Minnesota’s professional baseball team said it removed a statue of its former owner on Friday, citing remarks he made over 40 years ago.
Calvin Griffith’s statue was placed at Target Field when it opened in 2010 because he formerly owned the team and was responsible for moving the Twins to the state in 1961.
The decision to have a statue of Griffith “reflects an ignorance on our part of systemic racism present in 1978, 2010 and today,” the team added.
“We apologize for our failure to adequately recognize how the statue was viewed and the pain it caused for many people—both inside the Twins organization and across Twins Territory,” it continued.
Griffith can’t be removed from the team’s history but removing the statue is a “necessary step” in making Target Field a place “where every fan and employee feels safe and welcome,” the team said.
Statues across the United States are being removed for alleged links to racism as Black Lives Matter protests continue weeks after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who perished in police custody in Minneapolis after resisting arrest following a call about forged money being used at a nearby store.
“Black people don’t go to ball games, but they‘ll fill up a rassling ring and put up such a chant it’ll scare you to death. It’s unbelievable. We came here because you’ve got good, hard-working, white people here,” he said.
The Twins were moved from Washington, D.C.
Griffith died in 1999.
