What's Next In Minny?

[Skipper Steve]

Baseball was barred from eliminating the Minnesota Twins next season when a judge on Friday ordered the team to play its 2002 home schedule in the Metrodome.

Twins owner Carl Pohlad also was ordered not to sell the team unless the new owner agrees to have the team play its 2002 home schedule in the ballpark.

The order by Hennepin County District Judge Harry Seymour Crump threw into question last week's vote by baseball owners to eliminate two major league teams next season.

Any predictions on what happens now in terms of Twins fan reaction this upcoming season? Do they rally and pack the joint every night - - making an ugly case for baseball in their claim that the city cannot support a team? Or, do they fall prey to "lame duck" fever and make Minny look like Montreal (in terms of no one showing up for geames)?

[CubFan7125]

WHATS NEXT YOU ASK?


2 WONDERFUL WORDS:

PLAY BALL

Originally posted by Skipper Steve
[snip]

Any predictions on what happens now in terms of Twins fan reaction this upcoming season? Do they rally and pack the joint every night - - making an ugly case for baseball in their claim that the city cannot support a team? Or, do they fall prey to "lame duck" fever and make Minny look like Montreal (in terms of no one showing up for geames)?

Some 20 years ago, one of the most famous of all NYC staples, Radio City Music Hall was slated for closing due to lack of revenue and poor attendance. Right away, all the big acts scheduled shows there, from '70s singers to people you'd seen headlining concerts.

If the Twins fans want to prove anything to baseball, it's that they can support their stadium, their team and vote with their dollars and sense. If they can prove they deserve to remain an MLB team rather than put on the scrap heap, I'd say that would be great for baseball, since the little guy came through and proved they're competitive. It would also zip up the lip for Bud.

PS,

TSN: the fans speak out.

[mainsr]

Originally posted by Yogi#8Fan
If the Twins fans want to prove anything to baseball, it's that they can support their stadium, their team and vote with their dollars and sense. If they can prove they deserve to remain an MLB team rather than put on the scrap heap, I'd say that would be great for baseball, since the little guy came through and proved they're competitive. It would also zip up the lip for Bud.

While I'm basically in accord with you, I don't think Twins fans should have to prove their mettle in 2002. The Twins outdrew the White Sox, Royals, Devil Rays, Phillies (!), and Marlins. Why isn't the gun to any of their heads? They've proven it in the past. Pohlad is obviously going to try to undermine the team - Joe Mays for draft choices, anyone? - just as he has for the past decade. I'd flip it around - if Pohlad can't put a team onto the field that'll draw 2 million, baseball should buy the franchise from him for $10 million and put it up for auction.

Won't happen, of course. Bud's too hung up on the idea of clearing out the whole upper Midwest for his kid's team.

[hmrsf]

Originally posted by CubFan7125
WHATS NEXT YOU ASK?


2 WONDERFUL WORDS:

PLAY BALL

Road trip!!!

hmrsf, I would agree the Twins fans shouldn't _have_ to prove their faithfulness with dollar signs like it's the day after Thanksgiving but if someone threatens to take away something you'd taken for granted, I feel that demonstrating you want your team there is in order, even if to show Bud how stupid his idea is. I'd much rather see Twins fans spending money down there than someone saying that's not necessary, then Bud decides no one's going there anyway so they may as well close it down.

So long as the end result is their team remaining open for business, I probably couldn't care less whether the way it's done or the necessity of it being done is logical. What logic is there if the stadium is closed, anyway? If spending money at their stadium is what it takes, so be it. They shouldn't have to under normal situations but this isn't the case and present conditions may warrant coughing up some buck$.

[mainsr]

The problem I would have as a Twins fan is that for every dollar I spend on the Twins, Pohlad gets a few cents. That makes the "spend money or the team goes" dictum even more like extortion. Selig pushed the moronic idea of contraction, but it was Pohlad who elbowed other teams aside and said, "Me! Me! Me! Give me the quarter bil!" He is the Art Modell/Bob Irsay of Minnesota.

I can see how you're saying that it's practically a lost cause for Twins fans, through no fault of their own.

I can't see any real owner of a team wanting it to fold, especially volunteering for the duties. It's like doing a disservice to your fans.

If it were a case of a team needing to be taken out of its misery, in that they weren't competing near the MLB level, the seats were always empty and the finances weren't looking profitable for years to come, I wouldn't mind this so much. For a team owner volunteering his team for this is as stank as it gets. Let me not start too much on this or you'll never hear the end.

http://www.sportingnews.com/voices/d.../20011119.html

MLB is no match for Minnesota

Before he entertained us as an actor, talk-show host, mayor and governor, Jesse Ventura made his living as a wrestler. "Jesse The Body" came to the ring strutting under a feather boa. Sometimes he favored yellow boas, often the pink. In the presence of the shaved-bald, scowling, built-of-bricks, 6-4, 250-pound former Navy SEAL, almost no one ever said, "Jesse, real men don't wear feathers."

