So Long Twinkies?

[Skipper Steve]

Originally posted by pjl7
Pohlad is evil. Selig is a stooge.

Well said!
I blame Pohlad for all of this - - if he didn't want to cash out, we wouldn't be talking about the Twins.

[satchel]

plj, I really feel for you. I hate Pohlad and have ranted about him elsewhere on this thread.

Selig, if the Twins are one of our unannounced mystery teams, has really pulled off a coup as far as covering his own ass goes. I see this in two respects.

(1) It saves Tampa Bay, so Selig doesn't have to acknowledge that an expansion club started on his watch was a stupid idea and an utter failure.

(2) All through his tenure, Selig has been crying about the inability of lower budget teams to compete. All this season, while Minnesota was playing great ball and drawing fans, analysts were wondering aloud whether Selig would have to change his tune a bit. Selig has found an even better solution. The Twins are a flaw in his theory, so he'll surgically excise them. I half wouldn't be surprised if Oakland - the other flaw in his theory - is the other contraction team.

[BuzzBuzzard]

Here's another thought. I don't know my geography well enough to answer this, but do the Brewers benefit in the elimination of the Twins? The conspirator in me is really coming out, but since Bud has an interest in the Brewers.....

[Skipper Steve]

Originally posted by BuzzBuzzard
Here's another thought. I don't know my geography well enough to answer this, but do the Brewers benefit in the elimination of the Twins? The conspirator in me is really coming out, but since Bud has an interest in the Brewers.....

ESPN.com had a piece on this - it helps the Brewers, in terms of their TV market - I think. Let me look for the link.

[Skipper Steve]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2001/1105/1273904.html

Monday, November 5
Milwaukee execs play down conflict of interest potential
Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Milwaukee Brewers could benefit if the Minnesota Twins are eliminated, representing a conflict of interest for Brewers' part-owner and baseball commissioner Bud Selig, according to some industry analysts.

The Brewers could benefit by a doubling of the number of households that can watch games on cable TV; by getting a high pick in any dispersal draft triggered by the elimination of teams and, over time, by pocketing more revenue-sharing dollars in the absence of the Twins, Montreal Expos or other franchises.

"It's bad because you want a person who has a broader, longer-term vision and not someone who has a vision occluded by being the owner of a franchise," said Smith College professor Andrew Zimbalist, author of the book "Baseball and Billions."

"No matter what," he said. "You've got a commissioner who has the appearance of a conflict of interest."

Gov. Jesse Ventura is skeptical, as well, saying Friday on his radio show, "If the Twins are gone, doesn't that make Milwaukee a much more viable franchise?"

Team owners could vote as early as Tuesday on whether to buyout Twins owner Carl Pohlad and dismantle the team, according to reports.

Laurel Prieb, the Brewers' vice president of marketing, team spokesman and Selig's son-in-law, said there's no conflict of interest for Selig.

"For anybody who truly knows the commissioner, and knows his passion for the game of baseball and for the job that he has to do, and the trust he has of all the owners, they know he's always doing what's in the best interest of the game. Anyone who knows him wouldn't question" the possibility of a conflict, Prieb said.

Selig continued to operate the Brewers after he was elevated to interim commissioner in 1992. In 1998, when he was officially selected as baseball's ninth commissioner, he resigned as chief executive of the Brewers. He placed his team holdings, reportedly 35 percent of the club, in a blind trust. Trustees vote on his shares.

When Selig is no longer commissioner, his stake in the team will revert to him. His daughter, Wendy Selig-Prieb, operates the team. She is not listed as an investor.

Any new gate revenue for the Brewers because of any potential Twins demise would probably be modest, sports finance experts said.

"This is not going to be a big land grab for Bud Selig's team and his family," said David Carter, a principal in the Sports Business Group, a Los Angeles consulting firm, and a sports business instructor at the University of Southern California.

"Yes, these are both small-market teams. Together, they might make a more compelling market. But I don't think owners around the league would stand for a plan that only benefits Selig," he said.

Of the 2.8 million fans who attended Brewers games this season in the largely publicly financed $400 million Miller Park, 57 percent came from outside of the five-county Milwaukee area. Not counting Twins games in Milwaukee, only about 2 percent of the ticket buyers were from Minnesota, Prieb said.

Michael Megna of Milwaukee, an expert on franchise valuations, said he doesn't think the Brewers' franchise value will rise significantly if the Twins are eliminated.

