Selig to Twins: It Was Nothing Personal

The man who provided the Minnesota Twins with a rallying cry, who helped light their crusade, was ushered up a private stairway behind the press box and into the glass enclosed box of Twins’ owner Carl Pohlad.

A Metrodome crowd of 55,562 was too busy waving their Homer Hankies, too caught up in Game 1 of the American League championship series, to notice that the commissioner of baseball had joined them--a good thing, of course, for Bud Selig, the reviled purveyor of the contraction plan that called for the Twins’ extinction.

Had Selig chosen to sit with Jackie Autry and other baseball luminaries in a newly constructed box near the Angel dugout, he might have been greeted by a rude and roof-raising reception surpassing even the normal, ear-shattering decibel level.

The fact is, however, Selig should be cheered here, greeted by a red carpet.

Amid their surprising and stirring season, as they continue to shed the Selig label of an aberration, and now take on the Angels in a series refuting the competitive imbalance doctrine, the Twins have used contraction as motivational fodder, driven by the vision of Selig presenting them with the World Series trophy in their champagne-soaked clubhouse.

Even Selig smiled at that vision Tuesday night and said: “If I was their Knute Rockne, then they owe me something.”

Something?

“Well,” said infielder Denny Hocking, “I don’t think we’re going to vote him a full share.”

The Twins have time still to think of another reward, although they took another step toward turning improbability into reality and Selig into Rockne by defeating the Angels, 2-1, in the ALCS opener as Joe Mays and Eddie Guardado erased the memory of those 56 hits and 31 runs Anaheim had collected against the New York Yankees in the division series.

With no Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina and David Wells to beat up on, the Angels were restricted to four hits, and this much is clear:

The Twins live and contraction is dead, buried through 2006 by the new labor agreement, and Selig, talking with reporters during the early innings of Game 1, said contraction was never about the Minnesota players and it was time to put the focus on the field.

He delivered that same message to Hocking, the Twins’ union representative, before the game. Hocking said he didn’t plan to interrupt the playoffs simply to relay to teammates in a clubhouse meeting what Selig told him, but “I was impressed that he was man enough to signal me out. He was basically saying that [contraction] is off the table for four years, let’s put it behind us.”

Aside from Hocking and Manager Ron Gardenhire, who also talked with Selig before the game, the Twins had no knowledge he was present, secluded in the owner’s box, and Hocking said that despite all of the comments he and teammates have directed at the commissioner, neither he nor contraction are the “rallying cry” they have been portrayed to be.

“The extra motivation was fine in April and May,” he said, “but this team began sniffing this position at about the All-Star break.”

That may be true, but when hasn’t Selig been a convenient lightning rod?

What other theme is there to this ALCS than that of a team rising from the ashes of virtual extinction and baseball’s 27th-lowest payroll to now close within three victories of the World Series?

Selig himself called it a remarkable story, saluted the job General Manager Terry Ryun has done, said the community should be proud and that there is no reason to continue replaying contraction, that if people had grown sick of hearing him talk about it, he was equally sick of continuing to talk about it.

Nevertheless, Selig wasn’t so sick that he couldn’t make another effort to set the record straight. He wouldn’t confirm what is accepted as fact, that it was banker Pohlad who volunteered his team for contraction, but he reiterated that the concept wasn’t his baby alone, that all 30 owners approved it, including some who wanted four teams eliminated.

He also insisted that he isn’t referring to the talent level of the Minnesota players or any other players in describing it as an aberration when a small-revenue team reaches the playoffs.

Selig has received industry heat for using that term, but he said it’s only a reflection of that seven-year study by his blue-ribbon committee that showed 98.2% of 224 playoff games had been won by teams in the top two payroll quartiles.

He also pointed out that the Twins had gone through “a decade of frustration to get where they are” and that Oakland has been the only small-revenue team “to win consistently” and “we have seen how hard it is for the A’s and other small-market teams to retain their players.”

The new labor agreement, Selig said, will provide immeasurable help for those teams. The Twins, for example, are expected to receive about $25 million in revenue sharing in the first year of the new agreement, and even the Angels, despite playing in a booming population belt, are expected to receive about $13 million on the basis of comparatively low revenue.

If the revived Twins could benefit from a new ballpark, a process still tied up in legislation, their immediate future is secure, and Selig said he was “grateful to be here, grateful that [Minnesota] still has a team.”

Of course, referring to the uncertain reception, he acknowledged that neither his wife, who went to school in the Twin Cities, nor many relatives and friends, chose to accompany him (“they decided to let me try it the first time,” he said) and only Laurel Prieb, his son-in-law, came with him from Milwaukee.

“I guess he felt that he could serve as a bodyguard,” Selig said.

As it turned out, Selig didn’t require a bodyguard. Most fans didn’t know he was at the game, nor did most of the Twins.

Hocking, of course, had resisted calling a clubhouse meeting to inform them. The commissioner’s name comes up often enough in their clubhouse anyway.