invest time and shell out for seats, television subscriptions, jerseys, caps, balls, beers and every overpriced item they can snag to align themselves with the hometown team.

Then there’s the ineffable and inexplicable emotional investment in these parasocial relationships. We know we’re not guaranteed anything in return, but we do expect a little effort, a scintilla of respect for our multifaceted investments of time, money and love. What are these Twins without us?

Chairman Joe didn’t even give us the dignity of revealing these new partners. We heard about this alignment, the parlance of a born-on-third-base executive who needs to prove real soon that he knows what he’s doing with our team.

So that’s it. The Pohlads still own the team and we, the fans, do what we’ve done for more than three mostly mediocre decades since the World Series victories of 1987 and 1991: Wait on the promise of next year.

I’d like to walk away for good, but even as a casual fan, I remember the infectious magic of the 1987 pennant chase, the first I experienced as a young adult.

Twins fans are bitter right now, but if I know anything, it’s that time wounds all heels and success heals most wounds.

If this alignment works out like Chairman Joe promises, we’ll get them next year. The Twins will be chasing a pennant and fans will pack the yard. This lost season will be nothing but a hazy Canadian-wildfire-smoke-covered memory.

Minnesota Vikings owners Mark and Zygi Wilf aren’t selling any time soon, and I hear there’s a lively young quarterback tossing to the otherworldly Justin Jefferson.