It was 2007, the year after a magical Twins’ season: Johan Santana’s Cy Young award, Justin Morneau’s MVP, Joe Mauer’s batting title. For weeks, Pohlad trudged to the neighborhood coffee shop in Portland, Mass., returned to his place and switched on baseball. It brought peace. “Something about baseball,” he said, “filled my cup.”
One day, feeling like a deadbeat, he called his older brother, Tom.
His brother voiced what later would seem obvious: “Why don’t you consider moving home and working for the Twins?”
When he joined the team later that year, it wasn’t as the anointed one. He met with then-team President Dave St. Peter to chart a path toward a broad understanding of the business. Employees got to know him as a person, not an owner.
“Joe never played that ownership card,” St. Peter said. “He didn’t want the fast track. He knew this was the long game.”
“This isn’t out of the movies where the owner dies, the son takes over and he was born on third base,” said another childhood friend, Thomas Simmons. “He deeply cares about the Twins.”