No, the Twins were the basic impetus behind the whole deal. An aged Carl Pohlad supposedly offered to sell the Twins to MLB for $150 million with the intention of killing them off. Here's Jim Caple of ESPN:



I'm not sure how what Caple said translates into a no. Carl wanted a new stadium and the threat of contraction was a tool to get it.

Jerry Reinsdorf is the #### of the world.

I remember reading somewhere that contraction will never happen not just because it will never happen given how much money MLB gets, but because of the minors as well.

Consider:
Each team has 5 to 7 affiliates.
Many of those affiliates also play in taxpayer-funded stadiums, many of them quite news.
Contracting two teams would thus take out 10 to 14 slots available for teams in the minors.
Even if teams were able to re-affiliate, there would still be odd-men out.
If a city that had paid millions of taxpayer dollars were to suddenly find out that it no longer would have a affiliated team- or if said team was going to have to be short-season A-ball instead of AA or whatever- there would be lawsuits, congress throwing fits, etc. MLB hates those.

I don't think they would ever contract one of the original 16 teams. If anything, and this would still never happen, some other team would get contracted and the A's would move into their territory. Like for instance contracting the Rays and then having the Tampa area pony up for a new stadium to bring the A's to town.

I don't see why they wouldn't ever consider it. Original 16 teams have moved. It depends on the if the market can support the team or not anymore. Which is also why I disagree with the second point. How would that be any different than building a new stadium for the Rays?

I'm not sure how what Caple said translates into a no. Carl wanted a new stadium and the threat of contraction was a tool to get it.

I don't think we'll ever know to what extent contraction was just a ploy for more stadia as opposed to a threat that might be carried out, but either way, the Twins were at the center of it. And I can believe that Pohlad was a miserable enough bastard that he would have been willing to kill off his own team if it came to that.

Reinsdorf is once again making the mistake of looking backwards and fighting yesterday's battles that he lost. The "growth" of Bud Selig in getting past this attitude (credit to Manfred and Weiner) probably helped baseball more than anything else.

The problem is that it is usually hard to find two teams to contract.

Thinking with my fingers....

Because of the everyday-nature of the game having one team idle at any one time, especially in the middle of summer, would be like leaving money on the table; one team would be idle on a Friday-Saturday-Sunday.

On the other hand, you can usually find one team in such financial straits that bankruptcy would contract them and you can usually find two teams that are almost as bad that they could be merged. I could see Oakland contracting with Miami and Tampa merging.

I think MLB making money hand over fist is probably more of an IMPETUS toward the contraction talk, simply because there is subsidization (revenue-sharing) going on. Plus Oakland has a hard time just moving because so many other teams have clams on the "open" territories and someone will then get the abandoned territory. I assume Angelos is still ######## in owners meetings.

Trying to have some fun thinking creatively with an odd number of teams... with the actual subject buried in the article... I wonder if that "idle team" in the MLB schedule could play a foreign team. For example, have the Tokyo Giants play the White Sox for a 3-game series in June and the games count in the teams' respective standings. Almost every MLB team would have to play two of these series. (I think the WHA did this with a couple of Russian teams in the 70's.)

Miami and Tampa merging

How do you do this and distribute talent across the league equally? I think any non-Houston and Seattle teams merging would result in an instant playoff contender.

he threatened to sell the Twins to a North Carolina businessman who said he would move the team to what is essentially Mayberry.

I remember this well. Mayberry ain't far off as a description.

He IS notoriously cheap when it comes to the Bulls, always attempting to avoid the NBA's salary cap taxes, though I believe he will have to actually pay some this year.

Partial spoiler to the trivia question going on in the NBA thread, but the Bulls are one of seven teams never to have paid these taxes (though my understanding is that they will this year as well).

On the other hand, you can usually find one team in such financial straits that bankruptcy would contract them and you can usually find two teams that are almost as bad that they could be merged.

Really? When is the last time a team went bankrupt on its own, not as the result of ownership's non-baseball finances? Seems like there were plenty of buyers for those non-baseball bankruptcy teams, too. Even the "small market" and second division teams are making money under the current set-up. Contraction is nonsense.

I always thought the biggest hurdle to contraction at this time is that MLB as a whole is posting record profits year after year and even the lowest revenue teams are making money...

Not sure why this is a hurdle. The lowest revenue teams make money presumably due to revenue sharing. If you contracted two teams, you'd have a bigger pie (eliminating two teams who on their own are losing money) divided up among fewer owners.

If a city that had paid millions of taxpayer dollars were to suddenly find out that it no longer would have a affiliated team- or if said team was going to have to be short-season A-ball instead of AA or whatever- there would be lawsuits, congress throwing fits, etc. MLB hates those.

If you're willing to spend $150 million to contract a team, you can probably afford to spend a few million to settle those lawsuits. Congress is a different matter I guess, but other than being a nuisance I'm not sure what they can do.

Congress is a different matter I guess, but other than being a nuisance I'm not sure what they can do.

Three words: Anti-trust exemption (or is that 2 words?)

Expand. A's to San Jose. Add a New Jersey franchise. Add a Charlotte team.

I am possibly alone on BTF in believing contraction was and remains a genuine threat by the owners.

You may not be lone, but you're a very small minority. I do not see contraction ever happening. If it got past the point of the collective bargaining agreement, some senator from whatever state is having the team contracted, will interfere or another from a state(Nevada?) that could support a team would get involved. It's never going to happen. It's an empty threat that nobody takes seriously, and inside of the next decade, the owners and players will have approved expansion again.

I don't think we'll ever know to what extent contraction was just a ploy for more stadia as opposed to a threat that might be carried out, but either way, the Twins were at the center of it. And I can believe that Pohlad was a miserable enough bastard that he would have been willing to kill off his own team if it came to that.

It's possible(but highly unlikely) that the owners seriously considered contraction, but again, it doesn't matter what the owners want, the players were never going to allow it, and as pointed out, the cities wouldn't have allowed it.

Contraction was/is a threat to use as a bargaining chip, that is all it's good for, it's not going to happen in any of our lifetimes.