Every time you look into center field at Twins Target Field, remember artist Ray Barton
Ray Barton drew the picture of two baseball players, shaking hands across a river, for $15.
The well-known St. Paul cartoonist and illustrator knocked out the image as a side job in 1961, assuming it would grace the sides of Dixie cups at Metropolitan Stadium for the state's new baseball team, the Minnesota Twins.
But when team owner and notorious penny-pincher Calvin Griffith saw Barton's picture, he decided to turn it into the team's official logo — much to Barton's chagrin.
"He told me he never really liked it. It wasn't one of his crowning achievements," said Tony Barton, one of the illustrator's six children. "He was a cartoonist, a writer, a creative director, but he never really thought it was that great. And if you look at it close, it really isn't. Anyone out of art school could have done it. He just happened to be the one who did it."
Ray Barton, a native of St. Paul, died Sunday of cancer. He was 80 years old.
