FLASHBACK: Media Coverage of the 1984 Sale of the Minnesota Twins to Carl Pohlad

[Tom Froemming]

I stumbled upon this checking out Twins stuff on YouTube and found it fascinating. Below is a video that compiles some of the media coverage from when Calvin Griffith sold the Twins to Carl Pohlad back in 1984. 

 

I found the entire 25+ minutes interesting, but there is a little overlap in coverage on some of the earlier segments. The profiles on both Griffith and Pohlad were particularly fun to see. A lot of the items covered I was aware of, but as someone who hadn't been born yet, it's interesting to see what the media coverage of the sale and these two men was like at the time the deal went down.

 

The full video is below, but here's a link to where the "special reports" on Griffith and Pohlad start (around the 16:30 mark). 

 

 

I'd love to hear any of your memories from that time.

[tarheeltwinsfan]

Thanks Tom. That was very interesting.  In only 3 years after this sale/purchase  the Twins won the World Series and did so again 4 years after that.  It's been 28 years since 1991. I think it is time for the Twins to be World Champs again., 

[big dog]

Griffith's pay scale was legendary.  We all knew that there was no way the team was going to keep anyone who had a halfway decent year and became a free agent.  Dave Goltz, Larry Hisle, Gary Ward, all guys who were gone because they wanted very reasonable money.  Lyman Bostock traded before he got to that position.

 

Two memories that stand out- Gaetti was a young player and he mentioned to the press that his major league salary wasn't enough to allow him to live without having a job during the winter.  He said that it was hard to put in a full offseason of workouts when you had to bag groceries in order to pay your rent.

 

Another year they had a centerfielder named Darrell Brown.  He was charged with passing a bad check in California and there was a warrant out for his arrest.  He actually stayed in Minnesota on a road trip so that he wasn't arrested at the ball park.  The Twins were fighting for third place that year- if I recall correctly, each player on the third place team got something like $10,000 each of playoff money which was a fortune to those guys.  One player said in an interview that they were really trying hard and their rallying cry was "Keep Brownie out of jail!"

 

Yup, these were the Calvin Griffith Twins.

 

I remember we all thought the money was really going to flow after that.  It did, relative to the days of Cal, but not compared to the hopes and dreams of the fans.

[CharlieDee]

Good stuff Tom. I remember those days and being excited about having new owners. I think everyone was happy Calvin was selling!  That was a fun time as we had a new Metrodome, new owners, and some great young players. Now it seems like such a long time ago....I'm ready to see the Twins win a World Series again!

[tony&rodney]

The two men, Griffith and Pohlad, were very different. Griffith was purely a baseball man, an individual to the core, approachable, and a near cliche flawed human being. At a large party just before Game 1 of the 1987 World Series, thrown for media and anyone else with a pass, Calvin sat alone by himself off to the side and was happy to visit freely with a nobody for thirty minutes. Pohlad was a businessman, astute and tuned into the economic strategies available for people such as himself. He knew what to say and when to say it. Carl was certainly guarded, although I found him polite. 

Now after watching the video, I draw attention to Griffith's naïveté. He states that he and Carl will be partners, with Pohlad as the owner. Indeed, there was mention that Griffith's family would remain with the organization. Calvin never got any of that in writing and they were all shown the door. Carl did what the business model suggested and he followed the guidelines of the major league baseball's executive committees. As you can imagine, Griffith was not in favor with other owners. Different styles and we don't need to criticize either but awareness should serve to educate fans to some extent. The comments of Kent Hrbek, Mickey Hatcher, and the little blurb where Dave Engle approaches Calvin to say thank you are precious. Read the biography, Calvin Griffith: The Last of the Dinosaurs.

[sweetmusicviola16]

1984 was actually a fun season until the final week. The Twins were neck and neck in the old AL West with KC. I believe we were 81-75 and the teams were tied. The Twins however were swept by lowly Cleveland, including a game that we led 9-0 as I recall and ended up losing 10-9. Then with all wind out of our sails we got swept by KC in the last series.

 

But 1984, they year that Hrbek, Brunansky, Gaetti and Viola matured into legit ML ball players. It was also the rookie year of a guy from Chicago named Kirby Puckett.

 

Cal Griffith. I will always remember him fondly for the most part. He could no longer afford an ML team and had to rid players as they progressed in the game to to lack of funds. But had he not sold the likes of Smalley, Wynegar, Ward, Landreaux, Erickson off we may well have never had 87 and 91 as WS champs. It was the return he got for the players in his firesale that made up the core that will forever be in Twins lore. Calvin and those he hired did have an astute eye for young talent.

[Guest]

I'll be the one to say it, I let out a large WHOOP! when I heard Griffith was selling to someone who was planning to keep the team in Minnesota.

 

I couldn't stand Griffith. Maybe he could evaluate talent, but he was a racist, greedy SOB and a flat out terrible businessman. I've always felt that if he'd had any clue about running a successful, customer-centered business, he'd have been able to succeed, even in the free agent era.

 

But he had no interest in even trying to do that. Instead, he railed against having to treat players as anything but chattel that he had absolute control over. He simply refused to adjust his approach, probably because he couldn't adjust his very flawed personality.

 

People hold the Pohlads' willingness to contract the team against them (and rightfully so), but if Griffith could have gotten the price he wanted, with MLB owners' approval, to move or sell the team, he'd have done it in a heartbeat. In fact, as I recall, Pohlad was pretty much the last best hope to keep the team in Minnesota. Griffith had an escape clause in the Dome lease that he was set to exercise after 1984 if a buyer hadn't been found.

 

And I wasn't alone in feeling that way about him. The most surprising thing in the news clips, to me, were that every fan they interviewed spoke admiringly about Griffith. I certainly don't remember most fans feeling warm and fuzzy toward him. Maybe the media was just more deferential in those days and didn't feel right about using uncomplimentary responses on the air.

 

Carl made a pretty astute $32 million investment, as it turned out. He also had a competitive streak in him. His son Jim inherited the successful business, but I wish he'd also inherited a bit more of that drive to be "number 1."

[Nine of twelve]

 

 

I couldn't stand Griffith. Maybe he could evaluate talent, but he was a racist, greedy SOB and a flat out terrible businessman.

I'm not going to defend Calvin Griffith's infamous Waseca remarks. But for the purpose of a broader perspective I will mention a couple related things about Rod Carew. Carew at the time strongly denounced Griffith for those remarks, but when Carew was elected to the Hall of Fame the first person he called to thank was Calvin Griffith. And Carew attended Griffith's funeral.

[tony&rodney]

Calvin could be viewed as a simple man, but his relationships with players were complicated by the ongoing financial hassles contrasting with his rather astute observations of their talents. It was a different time and there isn't any way for someone who wasn't an adult in the 1970s to understand the dynamics of that era. I don't mean that as demeaning in any fashion. Free agency and business in general changed dramatically and layers of managers made decisions more about the margins and "solid" business acumen than any former emphasis on human interactions or performance. Some of that was for the better and some was not. 

If you ever had a conversation with Carew or Oliva about Calvin, they would elucidate the issues best.