My friend Jon Kerr interviewed Coleman & Griffith in 1990 for his book “Calvin’s Last Dinosaur.” (Kindle/Amazon link, it’s cheap/free: amazon.com/Calvin-Basebal…). This was 12 years after Waseca & 6 years after Calvin sold the Twins. A few quotes from it: 1/ #griffithstatue
2/ Coleman went to Griffith’s Waseca speech with his father-in-law; he had neither tape recorder or pen/paper. “After the first couple of comments I realized I’m just gonna have to start salting some of these away because I’d never heard anybody talk like this.” #griffithstatue
3/ Griffith: “[T]hey got that writer down there that had to be sensational & intimated things I didn’t say. I was shocked as hell. If I had a gun I would’ve shot the sonofabitch. I woulda shot Coleman. But you can’t do that or you go to jail.” #griffithstatue
4/ Coleman: “It was just incredibly vulgar, insulting, denigrating commentary. ... I was thinking to myself as I shrunk lower in my seat, ‘Just shut up Calvin, please shut up’ ... Because if you say anything more, I’m gonna have to tell somebody about this.”
#griffithstatue
#griffithstatue
5/ Coleman made the decision to write the story that evening even though he was approached by the publisher of a local paper who indicated the speech was being considered “off the record.” “As soon as I got back to the farm, I sat down & wrote all the quotes ...” #griffithstatue
6/ Coleman: “... There were a couple (of quotes) I wasn’t quite sure of and I canned them. Everything I was really sure of, I was confident of, I wrote down. If you’re a reporter, you’re trained to hear things. Those quotes were pretty easy to remember.” #griffithstatue
7/ Griffith: “So that was it. He ruined my reputation as a man. Certainly it hurt. I still have a lot of episodes & people say things. ... I know what I said & I didn’t say anything bad. But people’s minds are funny & you don’t know if people ever get over it.” #griffithstatue
8/ In newspaper accounts afterward, Griffith explained the “15,000 blacks in the state” as “misunderstood,” & “I had a couple of drinks and was trying to be funny.” The Waseca Lions Club president stated “I wasn’t offended & don’t know anyone who was.” #griffithstatue
9/ Lions club members sounded anything but embarrassed. “Everybody knows how to spell ‘Waseca’ thanks to the Tribune,” said the VP of the Chamber of Commerce. Added another resident, “Calvin Griffith is one of the 10 Greatest Americans of our time. He is for us.” #griffithstatue
10/ Outside Waseca, immediate criticism. A Bloomington state rep called for a full MLB investigation of Griffith & that the Twins might no longer be welcome here. The local Urban League suggested the Twins might be more at home in apartheid South Africa. #griffithstatue
11/ Kerr notes Griffith had a racist history. A Chicago reporter had written a similar account 20 years earlier, overhearing a private MLB owners’ meeting thru a hotel floor vent. He quoted Griffith saying, “The trend in Washington is getting to be all colored.” #griffithstatue
12/ Kerr also notes that in 1964 spring training, the Twins put players in segregated hotels even tho there were unsegregated options. Tony Olivia backed Griffith up, saying blacks preferred the food & atmosphere at Orlando’s tiny Statler Hotel.” #griffithstatue
13/ Thelma Haynes, Calvin’s sister, claims he was “trying to be sarcastic. When people did come to Washington to try to prevail on us to come to Minnesota they did use the fact that there were not many colored people in Minnesota as one of their selling points.” #griffithstatue
14/ Griffith agreed that Minnesotans mentioned the low number of blacks. “The only thing I said about blacks was that they didn’t go to ballgames. I read it in the paper. And they’re still saying it. You read articles all the time. Is that radical, er ... racist?” #griffithstatue
14/ FWIW, Shirley Povich, the venerable DC sportswriter, said the Griffith family “had a Southern strain. I don’t think he was sincerely prejudiced nor was [Calvin’s father & Senators owner Clark Griffith] who *was a holdout against blacks in the major leagues*.” #griffithstatue
15/ Coleman: “Based on what I heard in the room, there’s no doubt in my mind that Calvin was a racist, sexist troglodyte. But I think he’s probably mellowed a lot. His attitudes were from the Dark Ages & he got caught saying something incredibly stupid.” #griffithstatue #fin
