Major League baseball owners say they plan to move ahead with contraction and the fate of the Minnesota Twins is still unclear. The Twins are a big story in the Twin Cities, but we wondered how the baseball saga is playing in Fargo. Mainstreet Radio's Dan Gunderson hit the streets to find out.
DAN GUNDERSON: Outside it's cold and icy, but the competition is hot inside the Fargo Senior Center.
[CLANKING]
SPEAKER: Beautiful.
DAN GUNDERSON: About a dozen men are gathered around two pool tables for the monthly singles tournament. The Twins are not a hot topic. One pool player chastises a reporter for distracting him. But once the game is over, everyone has an opinion, should the Twins stay or go.
SPEAKER: Got to keep them some way or other, I don't know. That's a tremendous asset for our state.
SPEAKER: Well, you never see them win anything, do you? Not very damn often.
SPEAKER: I would like to see the Twins at Minnesota forever, as far as I'm concerned. It's like the Lakers left. And that was a bummer. It was too bad that the Lakers left.
DAN GUNDERSON: The Lakers, of course, were Minnesota's first professional basketball team. They left in 1960, the same year the Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins. Across the river at Concordia College in Moorhead, a younger generation seems a bit more enthusiastic. April is a first-year student from Marshall, Minnesota. She says she can't remember a time when Twins games were not a family tradition.
APRIL: My family, I mean, as an example of a Minnesota family that we watch the Twins together. I mean, we have a wonderful year when the Twins are doing well, and we go through a downtime when the Twins are doing badly. But I think we would lose a lot of what brings our community together.
DAN GUNDERSON: A handful of guys hanging out between classes are united in their opinion, losing the Twins would not be cool.
SPEAKER: We finally start to play well. We got a lot more attendance and stuff like that. Now they leave, that's not cool.
SPEAKER: Plus, it's not like we're doing that bad. We won the World Series in '87 and '91. I mean, we're not like the Brewers or Expos.
SPEAKER: Cubs.
SPEAKER: I mean, I bet you in five years, we'd be trying to get on a baseball team again and be worthless. Have to rebuild again for five years. And then the attendance would be down for five years, and they need to keep them. It'd be horrible if we lost them.
DAN GUNDERSON: OK, this decidedly unscientific sampling may not represent how Fargo-Moorhead citizens feel about the Twins. So, seeking truth, I head for the sports page of the only newspaper in town. Fargo Forum columnist Mike McFeely has covered the Twins occasionally and written some columns sharply critical of Twins owner Carl Pohlad. He says the twins are taken for granted in rural Minnesota and the Dakotas. Summer evenings mean Twins baseball on the radio.
MIKE MCFEELY: That's going to be missed by people in the Dakotas and Minnesota and the farmers who are out in their tractors and this and that in the Dakotas. But I don't think it's going to be a tragic event for a lot of people. I mean, I think there's die-hard fans that are going to be pretty sad when it happens or if it happens, but I don't think it's-- it'll be too bad, but life goes on.
DAN GUNDERSON: McFeely says people seem conflicted about the Twins. They want the team to stay, but no one wants their tax dollars to pay for a new stadium.
MIKE MCFEELY: This stadium issue is almost taken on a life of its own in that, there's so much resentment towards it. That it's I don't want my tax dollars to go to fund this billionaire so he can make more money. And it just becomes such a point of contention with people. We want the Twins, but we don't want to pay for it. And that's the basic argument that everybody has.
DAN GUNDERSON: McFeely says the demise of the Twins will leave a hole in the sports page, but he doubts anyone except the most die-hard fans will notice. Dan Gunderson, Minnesota Public Radio, Moorhead.
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