My head is still spinning from all of the twists and turns in the story of Durland and Darvin Miller — and the great mystery unraveled, for the most part by Grantland.com.
Like many people, I occasionally forget that the domain for Minnesota Twins' web site is twinsbaseball.com — and not, in fact, the simpler and cleaner Twins.com that MLB would rather it be. And so I type in Twins.com, and I see what I always see: D&D Miller, a site under construction.
The bullet points from the story:
*Durland and Darvin are, in fact, twins. They grabbed the domain in 1995 and they got it for free!
*Durland and Darvin are, in fact Twins fans!
*Plenty of people have tried to get them to sell the domain, including Major League Baseball Advanced Media, to no avail. But there's hope?
Let's let Grantland explain a little:
Durland and Darvin, born and raised in San Jose, are Twins fans. Not because they are Twins, or because they bought Twins.com. Either of those explanations would make too much sense. They're Twins fans because their father is from Minnesota, where much of their family still lives.
"Years ago we'd actually reached out to the Twins, saying, 'Hey, we have this [website], and we're not really using it, maybe we could work out a deal,'" Durland says. "And they just never really followed through on it. But certainly, if the right offer came around, we'd sell."
An MLBAM spokesperson confirms that there has been "direct outreach [to the twins] from in-house," but that the talks have never resulted in the right price. The Millers seem to prefer that the outreach originate with their team, not the league. "We've just never been approached by anybody directly associated with the Minnesota Twins," Durland says. "It's always been through some other party trying to probably broker a deal, or commission a deal." Judging by my own initial efforts to contact the Millers, the indirect approach doesn't work. If MLB is serious about acquiring Twins.com, Twins president Dave St. Peter might have to fly to California and knock on Durland and Darvin's door.
There's really so much more to the entire story, though. Please do give it a read.