Life is fabulous. Life is magic. Life gives us Jesse The Body as Minnesota's governor just when Minnesota has picked a fight with Major League Baseball and its commissioner, Bud Selig.

Selig has declared Minnesota's Twins worse than useless and ordered them killed, disappeared, gone. In response, Gov. Ventura met with Minnesota legislators and power brokers, after which we heard his earthmover-in-low-gear voice growling in defiance of baseball's "rash decisions."

Most deliciously, Ventura will go on the road with his public relations campaign to shake some sense into Major League Baseball. Says Bill Lester, executive director of the Twin Cities commission operating the Metrodome: "Jesse will lead the national effort to stop the evildoers in their tracks."

Life is so good. Jesse everywhere. With Jay Leno, with David Letterman, with Larry King. Jesse growling at Tim Russert. Who knows, the governor could wind up in Afghanistan on Christiane Amanpour's lap, saying, "Osama was a twerp. The guy I want is Bud Selig."

Imagine that.

Jesse the Body against Bud Lite.

There's a Death Match worth $49.95 pay-per-view.

Ah, if only this mess could be resolved by having that much fun with an outcome so predictably pleasing.

Sadly, it will be no fun at all. In the real world of a multibillion-dollar industry, Bud Selig comes to combat well-armed.

Muscled-up with cash and lawyers, baseball has chosen to fight a two-front war against Minnesota and the MLB Players Association.

Talk about wrong-, rock-, and fat-headed. Bad enough for owners to pick another fight with players undefeated in 30 years of these fights. Worse to try to kill two teams, one with baseball's very genetic code in its DNA.

Unfortunately, if Selig and other club owners have demonstrated anything in 30 years, it's their inability and/or unwillingness to see that what's good for one may not be good for all.

NFL owners understand that equitable revenue sharing keeps every franchise rich and competitive. But baseball owners refuse to share revenue in any meaningful way.

Among the reasons for that refusal is the suspicion the money goes into another owner's pocket instead of into the daily lineup. So the Blue Ribbon Commission a year ago suggested that owners increase revenue sharing with this condition: that there be a minimum team payroll of, say, $40 million, to assure a competitive product.

Good idea. But answer this: Have you heard Bud Selig talking it up?

Instead, he kills the Twins. As if that fixes anything.

As if baseball's problems vanish with the killing of a team that won the 1987 and 1991 World Series and was competitive in 2001.

As if it makes sense to walk away from the nation's 13th-largest TV market when hometown money wants to buy the franchise from 86-year-old Carl Pohlad, whose investment portfolio has taken such a beating he stopped investing in baseball.

It's "absurd," said Clark Griffith II, a Minneapolis attorney and grandson of the franchise's legendary builder. U.S. senators and representatives from upper Midwest states have criticized MLB. A Minneapolis judge, ordering the Twins to play the 2002 season, said baseball is as much a public trust as a private enterprise.

"The only 'contraction' I'm familiar with came when my wife gave birth," said Paul Ridgeway, a Minneapolis businessman leading a "Save the Twins" campaign. "But after her pain, we had a baby to show for it. Now MLB wants to 'contract' us -- and steal the baby. We're not going to let 'em."

"People here are outraged, in the whole state, the whole region," said Harvey Mackay, the sports nut/businessman/best-selling author whose fingerprints are on every Twin Cities sports enterprise and who is famous for having said, "Without pro sports, we're on our way to being a cold Omaha."

Because Pohlad made mistakes that destroyed his credibility, Minnesota's legislature has refused to help build a stadium replacing the anachronistic Metrodome. With Pohlad gone, there may be hope.

"New ownership won't bet on the come," Mackay says, meaning no one will buy the Twins without a new stadium guaranteed. "What we need is for baseball to give us time, one more legislative session." With Ventura's backing for public financing-not public funds-Mackay believes a new stadium can be built.

But even that optimism is fragile. Pohlad may refuse to sell to local buyers; or MLB may make a preemptive, one-time-only offer, or even if Pohlad makes a hometown deal, MLB could invoke its veto power and insist, "Dead, the Twins are dead."

The bet here is the Twins will live; too many powerful forces are aligned against MLB. If the Expos are beyond rescue, they yet shouldn't disappear. They should move to the nation's capital, and if Orioles owner Peter Angelos utters even a peep of geographic protest, Bud Selig should ask Gov. Ventura to have a word with the twerp.

