Major League Baseball in North Carolina? At one time, the state eyed the Minnesota Twins
The stars appeared to be aligning in 1998 to bring Major League Baseball to North Carolina.
Carl Pohlad, then the owner of the Minnesota Twins, was talking about selling the team if he didn’t get a new ballpark.
Don Beaver, a Hickory businessman, was ready to buy it and had support within MLB.
A referendum for a tax increase was placed on the ballot in Forsyth and Guilford counties that would provide a major part of the funding for a new ballpark, to be built in the Triad.
“A baseball team would be good for the state — a sport that reaches the masses,” Beaver told the News & Observer in 1998. “There’s a need in this state for the one missing major professional team, a baseball team. Maybe I can make it happen.”
And then it all fell apart.
The referendum failed — badly.
Pohlad eventually got the new park he wanted in Minneapolis.
Beaver did not have a team to buy and North Carolina did not get Major League Baseball.
Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon is now saying he’s ready to give it a try, that he has an investment group and that a team could be in Raleigh or Charlotte.
Beaver wanted the Twins — or whatever the new team would be named — to start play in 2001 in a park that was to be built near Kernersville. The idea was for a centrally located MLB park that could draw from both the Triangle and the Charlotte area and have no major-league pro sports competition in the Triad.
Beaver then owned five minor-league teams and was part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He said his group of investors needed $140 million in public funding to build the $210 million ballpark. He believed the Triad would approve a tax increase in the referendum, and an exhibition game in March 1998 between the Twins and Montreal Expos in Winston-Salem was well-received.
Jim Hunt, then North Carolina’s governor, threw out the ceremonial first pitch and said MLB in the Triad would be a “good deal” for the state.
But the Triad referendum in May 1998 was voted down 67% to 33% in Guilford County and 59-41% in Forsyth.
Beaver, then 57, was disappointed that night when the returns rolled in. He said Charlotte might be an option for the Twins but conceded, “We’re behind the eight-ball.”
Looking back 25 years later, how serious was the effort?
Pohlad did sign a letter of intent to sell the Twins to the group of investors headed by Beaver. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but it was believed Beaver’s group offered $140 million.
After the Triad referendum was voted down, Beaver did not give up his efforts and hoped he still might be able to buy the team and move it to Charlotte.
But that came to an end after Pohlad and the Twins agreed to play two more seasons in the Metrodome. One Minnesota state legislator said the talk of a sale was little more than a bluff by Pohlad and a ruse between Pohlad and Beaver to gain funding for a new Twins ballpark — a notion Beaver dismissed.
“That’s been the talk since we first started the process,” Beaver told the N&O in 1998. “If we hadn’t thought it was a viable situation we certainly wouldn’t have wasted our time.”
Bud Selig, then the acting MLB commissioner, said even had the referendum been approved, major-league owners might not have approved a relocation to the Triad, then the 46th largest market in the country.
Pohlad owned the Twins until 2009, when he died at 93. Pohlad’s son, Jim, is the team’s executive chairman and part owner.
Beaver became majority owner of the Charlotte Knights minor-league team. While not getting to as many games as he once did, he was spotted at Truist Field in uptown Charlotte this past May, the Charlotte Business Journal reported.
(Chip Alexander covered Don Beaver’s attempt to bring MLB to the state in 1998)
