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Former Twins owner Griffith dies at 87
Posted: Wednesday October 20, 1999 01:47 PM
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Calvin Griffith, who brought major league baseball to Minnesota and later earned notoriety as one of the game's biggest tightwads, died Wednesday in Melbourne, Fla. He was 87. Griffith developed a kidney infection and a high fever two days ago, said Sima Griffith, his daughter-in-law. She said he had a pacemaker put in three to four weeks ago and had been in a rehabilitation center in Florida. Griffith moved the Senators after the 1960 season and the team became the Minnesota Twins. He sold the club to Minneapolis banker Carl Pohlad in 1984. Under Griffith, the Twins led the American League in attendance their first 10 seasons, featuring such stars as Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles, Bob Allison and Rod Carew. "The people in Minnesota were trying to get a baseball club for so many years," Griffith said during a December 1995 interview. "They were on the verge of getting one several times. Then the Giants went to California, Cleveland stayed in Cleveland and the White Sox stayed in Chicago. "[Minnesota fans] got disappointed so many times, when they got a team they wanted to show their appreciation." The love affair peaked in 1965, when the Twins lost the World Series in seven games to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It began to fade during the 1970s as free agency crept into the game. "Calvin was one of the dinosaurs in the game," Twins manager Tom Kelly told WCCO Radio Wednesday. "You talk about somebody standing up for his principles -- about how the game should be run or the ownership of a team -- Calvin certainly was one of the dinosaurs." Griffith visited the Twins as recently as this summer, rubbing elbows with coaches, players and journalists. A bat boy who grew into an owner in the family business, Griffith was born in Montreal on Dec. 1, 1911, one of Jimmy and Jane Robertson's seven children. He and sister Thelma were sent to Washington to live with their aunt and uncle when Calvin was 11 and Thelma was 9 because their parents were struggling financially. When Jimmy Robertson died a short time later, the children were adopted by Addie and Clark Griffith and took the Griffith name. Griffith was a bat boy in 1924-25 for the Senators, the team for which his uncle and adopted father became a Hall of Fame pitcher. He worked in every capacity in the minors and majors before taking control of the Senators from Clark Griffith. Griffith was among the first owners to prophesy doom for small-market teams, a position contradicted when the Twins won World Series titles in 1987 and 1991 -- after Griffith sold them to Pohlad, ending 65 years of franchise ownership by the Griffith family. When he still owned the team, Griffith refused to pay the escalating salaries brought on by free agency. The Twins started losing their best players to other teams, and Griffith became a villain to the fans when he talked about selling to a group that wanted to move the Twins to Tampa, Fla. Eleven years after selling the team, Griffith seemed to realize his forecast for the game's future was wrong. "The salaries and everything else was just getting way out of line," he said. "We couldn't hang on. But if I knew they were going to get $15 million for their damn TV [broadcast rights], I would have stayed in there." For all the acrimony Griffith created with his stance on salaries, his lowest moment came during a speech to a local Rotary club in 1978. "Black people don't go to ballgames, but they'll fill up a rassling ring and put up such a chant they'll scare you to death," he said. "We came [to Minnesota] because you've got good, hardworking white people here." The Minneapolis Star wrote a front page editorial calling for Griffith to sell the team. Griffith said later his words were taken out of context, but civil rights groups called for a boycott of Twins games. Carew, whose contract was soon to expire, said, "I'm not going to be another nigger on his plantation."
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