THOMA COLUMN | A new season, and a new owner (kinda)
Feb. 20—There is a well-established protocol for those "introductory press conferences" that accompany major signings. The player and the general manager (or equivalent) sit in the middle, flanked by the agent and the owner.
And so it was last month when Carlos Correa, much to the surprise of everyone including himself, reupped with the Minnesota Twins. Correa was next to Derek Falvey, with Scott Boras at Correa's left ... and Joe Pohlad at the other end.
Joe Pohlad? Who dat?
Twins fans of a certain age well remember Carl Pohlad, who built a business empire but was essentially unknown to the public until he purchased the baseball team from Calvin Griffith. The elder Pohlad started turning over his various enterprises to his sons in the late 1990s, and for about 20 years, Jim Pohlad has been the chairman and public face of ownership. (Carl Pohlad died in 2009.)
Until November, when Joe — the 40-year-old son of Robert Pohlad — was named executive chairman. Falvey and Dave St. Peter (the team president) now report to Joe, although Jim is still apparently the team's official "control person" in eyes of the commissioner's office.
Joe Pohlad's emergence is no surprise. He's been preparing for this for years. He's worked in the commissioners office and has held a variety of behind-the-scenes roles in the organization, largely on the business and stadium operations side.
If Joe Pohlad is "the" owner, he is, I believe, the first third-generation owner of a major league team.
Second-generation ownership has been something of a Twins trademark. Griffith, of course, inherited the Washington Senators from adoptive father Clark Griffith, and Jim Pohlad controlled the franchise about as long as his father did.
But historically, few teams are passed from one generation to another, and when they are, the outcomes are frequently poor.
I can name four teams passed on by Hall of Fame owners to their progeny to ill effect: The Twins (Clark Griffith) and Athletics (Connie Mack) moved to new cities within a few years, the White Sox (Charles Comiskey) floundered before being sold and the Pirates (Barney Dreyfuss) turned a budding dynasty into mediocrity with a counterproductive power struggle.
For a long time, few teams kept the same ownership for more than five to seven years, presumably for tax reasons. And I suspect that inheritance taxes played a role in prompting even long-term owners contemplating their mortality to sell the franchise rather than pass it on.
But tax laws change, and the number of MLB teams now controlled by a second generation is on the rise.
The Yankees are the most prominent such franchise, of course. The official owners of the Cincinnati Reds and Baltimore Orioles are still alive, but effective control of the teams now lie with specific sons — and in both cases the sons went out of their way this offseason to establish themselves in the public eye as entitled jerks.
The first two generations of Pohlad ownership were rather low-key, and a continuation of that approach seems likely. If Joe Pohlad said anything during the Correa conference, I missed it.
That's a plus. Quiet ownership, at least in public, is better for the operation than an owner seeking headlines. There is little benefit to generating talk-radio controversy for its own sake.
