The Pohlad family, who own the team, agreed to offer up the franchise for contraction in 2001.
In a speech, Selig told Oakland businessmen that the A's franchise was a contraction candidate.
But Ryan said he was most proud of turning down the general manager's job in Toronto in 2001 to stay with the Twins when the franchise was threatened with contraction.
He did not rule out that possibility but said baseball "will continue to evaluate our weakest franchises to determine how much contraction is warranted and in the overall best interests of baseball and its fans".
Not quite a year after the first contraction rumors threatened the franchise's existence, the Twins -- one of baseball's youngest teams, with one of the game's smallest payrolls -- find themselves facing equally surprising Anaheim in the American League Championship Series, which is scheduled to begin Tuesday night at the Metrodome.
The contraction will end two franchises from a group of teams that includes Montreal, Minnesota, the Florida Marlins, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Oakland Athletics.
The conversation will involve a different vocabulary: franchise tags, Bird rights, hard salary caps, contraction.
The Brewers, who play in a new stadium, Miller Park, built at taxpayers' expense, are not on Selig's schedule for possible "contraction," as the end of franchise life is euphemistically known.
THE new buzzword in baseball is contraction, as in the folding of two franchises.
With too many franchises floundering, a reasonable argument can be made for contraction.
