Developing hard(ly): Twins sue to break expired multi-year lease

Twins attorney Roger Magnuson said the lawsuit filed in Hennepin County District Court shouldn't be viewed as a first step in an attempt to move the team. For more than a decade, the team has been pursuing public money toward a new ballpark without success.

"That's not the purpose of the filing,'' Magnuson said. "Obviously, the hard reality is we have no obligation to play in the Metrodome next year.''

"It's not a threat at all,'' he added. [Read the story.]

Of course not. It also has nothing to do with Governor Tim Pawlenty's recent declaration that a special stadium session is "dead." Nor does it reflect some half-baked desire on the part of Carl Pohlad and his close personal friend Bud Selig to get the Twins and Major League Baseball a piece of all the reconstruction monies coursing through New Orleans now. Perish the thought.

Note the cunning tactical change-up in the Metrodome Machiavellis' approach: If past efforts at winning a stadium by pledging to move the team were akin to pointing an unloaded gun at the city and state, this gambit seeks instead to imply that the Twins have an unloaded gun in their pocket.

Here's a story I wrote a few years ago about the contraction episode and past Pohlad stadium shenanigans.