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Sealed Baseball Info Has 'Whited Out' Names

Reports Say Six Individuals Listed In Dealing With Pohlad Company

POSTED: 10:39 a.m. CDT June 20, 2002
UPDATED: 2:14 p.m. CDT June 20, 2002

There is reportedly more than just the uber-secret baseball team financial ledgers and memos about contraction among the documents being held under lock-and-key by local judge Harry Crump.

Carl PohladThere's also documents listing six unidentified individuals who apparently were involved in business dealings with Carl Pohlad, owner of the Twins, the Star Tribune reports.

Amid a flurry of published and broadcast stories following last November's announcement that baseball owners were seeking to buy and fold two teams to improve the finances of the game was one that caught much attention in Minnesota: That a business owned by Twins owner Carl Pohlad owned made loans to Bud Selig's Milwaukee Brewers in 1995 when Selig was president and CEO of the Brewers -- as well as the acting commissioner.

The reports said Selig quickly repaid the loans, which were called "treacherous" by former commission Fay Vincent, who said they may have violated league rules.

But a trio of other owners -- Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox, Drayton McLane of the Houston Astros and Fred Wilpon of the New York Mets -- came out in defense of Selig and the loans.

The reports of the loans surfaced in early January, and in the spring owners balked at contraction for at least another year following the filing of a lawsuit by the landlord of the Metrodome in Hennepin County District Court.

During that legal process, attorneys for the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Task Force, asked the judge to require baseball owners and the Twins to turn over financial information and contraction-related documents.

They did turn over information, but it wasn't made public prior to a full settlement of the then still-lingering lawsuit earlier this month.

Much of that information reportedly is on a compact disk in the hands of Crump. Earlier this week the Saint Paul Pioneer Press joined a handful of Twin Cities media organizations in suing to get copies of all information submitted as part of the lawsuit, including the compact disk.

But Thursday, the Star Tribune reported that the suit seeks a second set of information, six pages of documents filed under seal with the court that include several sections that were "whited out."

The newspaper said those documents include information about other business transactions Pohlad made to six unidentified individuals.

The newspaper reported that the white-out sections apparently include personal financial information in bank records from institutions owned by Pohlad.

Crump is expected to rule on the lawsuit seeking release of the information later this month.


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