Dave Kindred is a contributing writer for The Sporting News. Email him at kindred@sportingnews.com

http://www.sportingnews.com/baseball...24/361961.html

Alabama billionaire shows interest in buying Twins
November 24, 2001

An Alabama billionaire searching for a major-league baseball franchise to buy might be interested in purchasing the Minnesota Twins, according to a published report.

Donald V. Watkins, who would become baseball's first black owner, has submitted a purchase offer for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and says he would also like to talk to the Twins, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported for Saturday's editions.

"I'm interested in exploring the Twins as an option," Watkins told the Pioneer Press Friday from Montgomery, Ala. "I want to play in the game, and if the Twins are the point of entry, that's OK with me."

Earlier this month, Major League Baseball announced that it plans to eliminate two teams for next season -- and the Twins and Expos are expected to be the two teams.

But a judge ruled Nov. 16 that the Twins must play their 2002 home schedule in the Metrodome. Twins owner Carl Pohlad also was ordered not to sell the team unless the new owner agrees to have the team play its 2002 home schedule in the ballpark.

Watkins, 53, is reportedly worth $1.5 billion. He said he would work to build a stadium in the Twin Cities if he owned the Twins.

"I used to be a city councilman in Montgomery," Watkins told the Pioneer-Press, "so I know what it's like to work in a public-private partnership to grow a sports enterprise."

But Watkins likely would have to wait for contraction and his bid for Devil Rays to be sorted out before talking with the Twins.

http://www.sportingnews.com/voices/d.../20011119.html

MLB is no match for Minnesota
November 19, 2001

Before he entertained us as an actor, talk-show host, mayor and governor, Jesse Ventura made his living as a wrestler. "Jesse The Body" came to the ring strutting under a feather boa. Sometimes he favored yellow boas, often the pink. In the presence of the shaved-bald, scowling, built-of-bricks, 6-4, 250-pound former Navy SEAL, almost no one ever said, "Jesse, real men don't wear feathers."

Life is fabulous. Life is magic. Life gives us Jesse The Body as Minnesota's governor just when Minnesota has picked a fight with Major League Baseball and its commissioner, Bud Selig.

Selig has declared Minnesota's Twins worse than useless and ordered them killed, disappeared, gone. In response, Gov. Ventura met with Minnesota legislators and power brokers, after which we heard his earthmover-in-low-gear voice growling in defiance of baseball's "rash decisions."

Most deliciously, Ventura will go on the road with his public relations campaign to shake some sense into Major League Baseball. Says Bill Lester, executive director of the Twin Cities commission operating the Metrodome: "Jesse will lead the national effort to stop the evildoers in their tracks."

Life is so good. Jesse everywhere. With Jay Leno, with David Letterman, with Larry King. Jesse growling at Tim Russert. Who knows, the governor could wind up in Afghanistan on Christiane Amanpour's lap, saying, "Osama was a twerp. The guy I want is Bud Selig."

Imagine that.

Jesse the Body against Bud Lite.

There's a Death Match worth $49.95 pay-per-view.

Ah, if only this mess could be resolved by having that much fun with an outcome so predictably pleasing.

Sadly, it will be no fun at all. In the real world of a multibillion-dollar industry, Bud Selig comes to combat well-armed.

Muscled-up with cash and lawyers, baseball has chosen to fight a two-front war against Minnesota and the MLB Players Association.

Talk about wrong-, rock-, and fat-headed. Bad enough for owners to pick another fight with players undefeated in 30 years of these fights. Worse to try to kill two teams, one with baseball's very genetic code in its DNA.

Unfortunately, if Selig and other club owners have demonstrated anything in 30 years, it's their inability and/or unwillingness to see that what's good for one may not be good for all.

NFL owners understand that equitable revenue sharing keeps every franchise rich and competitive. But baseball owners refuse to share revenue in any meaningful way.

Among the reasons for that refusal is the suspicion the money goes into another owner's pocket instead of into the daily lineup. So the Blue Ribbon Commission a year ago suggested that owners increase revenue sharing with this condition: that there be a minimum team payroll of, say, $40 million, to assure a competitive product.

Good idea. But answer this: Have you heard Bud Selig talking it up?

Instead, he kills the Twins. As if that fixes anything.

As if baseball's problems vanish with the killing of a team that won the 1987 and 1991 World Series and was competitive in 2001.

As if it makes sense to walk away from the nation's 13th-largest TV market when hometown money wants to buy the franchise from 86-year-old Carl Pohlad, whose investment portfolio has taken such a beating he stopped investing in baseball.

