Win Twins!

So the Minnesota Twins got their new ballpark. Old news by now, of course, and I won’t even pretend to understand everything about the details of the legislation; if you want to get technical about it, visit our friends at Field of Schemes.

Anyway, I’ve just got caught up on the news reports, and a few things caught my eye…

** Like this nugget of joy from the Baron Budhausen:

I was nervous we were coming close to the end. And if anybody thinks that was an idle threat, they were kidding themselves…I know Carl [Pohlad] has taken some hits…but there’s no family that wanted to stay there more in their hometown than they did…I felt like I did when we got our stadium [in Milwaukee]. That’s how much it meant, because that’s the last thing in the world anybody ever wanted to do, to think of no Twins in Minnesota.

Hoo boy. This is chock full o’ weaseliness, even for the Baron…

Let’s start with the Baron’s unbridled praise for C. Montgomery Pohlad. No one wanted to stay in Minnesota more than he did? If that were the case, then why did he offer the team up on the contraction altar? If that bit of unpleasantness had gone through, the Baron would have had to think of no Twins anywhere, let alone Minnesota.

The Baron’s crack about “idle threats” gets an honorable mention for dickery – I mean, is he trying to celebrate the success of his extortionist tactics?

** There was no direct quote offered, but the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Sid Hartman offers this from C. Montgomery himself:

Carl Pohlad said he would have sold the Twins after this season had the legislature not made a move to pass the stadium bill, which it was attempting to do late Saturday.

Talk about the geezer who cried wolf. C. Montgomery has claimed he was this far from selling the Twins for what, the last ten years? If the MLB business is really that bad, why didn’t he sell the team years ago? Maybe offering to contract the team scared off potential buyers. Or maybe he figured that he could huff and puff and scare the state and city into building him a new yard.

** Credit where it’s due: I will give C. Montgomery whatever props he deserves for putting up $130 million of his own (or should I say, the team’s) money to pay for the new stadium. Of course, that leaves about $392 million for the government to pay, so C. Montgomery isn’t off the Misers list just yet.

** Minnesota Public Radio has an informative article about how the stadium plan passed the state legislature. That piece gives us an insight into how the team was able to persuade stadium opponents to change their minds:

Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, voted against every stadium plan for the past decade, but voted for this year’s proposal. Davids says he told the Twins to find a way to build the stadium without using state taxpayer money, which this plan does.

“They took advice that I and others have given them as to why we have been voting ‘no’ in the past,” Davids said. It would have been a bit hypocritical for me to ask them to do something and then they come back with a plan I ask them to do and then I vote against it.”

Putting aside the tortured syntax of that last sentence…it’s good to see someone in government defending the taxpayers. But what Davids doesn’t mention is that most of that $392 million will come from taxpayer money.

Technically, Davids is correct (and that is the best kind of correct to be) – according to MPR, the stadium plan permits a 0.15% sales tax in Hennepin County to raise money for the stadium. So the state taxpayer money remains safe and sound, just like Davids wanted. Apparently, he wasn’t as concerned about the county taxpayer money.

One more thing about the stadium deal – that sales tax increase does not need voter approval. So everybody wins – the Baron, C. Montgomery, the Twins, Minnesota politicians wanting to show their constituents that they’ve kept their promise not to spend state tax money. Everyone except the people who live and shop in Hennepin County, I guess.