Carl Pohlad

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Carl R. Pohlad (born August 23, 1915, in West Des Moines, Iowa) is the owner of the Minnesota Twins baseball franchise since 1984 (succeeding Calvin Griffith). He has been widely criticised for both a seeming eagerness to allow the team to be eliminated in league contraction and a failure to spend enough of his immense wealth on improving the team. He has been defended as an owner in his willingness to continue to operate the team while losing several million dollars each year (in 2005, Pohlad broke even solely because of revenue sharing).

In 1997, Pohlad almost sold the Twins to North Carolina businessman Don Beaver, who would have moved the team to the Piedmont Triad (Greensboro - Winston-Salem - High Point) area of the state. The defeat of a referendum for a stadium in that area and a lack of interest in a move to Charlotte killed the deal. (Beaver is currently a minority owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.)

Pohlad grew up in Minnesota. He began a series of small businesses after graduating high school. Pohlad got his start in the banking business by foreclosing farms during the Great Depression. After the Depression, he began getting into investing. Over several decades, he built a banking empire, finally selling Marquette Bank to U.S. Bancorp in the 1980s. Forbes ranks him tied for the 107th richest person in the United States, with a net worth of 2.6 billion dollars. [1] Pohlad owned a part of the Minnesota Vikings from the mid 1980s to 1991.

Pohlad's wife, Eloise died in 2003.

Preceded by Calvin Griffith 1956–1984

Owner of the Minnesota Twins 1984–present

Succeeded by Current