It's "absurd," said Clark Griffith II, a Minneapolis attorney and grandson of the franchise's legendary builder. U.S. senators and representatives from upper Midwest states have criticized MLB. A Minneapolis judge, ordering the Twins to play the 2002 season, said baseball is as much a public trust as a private enterprise.

"The only 'contraction' I'm familiar with came when my wife gave birth," said Paul Ridgeway, a Minneapolis businessman leading a "Save the Twins" campaign. "But after her pain, we had a baby to show for it. Now MLB wants to 'contract' us -- and steal the baby. We're not going to let 'em."

"People here are outraged, in the whole state, the whole region," said Harvey Mackay, the sports nut/businessman/best-selling author whose fingerprints are on every Twin Cities sports enterprise and who is famous for having said, "Without pro sports, we're on our way to being a cold Omaha."

Because Pohlad made mistakes that destroyed his credibility, Minnesota's legislature has refused to help build a stadium replacing the anachronistic Metrodome. With Pohlad gone, there may be hope.

"New ownership won't bet on the come," Mackay says, meaning no one will buy the Twins without a new stadium guaranteed. "What we need is for baseball to give us time, one more legislative session." With Ventura's backing for public financing-not public funds-Mackay believes a new stadium can be built.

But even that optimism is fragile. Pohlad may refuse to sell to local buyers; or MLB may make a preemptive, one-time-only offer, or even if Pohlad makes a hometown deal, MLB could invoke its veto power and insist, "Dead, the Twins are dead."

The bet here is the Twins will live; too many powerful forces are aligned against MLB. If the Expos are beyond rescue, they yet shouldn't disappear. They should move to the nation's capital, and if Orioles owner Peter Angelos utters even a peep of geographic protest, Bud Selig should ask Gov. Ventura to have a word with the twerp.

Dave Kindred is a contributing writer for The Sporting News. Email him at kindred@sportingnews.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/sp...ll/25BASE.html

Delay Only Complicates Contraction
By MURRAY CHASS
The contradictions of contraction:

• Major league clubs and players should want to resolve the union's grievance as quickly as possible, the clubs to get moving with the elimination of two teams and the dispersal draft of their players, the players to clear up the potentially murky free-agent picture. But they have not set dates for the hearing on the grievance.

• Carl Pohlad, owner of the Minnesota Twins, wants his team to be one of those eliminated and has joined Major League Baseball in defending a lawsuit aimed at blocking the demise of the Twins, even though he voted against contraction at the owners' meeting Nov. 6 and agreed in the Metrodome lease that the Twins should have to play the 2002 season at the stadium.

• The Twins signed the lease for next season 11 days before the end of the 2001 season even though Pohlad had been involved in contraction talks throughout the summer.

• The lease provides its own remedy in case of the demise of the Twins, saying they can be required to play their 2002 home games at the Metrodome if "the team ceases to play major league professional baseball games for any reason."

The clubs have proposed holding the dispersal draft Dec. 14, but given the existing obstacles, it would be virtually impossible to adhere to that timetable. In fact, some lawyers on management's side are saying privately that it will be impossible to carry through with contraction at all this winter.

Nevertheless, the endeavor continues in the face of the union grievance, a Congressional attempt to dilute baseball's antitrust exemption, a Florida investigation and the Minnesota court injunction.

The injunction raises the most curious question arising from contraction: how can a team be forced to play games if it no longer exists? That is for lawyers to argue and judges to unravel, but contraction may very well hinge on that lease provision.

An appellate court may find that a government entity does not have the right to force a failing enterprise to stay in business, but that business, in this case, might have forfeited its right to go out of business.

The stadium commission and the State of Minnesota could, of course, win the battle and lose the war because a victory in the lawsuit would keep the Twins alive for only another year. Their lease does not extend beyond next season.

The state, on the other hand, could change its mind between now and the end of next season and agree to provide money for a new park. At this stage, however, Pohlad is not looking for a new park but a way out, and contraction 2002 would provide him with a lucrative escape route.

If Pohlad were to sell the team, indeed if he could find a buyer, it is highly unlikely that he could get more than $100 million. In fact, a couple of years ago he told someone who inquired about the team that he would be happy if he could get $30 million.

No contraction price has been set, but Major League Baseball could pay Pohlad as much as $150 million. Higher figures, as much as $250 million, have been mentioned in speculation about the unusual transaction, but it is difficult to imagine the other owners agreeing to those figures.

The fact is that Pohlad, 86, wants out of baseball, and contraction is his best avenue. He volunteered to sacrifice the Twins allegedly in the best interests of baseball, but he would be acting in the worst interests of Minnesota and the best interests of Carl Pohlad.

