Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Team For Sale! *RINGS BELL* Team For Sale!
Hot takes are a-flyin' like Jhoan Duran fastballs today, as the Pohlad family announced they're putting the Minnesota Twins on the market after 40 years of ownership. Bullying works!
Extremely funny that, when presented with public outrage over electively hamstringing the team financially, the family decided "hm, we'll simply cash out" rather than attempting any monetary appeasement. (Click here to read their actual statement.) Last sold to the Pohlads in 1984 for $44 million, the Twins franchise is estimated to be worth around $2 billion today. Credit to the billionaire Pohlads for snagging those two World Series wins in '87 and '91. Shame on the Pohlads for decades of pinch-penny governance, which resulted in mainstream calls to "get serious or sell" following this past season's historic collapse. Oh, yeah! And extra shame on late patriarch Carl for his willingness to let the Twins vanish from Minnesota in 2001; he had schemed to unload 'em to North Carolina four years earlier.
But we're here to issue a trusty and timeless universal reminder: Things could always be worse. Did you know that a famous racist (former Twins owner Calvin Griffith) mulled selling the Twins to an even more famous racist in '84? Ex-President Donald Trump! (H/T to the must-follow account Twins Almanac for remembering this historic nugget.) The story goes a little something like this: In '83 Trump wined/dined Griffith in New York City, and reportedly offered him $50 million in exchange for the Twins. Here's Griffin, sounding like a real hayseed, via biographer John Kerr:
I had the thrill of my life going through Mr. Trump’s towers there and seeing all those million dollar condos he had. Whoooeee! It was so superb it was unbelievable. Johnny Carson has a condo there. It was a lot of money no question about it. I never thought I’d get in a room talking about the kind of money he was talking about. It was more than [Carl] Pohlad ever offered, definitely.
Goll-eee! Sounding quite Trump-like, Trump told Griffin, "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," according to Twins lawyer Peter Dorsey. Ultimately the deal fell through—bullet dodged! For much more of Trump acting a villain in the sporting world, I recommend Jeff Pearlman's exhaustively reported 2018 book, Football For A Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL.
Anyway, back to contemporary baseball matters: (At least one columnist from) North Dakota is apparently making a play for our Twins.
Strib Cuts Terrific History Column
To keep today's sports theme humming along, it's time for some more armchair Strib quarterbacking. If I'm running the Star Tribune Media Co. (I'm not; they laid me off in 2020), I'm retaining the services of Curt Brown, the veteran journalist responsible for the Strib's wonderful Minnesota history column.
Alas, Brown announced Wednesday that the newspaper declined to renew his contract. That means no more deep-dive remembrances of legendary local Negro League baseballers; no more murderous love triangle recaps from 1950; and no more thoughtful pieces on righting past wrongs, like this one on a Native Civil War hero. And that's just giving you an itty-bitty glimpse of his range; the man wrote on everything from international Airstream caravans to the great grasshopper plague of the 1870s.
Brown worked as a daily news reporter for 32 years, including for the Strib from 1989 until his semi-retirement in 2014. That same year he began churning out weekly history columns as a freelancer—"nearly 500 character-driven yarns the last decade," he tells us.
If the tone of this blurb rings bitter or scoldy, that's due to my own personal failings. Here's the much more magnanimous Brown, writing to us earlier today:
I will deeply miss writing these stories about the characters who punctuate Minnesota's past. The column morphed into a crowdsourcing bonanza with readers serving up family stories and great suggestions. But I have nothing but gratitude for the Star Tribune giving me a stage from which I could tell stories since way back in 1989.
Krispy Kreme Mounts Minnesota Comeback
Krispy Kreme donuts arrived in Minnesota to great fanfare in 2002. Just six years later, the North Carolina-launched treat maker disappeared from our state, perhaps due to colossally inept management through the '00s or perhaps due to its namesake products being gross-out sweet—who can say? This much is certain, per J.D. Duggan at the Biz Journal: Krispy Kreme will soon return to Minnesota. An old CVS at 5696 University Ave. in Fridley is set to house the comeback location, which will include a "donut factory" in addition to retail. Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp. was purchased by German parent company JAB Holdings, also the conglomerate parent to Minnesota's Caribou Coffee, for $1.35 billion in 2016.
Fish Tales
Did you know there was a historically massive herring spawn on Lake Superior two years ago? And that, after decades of diminishing numbers, the hatchling count is expected to surpass any year's since record keeping began in 1970? Of course you didn't. But the Star Tribune's Greg Stanley is all over it with this fascinating story about the handful of commercial fishermen who still work Minnesota waters, and how they're poised to take advantage of the "once-in-a-lifetime" pop in the herring population. According to fishery experts, "that single generation of herring could be enough to support the state’s entire commercial fishing industry for the next 15 years," Stanley writes. However, reasons fisherman Eric Brisson, "a lot can happen in two years, and it’s a big lake.” Great reporting, great photography, great package. Well done, says this armchair Strib QB.
