Patrick Reusse: Here’s a label for Minnesota Twins followers who labeled their two owners ‘cheap’

Twins

Let’s go with “whiners.” Twins fans are better at complaining than attending games, and that will show even if the next owner throws dollars at the roster.

By Patrick Reusse

The Twins led the American League in attendance for their first decade on the Bloomington prairie, with an average of slightly over 1.33 million from 1961 to 1970. There was a World Series in 1965, the AL’s Great Race in 1967, and the first two AL West titles in 1969 and ’70.

Calvin Griffith, owner and his own general manager, went into 1971 spring training in a grumpy mood. The Twins had been one win better at 98-64 in 1970 than in 1969, yet attendance had fallen by 88,000 — to 1,261,087 — because fans were upset that Calvin had fired Billy Martin after his one season as manager in 1969.

There was quite a contrast in on-field leadership preferences of Minnesota’s sporting public at that time. There was great fondness for Bud Grant, the steely-eyed stoic who was leading the 1969 Vikings to a Super Bowl, and also for Martin, the maniacal little man who had punched out his pitcher Dave Boswell in a drunken fight outside the Lindell AC bar in downtown Detroit that summer.

Bill Rigney’s Twins had won those 98 games in 1970 with only seven wins from Luis Tiant, Calvin’s prime pitching acquisition in the offseason, and three from Boswell. “The Bos” had won 20 in 1969, even though he was unofficially suspended for a time in August, for getting his face in front of Martin’s punches.

Cy Young Award winner Jim Perry, Jim Kaat and wunderkind rookie Bert Blyleven were the anchors of Rigney’s rotation. Tiant was shut down because of an aching right shoulder, and Boswell had something going on that would cause his right arm to turn black and blue when he tried to pitch.

And thus it came on March 31, 1971, the last day when a team could release a player and only be on the hook for one-third of his salary, that Calvin released both Tiant and Boswell.

This saved Calvin and the Twins a total of $54,000: $32,000 for Tiant and $22,000 for Boswell. If parsimony can ever be correct, Griffith won the Boswell bet. His arm was shot, he won one more game in the big leagues, and went home to Maryland to work at the National Brewery.

Tiant? Not quite as wise for Calvin. Luis had tried to pitch in 1970 despite a fractured scapula in his pitching arm. Tiant wound up in Boston in the second half of 1971, going 1-7 with a 4.85 ERA.

No one was screaming “cheap Calvin” over the Tiant release. That started in 1972, when “El Tiante” started his run as a hero in Fenway Park. He was 15-6 with a 1.91 ERA that season, and 121-74 with a 3.20 ERA in 1,702 innings in seven Red Sox seasons from then through 1978.

Baseball’s most elaborate windup. The long cigars. The white suits of a proud Cuban. The “Fred Astaire” of pitching, said Reggie Jackson, a reference that certainly reminds you how long ago it was when Minnesota baseball fans first started proclaiming that an owner of the Twins was “cheap.”

Much evidence of Calvin’s frugality — this, indeed, was a family business with a needed bottom line — would surface over the next 14 years. And, somehow, I found symmetry that when Tiant died at 83 last Tuesday, the public accusations of a “cheap Twins ownership” were reaching a crescendo.

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Yes, we knew the tales of Calvin as a hard-nosed negotiator, but money wasn’t the almighty tiebreaker for talent until saving $32,000 cost the Twins a half-decade of El Tiante — before free agency completely changed the finances of the game.

Griffith was a baseball man. Calvin was the guy who told manager Sam Mele in spring training of 1967 that 21-year-old Rod Carew, out of Class A ball, would be his second baseman. Allegedly, Mele told beat reporters in Florida, “Starting the season with this kid at second isn’t my idea.”

Nobody saw those seven batting titles coming from Sir Rodney? I think Calvin did.

Griffith was cheap because costs were exploding as we stopped coming to the ballgames. And now Minnesota’s baseball fan base, which has been overrated for its loyalty for 55 years since the loutish Martin was fired, is taking a chest-thumping victory lap for driving the “cheap Pohlads” to sell.

You showed ’em, folks … forcing Minnesota’s second family of Twins ownership to get rid of a business it bought for $44 million four decades ago for $1.3 billion, maybe more. And, surely, you’ll get those new owners that pay the billion-plus, take the $40-50 million hit on lost regional TV revenue, and then will add $100 million to the payroll.

And that will get you to an actual ballgame? Probably not.

Great complainers, mediocre baseball fans.

Patrick Reusse is a sports columnist who writes three columns per week.

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