Team May Strike Out if Players Walk Out

MINNEAPOLIS —  The quickest way to bring a gloating, floating Minnesota Twins fan back down to his barstool after another Twins win is to employ a specific verbal sucker punch--unsportsmanlike but effective: The fans didn’t save the Twins, you remind him. A judge did.

The fairy-tale team of 2002 would likely exist now only in the record books under major league baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s so-called contraction plan, but for U.S. District Judge Harry Crump’s order last fall that the team honor its lease with the aging Metrodome and play through next season.

“I know, I know,” said a humbled Alan Green at Hubert’s tavern, across the street from the stadium, following a walloping of the Seattle Mariners earlier this week. “We got lucky. Now, if they strike, baseball is done here--really done.”

It’s hard to find a Minnesota baseball fan who disagrees, from former Twins stars Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek to Gov. Jesse Ventura to the guy who answers the phones at the Twins’ corporate offices.

If the players strike, they concur, voters will never agree to help the team build a new stadium--widely seen as a necessity for the Twins’ survival in baseball’s 14th-largest market.

The players union has threatened to strike Friday. With little progress thus far in talks between the union and owners, a walkout looks increasingly likely.

From the blue plastic seats of the Metrodome, it also looks to be the death knell for one of history’s great smaller-town teams, a club that lost more often than it won but came through just frequently enough--with the help of Hall of Famers such as Harmon Killebrew--to allow major league baseball to survive even in a place where the number crunchers said it couldn’t.

The strike deadline comes as Minnesotans are falling back in love with their team after many summers of discontent--a club that embodies so many of the mysterious beauties of baseball and broke nearly all the rules of baseball-as-business this season.

Together with the Montreal Expos, the Twins were on Selig’s chopping block because they don’t earn enough money. They can’t afford star players. Their home is a sterile, covered stadium with artificial turf and tin-can acoustics that does more to put off fans than lure them. They draw an average of just 22,000 fans per game, compared with 27,800 across the majors. And, a year ago, they just couldn’t win.

Then, a bunch of unknown, relatively low-paid players, led by a manager who was hired just before spring training, started treating the season like the gift it was.

Torii Hunter had struggled in the big leagues and kept getting sent down to the minors. He finally figured out the game, hitting 27 homers last year, and this year is a most valuable player candidate while being hailed as perhaps the best center fielder in baseball. Third baseman Corey Koskie had been a hockey goalie and volleyball standout in Canada. Baseball was a hobby. The Twins drafted him in the 26th round, and he has emerged as a team leader.

Fans have grown so used to seamless double plays they hardly noticed when the team turned three in a game against the Mariners this week.

Entering Wednesday’s action, the Twins held a commanding 16 1/2-game lead, despite being the fourth-lowest paid team, with players earning a combined $41 million this year. (The Texas Rangers’ Alex Rodriguez will earn more than half that himself, about $25 million this season.)

It has been 11 years since the Twins found themselves in such a pleasant late-season situation. They are playoff-bound for the first time since 1991--unless there are no playoffs. The situation is similar to that of the 1994 Expos, whose division-leading record went for naught when a players’ strike canceled postseason play. It is that precedent that terrifies many fans.

The small-market Expos were 74-40, and leading the National League East by six games when the players went out, canceling the World Series for the first time in 90 years. The team has had just one winning season since and, like the Twins, is struggling to survive.

“We barely made it to this season,” said Ryan Kuno, the switchboard operator at the Twins’ offices. “Now the state has started supporting us. We’re selling some tickets. It’s fun again. If baseball implodes, people here will just watch the [National Football League] Vikings again and forget about baseball.”

Twins owner Carl Pohlad has said he’s tired of dumping money into the team and would dismantle it if voters would not help buy a new stadium with more luxury boxes, soda stands and other revenue-producing amenities. Before the judge stepped in, however, legislators found it difficult to drum up much support for a publicly financed stadium. Pohlad, for his part, played the role he has for years--rich bad guy.

The lowest-paid player will make $300,000 next season, however. And one of the main sticking points in negotiations has been the players’ refusal to accept salary caps.

This has left fans here reconsidering Pohlad, and fans across the country second-guessing the players’ positing in the whole squabble.

Tom Genrich, a 32-year-old computer programmer, stood outside the Metrodome before Wednesday evening’s game against the Mariners, hawking a program called Gameday. Along with two brothers and a friend, Genrich began publishing the slick magazine to compete with the team’s official version, and at $1 per copy, selling it for a quarter the cost.

“We did it because we love this game,” Genrich said. “And I’m trying to understand what they’re arguing over and it’s easier to sympathize, surprisingly, with the owners.

“They’re trying to bring some financial equality to the game, and the players are trying to protect $250-million contracts like Alex Rodriguez’s.”

Genrich sold a boy a program, handed him a free pencil to keep score, and shook his head.

“It gets to the point,” he said, “where you say a pox on both their houses.”