Twins for sale
Do you know who almost bought the team last time?
It was announced on Thursday that the Minnesota Twins are for sale.
What if I told you that the last time the team was on the market that a future President of the United States was in the running to become owner?
The 45th president of the United States and the 2024 Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump, submitted the highest bid for the team.
Trump made a $50 million bid to purchase the Twins from Calvin Griffith in 1984. However, Carl Pohlad would become the owner for a reported $44 million.
Griffth’s attorney, Peter Dorsey, was quoted as saying in the 1990 biography “Calvin: Baseball’s Last Dinosaur” written by Jon Kerr:
"We met up in his (Trump’s) office and he said, 'I've got something that a lot of other people have, and I don't have something that a lot of people do have. I don't have a board of directors or shareholders. And I do have a helluva lot of money,'" Dorsey recalled, according to the biography.
If he submitted the highest bid, why didn’t Trump become the Twins' owner?
MLB owners make the decision about ownership, and it’s a common occurrence for them to favor an owner they'd prefer rather than simply the highest bidder.
Given what we know about his temperament, one and probably two things would have happened had Trump assumed ownership of the Twins:
He likely would have let the team’s relatively unknown players go in favor of big-name free agents. Much of the core of the team that would win World Series titles in 1987 and 1991 (Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, Greg Gagne, Kirby Puckett, Randy Bush, Frank Viola) would have been removed. And that would have been done despite owners colluding against players. A total of 62 players filed for free agency in 1985, but only four signed. There were no offers for star players (granted, older in most cases) like Rod Carew, Kirk Gibson, Bobby Grich, Tommy John, and Phil Niekro.
It’s also probable he would have at least threatened to move the team in favor of a better financial arrangement at the Metrodome if not move altogether. There were no teams in Florida at the time as the Florida (now Miami) Marlins didn’t begin play until 1993 and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now Rays) started in 1998. Trump also had strong ties to the New York-New Jersey area and owned the New Jersey Generals of the USFL and explored ways to move that team into New York.
Trump is widely blamed for the USFL's demise because he pressured owners into moving the league’s games to the fall, where they would compete directly against the NFL.
The league failed prior to the 1986 season. A jury later found that the NFL's attempts to destroy the USFL violated anti-trust laws but awarded the USFL owners only a token $1 in damages.
Trump also had an interest in another baseball team that now resides in the American League Central, the Cleveland Guardians (then the Indians).
His attorney sent a letter to the team in 1983 to let the franchise know of his interest in purchasing the team.
According to a story posted on cleveland.com, Trump and his wife at the time, Ivana, made several trips to Cleveland as part of his pursuit of the Indians.
Despite rumors later that year that Trump had bought the team, the deal was never done -- in large part because Trump stopped short of making an ironclad commitment to Cleveland. A report by Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Tony Grossi in late 1983 that Trump's would promise only to keep the Indians in Cleveland a minimum of three years.