"The value won't increase until the Brewers build a competitive team," said Megna, who works for potential buyers and sellers of teams. "Once the hysteria of the new facility fades, and they keep losing, what happens then? What happens when they're back to drawing 8,000 people a game?"

But Clark Griffith, who was in charge of marketing the Twins when his father, Calvin Griffith, owned the team from 1961 to 1984, said he believes the Brewers' value would increase because the team's territory would "no longer be hemmed in from the west." The Brewers are already in market-share competition with the Chicago Cubs and White Sox.

The Twin Cities metropolitan area -- which contains nearly 3 million people -- is a much larger market than Milwaukee, which has a metro area of about 1.7 million.

According to Sales and Marketing Management magazine, the Twin Cities area has an annual "effective buying income" of more than $65 billion; Milwaukee's consumers can buy about $32 billion annually.

Twins and Brewers games are both cablecast on the Fox Sports Net. Twins games can be watched in 1.6 million households from western Wisconsin to parts of Iowa and the Dakotas. Brewers games are available in 1.2 million households.

[Duque]

Governor Ventura and the State of Minnesota has already made it known that they will likely go to court if MLB does try to contract the Twins, and I'd imagine that would likely take several months (looking for help from a few of the lawyers here). If that's true, then they couldn't possibly disband the Twins before the start of the 2002 season. That's presuming, of course, that there is a 2002 season.

[pjl7]

There is currently an injunction here against dissolving the Twins. The difficulty of stalling this is that in order for a court to stop it from going forward, they need to keep an injunction in place. The standards for sustaining an injunction are very high. A case for a broken lease that injures the Metropolitan Sports Facilties Commission will not sustain that kind of relief. The only prayer is that a court would take action on behalf of the people of the state under some theory about the public good. It is a sizeable logical strecth. However, using the lore and literature of the national pastime (including self-laudatory statements by MLB itself) I could craft something at least credible enugh to tie things up in appeals for a couple of months.

Maybe we can get Pohlad declared incompetent.

[Skipper Steve]

Originally posted by pjl7
Maybe we can get Pohlad declared incompetent.

Probably easier just to put a hit on him. Youse guys have a Fat Tony in Minny?

[Duque]

Originally posted by Skipper Steve


Probably easier just to put a hit on him. Youse guys have a Fat Tony in Minny?

They've got an ex-Navy SEAL turned pro wrestler turned politician.

And those two guys from Fargo

[satchel]

Originally posted by pjl7
However, using the lore and literature of the national pastime (including self-laudatory statements by MLB itself) I could craft something at least credible enugh to tie things up in appeals for a couple of months.

Hey, such arguments have sustained the beloved antitrust exemption for the better part of a century. I'm sure the injunction motions will borrow some choice rhetoric from those opinions.

[pjl7]

You know, I didn't even think about that. There is probably volumes of dicta from Federal cases in which the courts support MLB...not to mention the congressional record as evidence of legislative intent.

[satchel]

Originally posted by pjl7
You know, I didn't even think about that. There is probably volumes of dicta from Federal cases in which the courts support MLB...not to mention the congressional record as evidence of legislative intent.

The thing is, pjl, that the antitrust exemption has been supported on the ground that baseball holds a special place in the fabric of American culture and all that. The owners are now trying to have their cake (preserve the exemption) and eat it too (cash in a company not perceived to be profitable) and to hell with the community that's affected by it.

My thinking is that the same arguments that have supported MLB in the antitrust cases can be turned against it here: with the privilege of the exemption comes some responsibilities. MLB, and Pohlad in particular, cannot abrogate those responsibilities without consequences.

[Skipper Steve]

This was pretty good:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/2001/1108/1275300.html

Thursday, November 8

'A part of me has been ripped away'
By John Sickels
Special to ESPN.com

You gotta be crazy
Gotta have a real need
Gotta sleep on your toes
And when you're on the street
Gotta be able to pick out the easy meat
With your eyes closed Then moving in silently downwind and out of sight
You've got to strike when the moment is right
Without thinking

And after awhile
You can work on points for style
Like the club tie
A firm handshake
A sudden look in the eye
An easy smile

You have to be trusted
By the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in

-- "Dogs" by Pink Floyd, lyrics by Roger Waters

They voted to kill the dream on Tuesday.

On November 6, 2001, an 86-year old man decided that his avarice was more important than 40 years of baseball tradition. More important than the jobs of thousands of people. Scouts. Coaches. Vendors. Waitresses. The hopes of youth. The center of a community. Morale in a time of national crisis. Lucre trumps virtue.

