On November 6, 2001, Major League Baseball’s owners voted 28–2 to eliminate two franchises after the 2001 season, blindsiding the players’ union just one day before the collective bargaining agreement expired. The Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos were the presumed victims, with each owner reportedly offered a $250 million buyout so MLB could seize and dissolve the clubs. Commissioner Bud Selig defended the plan as an economic necessity, pointing to chronically weak revenues, outdated stadiums, and the clubs’ inability to secure publicly financed replacements. The proposal would also have triggered sweeping realignment: Texas would move to the American League Central, Pittsburgh to the National League East, and Arizona to the American League West. The Twins and Expos were the only owners to vote against the plan, while the Florida Marlins, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and Oakland Athletics had also been discussed as possible targets.
The move immediately became a labor and legal confrontation. MLBPA executive director Donald Fehr called the decision “imprudent and unfortunate,” and the union filed a grievance arguing that contraction violated baseball’s labor obligations. The crisis deepened when Hennepin County Judge Harry Crump issued an injunction on November 16 ordering the Twins to honor their lease and play at the Metrodome, effectively preventing the club from disappearing for 2002. The plan also created a scheduling problem: eliminating only the Expos would leave the leagues with an uneven number of teams, making a normal 162-game schedule impossible without a daily idle club. The contraction effort was abandoned in February 2002, and a new collective bargaining agreement later barred contraction until 2006. The Expos were instead sold to MLB for $120 million, with the league’s other 29 clubs operating the team as a partnership. Their owner, Jeffrey Loria, used the proceeds and an MLB loan to buy the Florida Marlins, while John W. Henry used the Marlins sale to acquire the Boston Red Sox. The Expos ultimately relocated to Washington, D.C., becoming the Nationals in 2005; the Twins survived, secured public funding for Target Field, and opened the stadium in 2010. The episode remains one of North American sports’ most dramatic examples of owners attempting to erase franchises through a mixture of financial pressure, league control, and legal brinkmanship. There was also speculation that Selig’s family connection to the Milwaukee Brewers created a conflict of interest, since Milwaukee was geographically close enough to benefit from the destruction of the Twins’ market, although that allegation was never established as a proven motive.
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