Minnesota Twins Owner Carl Pohlad Dead at Age 93

After a decade-long pursuit, the Twins got the go-ahead from the state in 2006 for a $522 million stadium paid for mostly by a county sales tax. The team's contribution was about $130 million, and Target Field is set to open in April 2010.

In this April 2006 file photo, Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad is seen in Minneapolis. Pohlad, a...

In this April 2006 file photo, Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad is seen in Minneapolis. Pohlad, a billionaire banker whose Minnesota Twins won two World Series titles during nearly his nearly quarter-century as owner, died Monday, Jan. 5, 2009, a baseball official said. He was 93. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

(AP)

"I told Carl a long time ago, in life you'll be forgiven for everything except one thing: being successful," businessman Irwin Jacobs, a longtime friend and business partner, once said. "People are going to be jealous. You know, he made good, and he did it on his own."

Born poor in Iowa, Pohlad spent many years far from the celebrity culture of professional sports, building a fortune in banking, real estate and other ventures in the Upper Midwest. Following World War II, he and his brother-in-law, Russell Stotesbury, assumed control of a small bank holding company in Minneapolis and slowly built his small empire from there.

A football player at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., who served in the Army during World War II, Pohlad remained active into his 80s before a variety of back, hip and leg ailments made it hard to get around and ultimately impossible to walk.

Even after turning 90, though, he continued to make regular trips to the Metrodome to watch his team play — often wearing his lucky red socks and stopping by manager Ron Gardenhire's office before games. Jim Pohlad eased into the lead role over the past few seasons.

Though the public largely perceived him as a hard-driving miser, Pohlad and his wife, Eloise, who died in 2003, together donated millions of dollars to charitable causes. They founded the Twins Community Fund, which gave $3.3 million to area charities in 2005.

At a baseball banquet in January 2006, a wheelchair-bound Pohlad unexpectedly announced a $500,000 donation to the Bob Allison Ataxia Research Center at the University of Minnesota in honor of Allison, a star outfielder for Minnesota from 1961-70 who died of the brain disease in 1995.

Players often voiced frustration over the payroll, slashed in the late 1990s after the first couple of stadium plans fizzled and the post-championship rebuilding process was scrapped and restarted. But once the Twins developed a core that could compete and baseball's revenue sharing began to increase, Pohlad spent more on salaries and the team won three straight AL Central titles from 2002-04.