We are now seeing what appears to be--to borrow a phrase from the Bush administrations--the “final throes” of the Minnesota Twins’ stadium extortion.

A year after the Hennepin County Board passed a controversial measure to dedicate a countywide sales tax to building a new stadium for Twins owner Carl Pohlad, the legislature remains unconvinced and the Pohlads have trotted out one last feeble attempt at browbeating the public into acceding to their demands.

First they were able to convince a district court judge that they needn’t sign a new lease at the Metrodome after the 2006 season, thus sending sportswriters and editorialists at the Star Tribune into paroxysms of angst over the impending departure of the baseball company from the city. A Sunday column by Patrick Reusse (who should know better by now) even resurrected the specter of Major League Baseball “contracting” his beloved Twins if state lawmakers don’t approve the tax.

All that’s missing, of course, is another pathetic editorial from the Strib’s resident New Urbanist arguing for corporate welfare based on the “community amenity” a new stadium would provide city residents.

(Oddly enough, nobody has raised the question of where the Twins will play next year. Midway Stadium? Parade Stadium? Even if they get the legislature to approve the sales tax deal, they won’t have a new facility for a couple of years at least. We wouldn’t want to have to renegotiate the rent payment at the Metrodome after this latest ploy.)

Amid all their hand-wringing, these stadium proponents conveniently forget to mention a couple of relevant facts: Twins fans, by and large, don’t seem to be clamoring for a new ballpark. Attendance last year topped 2 million, the highest in a dozen years. And though Pohlad’s baseball company suffered a modest loss in 2005 ($500,000 after a $3.6 million profit in 2004), it remains a relatively profitable enterprise whose value has more than quadrupled from the $36 million he spent to buy it in 1984 to the estimated $178 million it’s believed to be worth today.

According to Forbes magazine’s annual report on baseball economics, the Twins were more profitable in 2005 than nine other major league teams, including such fantasy franchises as the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and Los Angeles Dodgers.

It should be noted also that Pohlad, whose personal net worth is estimated at $2.8 billion, is among the wealthiest of the 30 Major League Baseball owners. If anyone could afford to lay out a half-billion to assure the success of his own company, Pohlad certainly could. But, for some reason, that’s never been considered a viable option among those who say the city so badly needs a new ballpark.

Pohlad, of course, has every right to sell his baseball company if he believes it’s underperforming. And the new owner has every right to move it to some other city, where taxpayers are happy to pay to build a stadium. But if that should happen, it will not be the governor’s fault or the legislature’s fault for not acting. It will be a business decision made by a stubborn billionaire who refused to invest sufficiently in his company to make it more competitive.

We’ll miss the Twins every bit as much as we missed the North Stars when they moved to Dallas, but we won’t accept the blame--and neither should our lawmakers.