"He purchased the team," the Twins' media guide says of Pohlad, "with a sense of community responsibility and a feeling that major league sports, particularly baseball, are vital to the standard of living any community must strive to achieve."

But Pohlad may yet be rescued from his attempt to sap the standard of living of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Not only could the Minnesota courts block contraction, but baseball's arbitrator could also shatter the owners' attempt to jettison two teams.

The arbitrator, Shyam Das, could do that if lawyers for the owners and the players ever agree to dates for the hearing. Das gave them a list of 9 or 10 days in December when he would be available to hear their arguments. But more than a week has gone by without the lawyers agreeing on hearing dates. Das may have to decide the dates for them.

Neither side can be assured of winning the case. The owners believe they have the right to eliminate teams without the union's agreement, although their lawyers were not sufficiently certain to guarantee victory. In fact, Rob Manfred, management's chief labor lawyer, is said to have warned the owners at their meeting that their action could backfire. In issuing that warning, Manfred was exercising caution uncharacteristic of baseball's legal advisers. They more often than not have spoken with bravado inappropriate for the occasion.

Twenty-six years ago, for example, another arbitrator, Peter Seitz, signaled to representatives of the two sides that he was prepared to rule against the owners in the Messersmith-McNally free-agency grievance. Better you should negotiate a settlement, he advised.

But the owners ignored the advice of their labor expert, John Gaherin, and went instead with the bold claim of the National League lawyer, Lou Hoynes, who told them, in effect, this: Let Seitz rule against us; we'll go to court and have his decision overturned. Famous last words.

Despite the hurdles and the potholes, Commissioner Bud Selig pushes ahead with contraction. He acknowledges the time problem that exists but still believes contraction can be done in time for next season. But then, next season could be delayed.

Contraction has held up the start of bargaining for a new labor agreement and threatens to make those negotiations more difficult, setting a discordant tone for the talks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/22/sp...ll/22BASE.html

November 22, 2001
Contraction and Selig on Owners' Plate
By MURRAY CHASS

Three weeks after they voted to eliminate two teams for next season, baseball's club owners will convene again Tuesday in Chicago to hear a status report on the contraction plan. While they are there, the owners will be asked to act on another matter — the election of Commissioner Bud Selig to a second term.

No formal agenda has been sent to the clubs, but two officials said yesterday that they had been told a second term for Selig would be proposed.

When Sandy Alderson, executive vice president for baseball operations, and a likely candidate for future commissioner, was asked about the plan, he said, "That's something you ought to discuss with the commissioner."

The commissioner did not return a telephone call yesterday.

Selig, 67, has nearly two years remaining in his first five-year term. He was elected commissioner July 9, 1998, and his term began Aug. 1 of that year; he had served nearly six years as acting commissioner.

If the owners approve him for a second term — and it is virtually certain that they will — Selig will become the first commissioner to serve more than one term since Bowie Kuhn, who served from 1969 to 1984.

Peter Ueberroth, who succeeded Kuhn, chose not to run for a second term. A. Bartlett Giamatti died in office, and Fay Vincent resigned under pressure from a group of owners led by Selig, who was then the president of the Milwaukee Brewers, and Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox.

Selig, as chairman of the executive council, became the acting commissioner and held the position through one aborted commissioner search until he was elected in 1998.

Selig's election to a second term would come as baseball is mired in a contraction effort that has become messy and confusing. Challenges in court and before an arbitrator have delayed the process; some teams remain uncertain about their future existence and others face their off- season planning with uncertainty.

Players, too, are not sure what to expect. The free-agent market, except for perhaps the top tier of players, is expected to be affected by the questions surrounding contraction.

"I think the commissioner believes contraction continues to be a viable option to pursue," Alderson said. "Nothing is easy. Nothing is totally predictable. I don't think there's anything surprising that has developed over the last several weeks. It doesn't mean there aren't issues that have to be dealt with."

Dec. 15 has been mentioned as the date when the clubs want to hold a dispersal draft of the players on the teams that will be eliminated. Those teams have not been identified, but they are expected to be the Montreal Expos and the Minnesota Twins.

"I don't think that date has ever been precisely defined," Alderson said. "None of this stuff is an absolute necessity on any particular date. A number of dates are important. Yesterday, 40-man rosters had to be submitted. There are several other dates that culminate with Dec. 20, the contract tender date. As each of those dates passes, issues arise, but nothing is insurmountable."

Is there a point after which contraction for the 2002 season would become impossible?

"I'd say that's probably true," Alderson said. "I'd start with opening day and work my way back. I'm not sure where you draw the line."