Griffith Hopes to Head Off a Twin Killing

Chronicling the history of the Twins in Minnesota, the names Killebrew, Carew, Puckett and maybe even Mientkiewicz may come to mind quicker than Griffith, but are no more important.

It was the late Calvin Griffith, sustaining the ownership legacy of his father, Clark Griffith, who brought major league baseball to the Twin Cities in 1961 with the relocation of his Washington Senators.

Now it is another Griffith, another Clark Griffith--Calvin’s son and Clark’s grandson and namesake--who would like the chance to keep the major leagues there, despite the possibility that the Twins and Montreal Expos are about to be eliminated in baseball’s contraction scheme, providing that owners can overcome the opposition of the players’ union and a blizzard of legal actions.

In one of those actions Friday, a county judge in Minneapolis issued a temporary injunction that forces the Twins to honor the final year of their lease and play in the Metrodome next season. The ruling is likely to be appealed by baseball and the Twins, but could delay final approval of contraction long enough to kill it in 2002.

None of this might have developed if Twin owner Karl Pohlad had agreed to sell to local interests.

At 60, Clark Griffith is a Minneapolis business-, antitrust-and sports-law attorney who heads a group that has been trying unsuccessfully to buy the Twins from Pohlad since 1995, believing baseball can survive in the Twin Cities and willing to close the deal without the assurance of a baseball-only ballpark to replace the Metrodome.

“We’re willing to buy the club as is and work on the ballpark issue following the sale,” Griffith said the other day. “I believe that with a committed local ownership, the ballpark issue can be resolved, that a new park would be forthcoming and it would happen very soon.”

To this point, however, little has happened in the Minnesota legislature to inspire that optimism, which is a key factor in baseball’s willingness to leave the Twin Cities.

Then again, some believe that by not officially naming the Twins and Expos as the teams to be contracted, baseball is giving the legislature, and Gov. Jesse Ventura, a last chance to come up with ballpark financing. Ventura has proposed the use of public money, but he met with Griffith and other potential local buyers Friday and promised to be more involved in the effort to save baseball in the Twin Cities.

There is also a theory that in vacating Minnesota, baseball’s true intention is to create a market that teams hoping to generate ballpark financing in their cities could use as a wedge and/or an example of what can happen when public financing isn’t available.

Some would call it extortion. Griffith stopped short of that, but said:

“Well, I don’t see how you can smash the hopes of people in a community [by removing their team], and then turn around a year later and say, ‘Hey, we were just kidding, you can get a team back if you want.’ If burned once, I don’t think a community would welcome those overtures in the future.”

Griffith’s overtures have so far been rejected by Pohlad, who bought the Twins from Calvin Griffith in 1984 for about $37 million and now may receive $250 million--or $151 million more than Forbes magazine’s estimated franchise value--from baseball for agreeing to fold the team.

Griffith said he doesn’t believe that $250-million figure, calling it either a media creation or a sum that will be used by Pohlad--besides lining pockets already bulging with billions of dollars--to compensate cities in his farm system and pay for any contract or legal obligations.

It is also being theorized that baseball is willing to overpay Pohlad for his support and mentoring of Commissioner Bud Selig and willing to overpay Expo owner Jeffrey Loria because Loria will spend a large chunk of that excess to buy the Florida Marlins from John Henry, who in turn will spend a large chunk of it to buy the Angels from the Walt Disney Co., a little gift from baseball for the owners of ESPN, an industry underwriter.

Of course, Griffith may not want to believe $250 million is accurate because his own funding has been open to debate. Whereas other Twin Cities groups are insistent that their interest is contingent on a new stadium, the speculation in Griffith’s case is that his group is simply under-financed.

Pohlad was quick to reject a $95-million offer from Griffith in 1997 and did not respond to an October letter in which Griffith said he reaffirmed interest. By that time, of course, Pohlad was already committed to Selig and the ill-conceived contraction scenario.

“It’s frustrating in the sense that baseball has decided on a course unprecedented in major league sports and leading to the destruction of a team and the tainting of a great and viable market, the country’s 14th-largest media market,” Griffith said. “It’s also frustrating in the sense that there has been virtually no debate on the merits or absence of merits of contraction. It was a fait accompli by Selig. He simply walked into that meeting in Chicago, where it wasn’t even on the official agenda, and emerged with an overwhelming vote in favor of it. I mean, it would have been impossible to have an in-depth discussion of it in that short [period] of time. Some people I’ve talked to in the game still don’t know much about it.”

From his viewpoint as a sports-oriented lawyer, from his background in the Twins’ front office when his father owned the team, and from his experience as chairman of Major League Baseball Properties from 1975 to 1984 and as a member of the owners’ Player Relations Committee from 1975 to 1981, Griffith doesn’t think contraction solves anything and only creates controversy at a time when baseball needs to negotiate a new labor agreement.

“Contraction does nothing to help the real issues,” he said. “Any economic benefits are strictly ephemeral. A new labor agreement is far more important than a protracted battle over contraction, and that’s what it’s going to be.”

Clark Griffith was raised in a far different baseball era. His father was one of the last dinosaurs, one of the last family owners. Calvin Griffith simply couldn’t keep pace with the escalation in salaries and soured on the growing need to negotiate with middlemen. Some perceived him as penurious, but his son doesn’t believe that image or any other has hampered his interest in buying the Twins.

“Look,” Griffith said, “Pohlad is the one who came to me in both 1995 and ’97 with the proposal of putting a group together. It wasn’t as if I was beating his door down. I complied on both occasions and he was simply unable to pull the trigger.

“He was still too emotionally involved in baseball to sell the team. I don’t think it had anything to do with anything else.”

Well, it might have had a lot to do with the $95-million offer. As a former banker who relentlessly amassed a fortune foreclosing on under-financed properties, Pohlad retains a keen eye for the dollar. After eight consecutive losing seasons, his Twins finished second in the American League Central this year, drawing 1.78 million, an increase of 723,211 and their largest attendance since 1993.

For Clark Griffith, who believes his baseball background would be beneficial to the operation of the Twins and beneficial to Selig’s effort “to create a more efficient industry,” the resurgence of interest in 2001 illustrated the latent potential of the Twins Cities when the organization fields a competitive team.

Of course, the Twin Cities may not field any team next year, and--even though he sees Pohlad at breakfast several times a week and is willing to pick up those tabs--it would appear there is little Griffith can do to revive his baseball legacy, even if the courts keep the Twins where they are.