Did you know that Carl Pohlad is the richest owner in baseball? Did you know that the Twins turn an operating profit most seasons, including 2001? They won 85 games this year, have a load of young talent, and a farm system in good condition. And this is the team that gets the axe? How do you think Joe Mauer and Mike Restovich feel right now? They signed with the Twins in part because they were the Twins, their hometown team. No more.

I don't know if I will live to the age of 86, but if I do, I hope I'll be more concerned about the state of my immortal soul than the condition of my bank account, especially if the latter is already bulging at the seams. Carl Pohlad will need a pretty small camel and a pretty big needle sometime soon. And even if I didn't believe in things like souls, I would hope that I would value my good name and the name of my family more than a quick profit. If contraction happens, the Pohlads will become pariahs in Minnesota and throughout the upper Midwest. Carl Pohlad says he wants to take the money and run "for the good of his family." Well, Carl, your family already has plenty of money. It won't buy them much love now, will it?

More than just the Minnesota Twins died on Tuesday. If there was any doubt remaining that the Lords of Baseball are fundamentally corrupt and evil men, unworthy of the sport, it has been dispelled now.

As a Twins fan, I honestly cannot express how I feel right now. It is as if a part of me has been ripped away. The Minnesota Twins have been a constant of my life for the last 24 years, through thick and thin. Even the threat of moving the team to North Carolina wasn't as bad as this. If that had happened, at least the franchise would have continued, tracing the tradition back to the days of the Senators. Snuffing this franchise is such an absurd idea that only Bud Selig could have thought it up.

There is still a chance this won't happen, depending on how the labor war and the lawsuits go. But even if the Twins are granted a reprieve, and even if the Expos survive or move to Washington D.C., and even if all is hunky-dory six months from now, I will never forget this bitterness. The idea of using something like this as a bargaining chip in negotiations is as abhorrent as the reality of contraction itself would be.

If the Twins do die, I doubt I'll adopt a new favorite franchise. I don't think I can give my heart completely to a single team anymore. I still love the game, and that will never change. But it is now a love without illusions, with no expectation that the fiends who did this share the same love.

Gammons' Mailbag (includes unrelated Q&A's).

Contract the Twins? Why?
MAILBAG: Nov. 8

Q: Yes, I do think contraction should take place -- but why take away a team that has the history of the Minnesota Twins, with two world championships on its mantel? The Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Florida Marlins have just as many problems with their stadiums as the Twins. Minnesota will figure out its stadium needs; we just need some time. If the Twins are taken away, no one will have even had a chance to say goodbye. To me, that is the saddest thing of all. -- Troy Sebo, Rochester, Minn.
PWG -- If Carl Pohlad cared one iota about anyone else in Minnesota, he'd take $90 million for the franchise, then baseball could invest a chunk of that $200 million in a park and you'd have a terrific franchise. That this man, after cashing out his bank stock for $1 billion, would try to kill the franchise for a few bucks is a disgrace and an affront to all the people who attended Twins games for nine straight losing seasons.

Q: Regarding contraction, how can Bud Selig be considered an impartial leader when this issue comes up? After all, he is the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, who exist in Minnesota's border state of Wisconsin. Why would he not favor eliminating the Twins? With the Twins out of the way, the closest MLB team for most Minnesotans is (conveniently) the Milwaukee Brewers. Which owner would not be in favor of instantly gaining an extra couple million in his fan base? It seems to me that Bud Selig does not have baseball's best interest in mind, but his own pocketbook. -- Tim Wilhelm, St. Paul, Minn.
PWG -- The TV market would help, but I doubt he'd realize more than 100,000-150,000 in additional attendance from ex-Twins loyalists for another six or seven years. And the TV deals are minimal compared to the East Coast clubs.

[bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with contraction deleted by THE CURATOR]

[CubFan7125]

Originally posted by BuzzBuzzard
Here's another thought. I don't know my geography well enough to answer this, but do the Brewers benefit in the elimination of the Twins? The conspirator in me is really coming out, but since Bud has an interest in the Brewers.....

Milwaukee can be made in about 4.5 hours from downtown Saint Paul with a heavy foot, and in a little over 5 hours doing posted limits (always advisable with the Wisconsin Highway Gestapo patrolling I-90 & I-94).

So to answer your question, yes, Uncle Bud's franchise does indeed have the most to gain from the Twins demise. If it does happen, I advise all Minnesotans to drive the extra 90 minutes & go to Wrigley.