Oct 20, 2005 12:02 pm US/Central
Reality Check: The Twins And A New Stadium
by Pat Kessler
(WCCO)
A team that says they will leave if they don't get a new stadium is not a new threat to Minnesota, but some question whether the strategy will work.
If every year is an inning of baseball, the Minnesota Twins are now in the 10th, after a decade of trying to get a new stadium amid years of threats to leave the state.
"We will go back and tell our children and their children, what it was like to have baseball in Minnesota," said former Gov. Arne Carlson in 1997.
"I would be very sad if I would have to live without (baseball) in my hometown," said a student in 2001.
"What's up with everybody?" asked Kirby Puckett in 2002. "You say you don't care if the Twins stay or go? Well, that's not what I remember."
The team is not threatening now. It will not say it's even thinking about moving and it doesn't have to.
"The status quo will not be an option," said Dave St. Peter with the Minnesota Twins. "We're playing baseball in the corner of a football stadium and it's not the long term answer to baseball in this market and a new facility is a must."
The Twins are playing in the Metrodome without a lease. The team is committed to 2006, but no later.
It is unknown if the heirs of 90-year-old team owner Carl Pohlad even want the Twins and moving sports teams in and out of Minnesota is nothing new.
It's TRUE that the Minnesota Twins themselves are a team that moved here. They were the Washington Senators until 1961.
The team relocated from the nation's capital after 59 years there, partly in a dispute over a new stadium.
Sports teams moving out of Minnesota are not the exception, but the rule.
And that's NOT THE WHOLE sports STORY.
The public paid $130 million to build a hockey arena for the Minnesota Wild, years after the North Stars moved away.
Another $74 million in public money was used to house the Minnesota Timberwolves, after the Minneapolis Lakers left for Los Angeles, Calif. in 1960.
It is UNKNOWN whether Major League Baseball is willing to pull the plug, but the League did it just two years ago to the Montreal Expos, moving the team to Washington D.C.
That's the city the Twins abandoned 45 years ago.
That's Reality Check.
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