The Pohlad family will sell the Minnesota Twins

Joe Pohlad rejected the idea last February that his family might consider selling the twins, saying “it's not in our interest.”

Pohlad, the grandson of the patriarch of the family that bought the state's Major League Baseball team four decades ago, announced Thursday that “after months of deliberation, our family has decided to sell the twins this summer.”

Pohlad declined to speak publicly about that decision through a team spokesman, but he broke the news to the team's roughly 400 full-time employees at a Target Field meeting Thursday morning, then issued a news release.

A sale, which could net Carl Pohlad's three sons and eight grandchildren more than $1.5 billion, typically takes about six months from identifying potential buyers to negotiating terms to get approval from Major League Baseball's other 29 owners. Carl Pohlad paid former owner Calvin Griffith $44 million when he bought the franchise in 1984, and it was inherited by his sons after his death in 2009.

Only the Steinbrenner family, which took control of the New York Yankees when George Steinbrenner bought the team in 1973, and Jerry Reinsdorf, who bought the Chicago White Sox in 1981, have held MLB franchises longer among current owners than the Pohlads.

Indeed, if a sale of the Twins is completed, it would mark the first time since 1919 that the team, founded in 1901 as the Washington Senators and moved to the Twin Cities in 1961, is owned by someone other than Griffith or Pohlad. .

“For the past 40 seasons, the Minnesota Twins have been part of the heart and soul of our family. This team is woven into the fabric of our lives, and the twin community has become an extension of our family,” Pohlad, 42, wrote in her announcement. “The staff, the players and most importantly, you, the fans – who have built this incredible organization – are part of it. We have never taken the privilege of being stewards of this franchise lightly.”