For weeks, the city of Minneapolis has been under occupation by the murderers, kidnappers, and rapists going by the moniker ICE. Two protestors, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, were openly murdered by ICE agents and smeared as aggressors by Donald Trump and his administration.
Unsurprisingly, the billionaire owner of the Twins, when asked to make a statement, took the most cowardly path to a nonanswer when directly asked about the invasion.
Coming into what appears to be a season ticket holder event,
Redditor MasonCharPint asked Tom Pohlad what he would to do to help stop the violence coming from ICE. The question and answer are transcribed below:
MasonCharPint: So, someone was murdered on the streets of Minneapolis this morning, and we’re in a room right now with one of the most influential families in Minnesota in the Pohlads, and one of the biggest institutions in Minnesota is the Minnesota Twins, an institution that employs a ton of immigrants. What are you doing personally, Mr. Pohlad, with your family’s ability to ask questions, influence the world around us, to end what’s happening here in the Twin Cities, and Mr. Falvey, what are you doing to protect your players and their families and everyone they hold dear because we can’t keep going on like this?
Tom Pohlad: I mean, you’re right; we can’t keep going on like this. I want to be careful here; I want to, of course, acknowledge the heartbreak that’s going on in this community right now, and, on a personal level, it’s… it’s killing me on a personal level to watch this. I want to be careful to… to not necessarily pick sides, so to speak, but I think what’s important and what strikes me as a problem is that how you go about something is really important, and how things are being gone about in this community right now is… not good, right? And it’s hurting a lot of people, and my heart goes out to this community, like I said. We’re trying to do our part as the Minnesota Twins to bring people together.
Derek Falvey: Yeah, I think I’d echo some of what Tom just said there around the heartbreak and how shaken you are in the moment as you’re navigating through what we’re experiencing in our community, our collective community. We live here, our families are here, and we’re responding to it in real time and monitoring what’s happening and trying to understand more of how we can do… what we can do in this community to help and support. And, as Tom said earlier, today as we woke up and came into the ballpark — I was here early this morning, seeing our players, and then seeing some fans walk through the doors, and seeing the smiles on young kids’ faces when they walked right past one of our players and brought that joy to them around baseball — that was what I hoped today was going to be about, entirely. It was about bringing that to every one of you all, but certainly for some of the younger fans of our team. wanted to bring that. And in true candor right now, I’m shaken a little bit. I’m thinking about how we navigate that, keeping our players safe and our staff and our organization safe, that’s on the forefront of all of our minds every day. But we need to continue to lean into ways to learn how we can do more. And that’s the way I feel right now; I don’t have the perfect words for it right now other than to say I’m hurting, like you are and like so many others are in our community. I hope we can play a role in making it better.
MCP: The president listens to billionaires. Call on him. Tell him to stop this.
Kris Atteberry: The one thing that— I think the dynamic at play, and sadly, as a person who lives in Minneapolis myself, we’ve had to deal with stuff like this unfortunately before. And I think what we learned was: you can make a stand, and in so doing, do the right thing that you believe in, and half of your fanbase will think you’re doing the wrong thing and half the fanbase will think you’re doing the right thing, and what shouldn’t be polarizing is, which is really an odd and unfortunate thing. That makes this tightrope even harder to walk, doesn’t it
TP: Yes, it does. It does make it harder to walk.
Kris and Derek’s answers weren’t particularly helpful, but Tom’s was easily worst of the three. “I want to be careful to not pick sides?” Bollocks. By not picking sides, you are picking a side — a truth reflected everywhere from the catalogue of Rush to the book of Revelation — signifying by your inaction that you have no issues with the federal government’s attack on the people of your city.
If the fanbase weren’t outraged enough at the Pohlads, this ought to push many over the edge. In the comments on Reddit, several fans have promised to boycott the team until the Pohlads sell, and one cannot dispute that this ownership deserves such an action.
Contrary to their ownership, a pair of Twins players, Bailey Ober and Simeon Woods Richardson, have posted images on their Instagram stories (I was unable to access them) in support of the protests and their home baseball city. Not all is wretched in the team’s fandom.
Even so, Tom Pohlad’s comments and character continue to be indefensible as the citizens of Minneapolis stand up, risking — and twice now, giving — their lives in support of their neighbors. We may still cheer for the Twins, but we will never, never, cheer for the Pohlads.
