[Star Tribune] The Pohlad family is selling the Twins. @MillerStrib has the story:

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  1. Joe Pohlad rejected the notion last February that his family might consider selling the Minnesota Twins, saying “it’s not something that interests us.”

    It is now.

    Pohlad, grandson of the family patriarch who bought the state’s Major League Baseball team four decades ago, announced on Thursday that “after months of thoughtful consideration, our family reached a decision this summer to explore selling the Twins.”

    Pohlad declined through a team spokesman to speak publicly about that decision, but he and team president Dave St. Peter broke the news to the team’s roughly 400 full-time employees at a Target Field meeting Thursday morning, then issued a press release afterward.

    A sale, which could net Carl Pohlad’s three sons and eight grandchildren more than $1.5 billion, typically takes about six months, from identifying potential buyers to negotiating the terms to receiving approval of Major League Baseball’s other 29 owners. Carl Pohlad paid former owner Calvin Griffith $44 million when he purchased the franchise in 1984, and it was inherited by his sons upon his death in 2009.

    Only the Steinbrenner family, which took control of the New York Yankees when George Steinbrenner bought the team in 1973, and Jerry Reinsdorf, who purchased the Chicago White Sox in 1981, have owned their MLB franchise longer, among current owners, than the Pohlads.

    In fact, if a sale of the Twins is completed, it would mark the first time since 1919 that the team, founded as the Washington Senators in 1901 and moved to the Twin Cities in 1961, is owned by someone other than the Griffiths or Pohlads.

    Read more here: [https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-twins-sale-pohlad-family-mlb-calvin-griffith/601160089](https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-twins-sale-pohlad-family-mlb-calvin-griffith/601160089)

  2. Well. This is what I wanted. Now comes the scary power vacuum and fear of getting even worse ownership.

  3. All we can do is hope and pray they get sold to more of a Cohen type that treats the team like a luxury item and not a Nutting type. While the Pohlads are bottom tier owners, it’s still possible that it could get worse.

  4. Just hope that the new owner(s) are more like the Wilfs than the Griffeths or Pohlads.

    Them being a “private” family and not wanting their finances made public and endlessly debated – this makes sense.

  5. There’s gotta be a monkey’s paw to this. Like John Fisher will be the one to buy the Twins.

  6. 1. Today
    2. The birth of my first child
    3. The birth of my second child
    4. My wedding day

  7. Better streaming options and the Pohald’s are selling? This is better than making the playoffs!

  8. Unbelievable

    And kind of funny how several fanbases around the league have been calling for their owners to sell their teams for years, meanwhile we’ve only *really* been at it for a month or two and they’re already selling

  9. > Another possible factor in deciding to sell: The Pohlad family has come under intense criticism over the years for what many Twins fans say is a focus on profits over championships. That criticism, more pointed and palpable in today’s social-media environment, crescendoed this season when Joe Pohlad, facing a deep cut in the team’s television-rights payment, ordered the team’s front office to reduce the player payroll by roughly $30 million.

    Glad that the STrib pointed this out. The fans have been pissed.

  10. I don’t think anything we did as fans influenced the decision at all. They have known they were going this route for the past year and the moves leading up make a lot of more sense.

  11. Damn! I hope the right buyers are found that keep them in Minnesota and inject the cash needed to compete.

  12. This is a headline I never thought I would read in my lifetime. Unreal. I’ve been resigned knowing we’d have to deal with generations of these fucks. No blackouts and selling the team in consecutive days!!! Talk about a stretch of absolutely great news!!! Woo hoo!!

  13. Cautiously optimistic……..just scared that some sleezeball piece of shit buys the team.

    On the plus side, I can’t see anyone moving the team out of Minnesota anytime soon given that Target Field is one of the best parks in the MLB.

    Just hoping someone that actually loves baseball and wants to win will buy the team.

  14. man, Glen out AND Jim out? this is the dawn of a new era of Minnesota sports

    hopefully whoever buys will be willing to put some money in. doesn’t have to be Cohen, but needs to at least be enough to be competitive

  15. Between Bally and this, this is exactly what was needed to reinvigorate the fan base.

  16. This is 100% because they only see the Twins as a business. They see revenue dropping from poor management and the lowered TV revenue is freaking them out. Good Riddance.

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