Mike Veeck thought back Wednesday on how far the St. Paul Saints had come since he first started assembling the independent baseball team in 1992.

Asked how much he invested in the project, Veeck said, “Everything I had.”

It was risky. With the Twins playing across the river at the Metrodome, who would come watch a team of bush leaguers at what was then known as Municipal Stadium?

“I was terrified,” Veeck said. “I couldn’t get anyone to suggest we were going to average 2,500 a game. They said it wasn’t possible. Even some of my closest allies said it was not possible.”

Yet Veeck and his fellow investors built something unique, and picked the right place to do it. In 30 years, the team went from local joke to the most famous independent team in the country, moved into its own state-of-the-art CHS Field in Lowertown and, in 2021, became the Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.

“There’s a reason there are three Hall of Famers from St. Paul,” Veeck said in reference to natives Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor and Jack Morris. “It’s just a rabid baseball market.”

But Veeck and his partners, including Saints chairman and CEO Marv Goldklang and movie star Bill Murray, have decided it’s time to sell and are in the process of handing the team’s reins to Diamond Baseball Holdings, which owns 13 other minor league baseball teams, including the Saints’ new Class AAA rival the Iowa Cubs in Des Moines.

“To say it was a tough decision for my family is an understatement,” Goldklang said, “but, as my son said to me last night — I think quoting Dr. Seuss — don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Diamond Baseball Holdings CEO Peter Freund has been a co-owner of the Charleston RiverDogs, a Goldklang Group-owned team, for the past 10 years. The Saints will continue under current management, including executive vice president and general manager Derek Sharrer, who has been at the helm for two decades.

“They see this as a jewel in minor league baseball, a flagship franchise,” Sharrer said of Diamond Baseball Holdings on Wednesday.

For 30 years in St. Paul, that flag has been the Jolly Roger as the Saints worked hard to not just be different from other baseball teams, but to thumb their noses at some of the game’s more staid traditions. That isn’t expected to change, Sharrer said.

“Here’s the thing: If the flag is a pirate flag, that’s what they’re investing in,” he said.

The Saints started as an independent team playing at Municipal Stadium in 1993 — it was renamed Midway Stadium in 1994 — bringing minor league baseball back to St. Paul for the first time since the original St. Paul Saints left after the 1960 season. The team’s modus operandi, best explained by team motto “Fun is Good,” was as important — if not more important — as the baseball being played.

“We had the Twins playing seven miles away in the Metrodome; we’d have to be crazy to market the baseball,” said Veeck, son of baseball’s original firebrand owner Bill Veeck. “We had to market this as fun and affordable for a family, and we were able to do that thanks to St. Paul.”

That tradition, including the pig that brings baseballs to the umpires between innings, continued when the team became the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate as part of Major League Baseball’s major minor-league realignment in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Saints are entering their third season as a Twins affiliate, and the teams are locked into a Major League Baseball player development deal for the next eight years.

“What I can tell you — and I think (Twins executives) Dave St. Peter and Derek Falvey and Thad Levine would say this, too — is the Twins and Saints have the most envied Triple-A partnership in all of baseball,” Sharrer said.

Sharrer said Diamond Baseball Holdings is working on building a group of “30-plus” minor league teams. In December, the group added the Twins Double-A affiliate in Wichita to its stable.

“Their vision is to bring resources to the teams and facilities and operations staffs so that those teams can operate even better than they have in the past,” Sharrer said. “But they also understand that minor league baseball is hyper-focused locally. They get the minor league baseball business.

“They understand how important each community is to its team, and how important each team is to its community. They have no intent to change that. It’s what they’re investing in.”

Veeck didn’t just found the Saints — he helped found the entire independent Northern League after leaving affiliated baseball in 1992. The day the Saints won the first league championship by beating the Rochester Aces, Veeck said, was one of the greatest days of his life.

“I’m there at home plate, wearing a red Twins windbreaker, and I thought, ‘My dream just came true,’ ” he said. “I was humiliated so many times in the first few years. People said we had no shot.”

Now, Veeck said, it’s time to let someone else have a chance.

“There’s much to be said for the phrase ‘a man of his time,’ ” Veeck said. “One of the problems in this world is that people don’t know when to quit. There’s a whole new couple of generations out there, and I’m excited to see how they’ll market the team, how they’ll run it.

“Those are all my guys in (DBH). It’s unlikely things will change drastically, but change is good. The opportunity was perfect.”