Saint Paul Saints logo.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KWSN.com) — The fun-loving American Association charter team the Sioux Falls Canaries calls “the gold standard of independent baseball” is leaving the league after 28 years to become the highest-level affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.
The Saint Paul Saints and Major League Baseball made the news official on Wednesday, narrowing the Association down to 10 competing teams and moving the Twins’ Triple-A stable 1,000 miles closer to home. The Twins spent the previous 17 years making Rochester, NY, their nearest stepping stone to the big leagues.
Target Field in downtown Minneapolis and CHS Stadium in downtown St. Paul are separated by just 10.6 miles, the closest distance between any Minor League affiliate and their Major League parent club. A player on a rehab assignment or a player transitioning from Triple-A to the Majors could now make a short drive down Interstate 94 and have a consistent housing situation instead of shuttling between Minneapolis and upstate New York.
In May, some Sioux Falls baseball fans were abuzz from the speculation of a veteran Twins baseball reporter that Sioux Falls was “hungry” to become the Twins next Triple-A team, although no details of entities in the city jockeying to make it happen were provided. Sioux Falls-based Sanford Health had been a prominent Twins sponsor the last couple of years.
Now, the city won’t be affiliated at all with the Twins, who on Wednesday also announced the invitation of the Wichita Wind Surge to become the club’s new Double-A affiliate and swapped the levels of their longstanding Class A affiliates with the Cedar Rapids Kernels set to become the new Class A Advanced affiliate and the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels moving down to the Class A level as part of the widespread overhaul of Minor League Baseball.
The Twins had their eyes on the Saints all along, for obvious reasons, especially considering the financial hits every MLB team took during the 2020 season when the pandemic forced teams not to sell tickets.
Known as the best-funded American Association team, which drew the league’s biggest crowds the last five years thanks to famous wacky in-game promotions in their sparkling new $65 million, 7,200-seat stadium, the Saints worded Wednesday’s news with this as the opening line of the official release:
For 28 years the St. Paul Saints introduced the baseball world to pigs delivering baseballs to umpires, nuns giving massages to fans, and promotions poking fun at current events, politics, the baseball industry, and oftentimes themselves, all while being an Independent Professional Baseball Club. The Saints’ “Fun is Good” motto is about to enter center stage on a completely different level.”
Some baseball aficionados were skeptical the Saints would strike a deal with the Twins and MLB, considering the $20 million price tag to become a Triple-A affiliate and more so the free-spirited brand that screamed “independent” for three decades.
But Saints chairman Marv Goldklang said in Wednesday’s release that Twins’ ownership “emphasized their respect for what the Saints have accomplished and made clear that, except for the players on the field, they don’t expect much, if anything, to change in terms of the experience of attending a Saints’ game.”
The partnership between the organizations gives the Twins a minority stake in the franchise, but the majority ownership remains with Goldklang Group.
For a stretch in the early 2000s, the Goldklang Group also owned the Canaries, a fellow 1992 charter member of The Northern League, which eventually morphed into the American Association. A group managed by former Sioux Falls Stampede CEO Gary Weckworth bought the Birds in 2009, then sold them a few years later to current Twin Cities-based owners Tom Garrity and Mark Ogren. Those two recently announced the team is for sale.
A couple of hours after Wednesday’s news was announced, the Canaries tweeted this message to their longtime rivals, who were housed in Sioux Falls for the first month of the 2020 season and played home games in “The Birdcage” while awaiting local and state officials in Minnesota to agree to allow them to play home games back in downtown St. Paul.
“So long and happy trails, old friend (and 2020 roommates)! We will miss the St. Paul Saints and the gold standard they set for independent baseball.”
About 10 minutes later, the Saints’ Twitter account had a message for the American Association’s 10 remaining teams:
“To the @AA_Baseball and all of the teams, a deep and heart-felt thank you. We’ve been rivals on the field and friends off of it. Numerous times we’ve posted sarcastic tweets at your expense. Today is not one of those days. We will miss all of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
