It's been worse

[nicksaviking]

Earlier today I rescued my 1979 Sporting News "Official Baseball Guide" from the hands of my two-year-old. Being curious I checked the Twins section and saw some old Calvin Griffeth criticisms. As they were vague I decided to check online for some original source material. Upon my first try I found what I was looking for, namely this:

 

Griffith spares few targets in Waseca remarks

 

Most of these Griffith anecdotes I had heard before though I never heard them in context, nor did I realize that all these terrible racist and hate driven rants were taken from the same Lions Club meeting.

 

I'll never defend the Pohlads, but this is a nice reminder of what a truely despicable human being former owner and Hall of Famer Calvin Griffith was.

 

For anybody not inclined to check the link, the most inflamatory statement was when he said he moved to Minnesota "when I found out you only had 15,000 blacks here."

 

Sounds like New Orleans was a possiblity previously until he recieved this "good news." So it's nice to know we have our Twins because the previous ownership viewed Minnesota as a racists haven.

[gunnarthor]

Nice post.

[spideyo]

Wow. What a terrible human being

[ashbury]

"Fat, cheap and racist is no way to go through life, son."

/ The original quote includes "drunk" which of course wasn't exactly unknown to Cal either. In fact I think he or his minions tried to explain the Waseca incident that way, as though it helped.

[DaveW]

A rich white dude being racist?

 

I'll be damned!

 

I'm surprised Rod Carew never kicked his ass.

[nicksaviking]

Bowie Kuhn and the other owners should have ran him out of the sport. He had a lot of power though, he was VP of the American League at the time. It goes without saying he would not have gotten away with that now. It just doesn't seem like it was that long ago. Or perhaps it was long ago but I just don't percieve it that way since it happened in my lifetime.