Two Ballpark Figures Who Refuse to Give Up

Baseball owners’ plans to eliminate two teams has thrown a scare into fans of the Minnesota Twins.

For Joe Marble and David Hoch, it’s just more motivation.

For five years, Marble and Hoch have been everywhere in their determination to save the Twins.

They camped on the steps of the state capitol in 1997, trying to drum up support for a stadium when owner Carl Pohlad talked of selling the team to a man who would move it to North Carolina.

They traveled in an orange Volkswagen microbus from stadium to stadium in 1998 to work up enthusiasm to bring a fan-friendly outdoor stadium to Minnesota. (They recently filed a lawsuit against MasterCard for commercials they said copied scenes from a movie they shot of the trip; MasterCard’s ad agency denied it.)

And they were in Chicago last month holding a banner for nine hours outside the hotel where owners were voting to eliminate two teams. Returning home, they promptly took to the road and helped collect 110,000 signatures to oppose the plan.

Friends since childhood, Marble and Hoch are bound by the belief that the Twins must have a new ballpark--and politicians must find some way to get them one. For years before the most recent rally, Marble and Hoch weren’t merely part of the fan effort to build a stadium for the Twins, they were the effort.

“Everybody went away,” Marble said. “We never went away.”

Through their nonprofit group, Citizens United for Baseball in Minnesota, which they say is funded mostly from their own pockets, no publicity stunt has been too melodramatic.

On opening day in 1999, Hoch dressed as the grim reaper and buried a baseball on the Capitol lawn to make theassertion that inaction would be the death of the Twins.

This year, when legislators ignored a plan to fund a stadium by creating a state-run casino, Hoch stood outside the committee door blindfolded and with duct tape across his mouth. A sign declared that the bill was being held hostage.

Not all their efforts have been appreciated.

For the Capitol camp-out, they said they would remain until funding for a new ballpark was approved. But they left the next day when Capitol security personnel told them they’d need to apply every day for a new permit. For that, one local sportswriter nominated them for his annual “Turkey Award.”

Dramatic gestures aren’t reserved for their lobbying work.

In 1988, Marble proposed to his wife at a Twin game. He got 150 of the couple’s friends and family members to stand across the stadium and hold letters spelling out: “Gretchen Amy, Will You Marry Me?--Jersey Joe.”

Marble and Hoch grew up two blocks apart in south Minneapolis. Both came from large families. Both worked together selling hot dogs and soda at the old Metropolitan Stadium during Twin and Viking games.

Both have small businesses--Hoch is a mortgage broker and Marble is a real estate broker--and that gives them the flexibility to spend dozens of hours per week on their save-the-Twins efforts.

They say they’re going to win or go down fighting.

“We made a pact on the Capitol steps in 1997,” Hoch says. “We said we are going to stick this thing out, I don’t care if it takes a week or 10 years.”