The Pohlad family will sell the Minnesota Twins

Joe Pohlad last February dismissed the idea that his family might consider selling the twins, saying, “It's not something that interests us.”

Pohlad, grandson of the family patriarch who bought the state's Major League Baseball team four decades ago, announced Thursday that “after months of careful consideration, our family made the decision this summer to explore the sale of the Twins.”

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

A sale that 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 getting approval from the other 29 major league owners Baseball. Carl Pohlad paid former owner Calvin Griffith $44 million when he bought the franchise in 1984, and after his death in 2009 it was inherited by his sons.

Only the Steinbrenner family, who 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 owned their MLB franchises longer under current owners than the Pohlads.

Should a sale of the Twins be completed, it would actually be the first time since 1919 that the team, founded in 1901 as the Washington Senators and moving to the Twin Cities in 1961, was owned by anyone other than the Griffiths or Pohlads.

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