Hope springs eternal, my standard reaction to a new baseball season. I confess, the Minnesota Twins dreadful start (0 – 4 as of time of writing, 3 - 6 as of Monday AM) has dampened my hopefulness somewhat. Okay, I DID say I’d be satisfied with just one Twins World Series victory in my lifespan. And yes, I’ve already savored two, 1987 and 1991.
But I’m starting to get hungry again.
Maybe this year – the right blend of untested youth fulfilling their potential, several veterans having career seasons, a pitcher, maybe two, with break-out stats. Hey, it could happen. It’s now 34 years since “we” (as if I were out there playing) took the Braves in seven. Hey, 34… wasn’t that Kirby’s number? Maybe the stars ARE aligned.
My Twins are currently for sale. The Pohlad family, owners for more than four decades, has decided that’s long enough. I concur. Grateful for those Series’ wins; nevertheless, time for change.
But first, let’s look back to shortly before the Pohlad family took over, when it was still Calvin Griffith’s team. Calvin was, well, I guess you could call him a throwback, which is preferable to calling him a racist, although both words say something about the man who brought big league baseball to the region.
Griffith’s only biography, “Calvin: Baseball's Last Dinosaur,” by John Kerr, 1990, captured the aging owner accurately. I stumbled across the book several months ago in a spurt of re-shelving some of our volumes. I started fanning through and admit never reading this book start to finish.
Wait! What name did I just glimpse flipping through Kerr’s book? Oh my! How could I not have known this? (Ample excuses: at the time of “the episode,” 1983, living in Philadelphia, busy career, traveling weekly on an assignment in northern New Jersey, etc.; at the time the book was published, 1990, living in Wisconsin, starting my own business, two young daughters, etc.)
And the episode cited above? In 1983, a guy from New York made an offer to buy Calvin’s Twins. In fact, he said eventually that he’d pony up $53 million for a team that finally sold for $38 million in 1984. That guy’s name: Donald J. Trump.
Given this recent news-to-me finding, I needed to know more. I found considerable amusement in a story from “Racket” an online digest of Minnesota news, a piece authored by Jay Boller last October. “Did you know that a famous racist (former owner Calvin Griffith) mulled selling the Twins to an even more famous racist in '84? Ex-President Donald Trump!” (This story obviously BEFORE last November’s election.)
According to Kerr’s book, Calvin was indeed courted by Trump in New York City. “I had the thrill of my life going through Mr. Trump’s towers there and seeing all those million-dollar condos he had. Whoooeee! It was so superb it was unbelievable … I never thought I’d get in a room talking about the kind of money he was talking about. It was more than [Carl] Pohlad ever offered, definitely.”
As Bollar’s account notes, “Ultimately the deal fell through – bullet dodged!” Whew.
Arguably, billionaire Carl Pohlad’s 1984 purchase of the team kept the Twins in Minnesota, for which I’m eternally grateful. And while I tend to be critical of the Pohlad family’s recent stewardship, I wish to give Carl his due.
From the Twins Almanac blog: “The son of a Slovak immigrant, [Carl] grew up dirt-poor in what is now West Des Moines, Iowa. … His earliest business enterprise was contracting to pick cockleburs for area farmers, subcontracting the task to other boys and pocketing the 25-cent difference. … Drafted into the Army in 1942, he served as an infantryman during World War II in France, Germany, and Austria. He was wounded in battle and decorated with three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and an Oak Leaf Cluster.”
Now, for the second time in my life, my baseball boys are for sale again, with an asking price thought to be somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion. Sadly, the Meyer household is a bit short, sigh. But I’m tracking on the story and now, after reading this, perhaps you will be, too.
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I’m proud to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. These are my colleagues:
At least the Twinkies are now on a 2 game winning streak! Beating the mighty WSox twice!!!
Griffith was most definitely a racist, but give him credit for signing a lot of Latin American players (no doubt cuz he could get them cheaper). What is the Herr book you wrote about?
Wow! Thanks for the baseball history lesson. The Twins were nearly double-trumped! That is, Donald Trump came close to buying the ball club, and that means he would have probably ruined & lost it, too.