Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, Derek Falvey and Andrew Miller enter a bar…
Or maybe it was a restaurant or the Cleveland baseball team’s convention center in Goodyear, Ariz.
In the early to mid-2010s, the three hung out at various times during spring training in Arizona, unaware that they would one day become key figures on the Twin Cities sports scene.
“I remember meeting Derek and thinking he was a really good, smart guy,” Adofo-Mensah said this week. “Then the next year I saw a story about Twins’ new general manager and I asked someone, ‘Wait a minute, is that the guy I met?’ “
Adofo-Mensah worked on Wall Street before taking a job with the San Francisco 49ers in 2013 and joining the Cleveland Browns in 2020. Last year, the Vikings hired him as their general manager.
Falvey quickly rose through the organization of what is now the Cleveland Guardians before the Twins hired him in 2017 to oversee their baseball operation.
Miller worked in investment banking and venture capital before deciding to work in sports. He was with Cleveland from 2005-15 before becoming executive vice president with the Toronto Blue Jays. The Vikings hired him as their COO in 2020.
The three are known for creative thinking and human management, and you may have met them back then on a back court at Goodyear or a table at the Dakota in Scottsdale.
Adofo-Mensah was a college roommate of current Guardians GM Mike Chernoff in Princeton. Falvey and Chernoff collaborated with the franchise.
“Mike and I are like brothers,” Falvey said.
“We have a close circle of friends and we go to spring training every year,” said Adofo-Mensah. “We’ve missed that in the last year since I became general manager, but we spent time together and climbed Camelback and we toured the facility in Cleveland.
“One day Cherny said, ‘Hey, one of our guys is going to come out with us,’ and it was Falvey. We went to one of our favorite places, and I remember him being super smart and cheerful and flat back. We would pick each other’s minds.”
Miller transitioned from an internship to a full-time position at Cleveland’s baseball operations about six months before Falvey was hired as an intern in the mid-2000s. “He took me under his wing and is like a big brother to me,” Falvey said.
As young men unencumbered by families, they shared meals and philosophies. “We just hung out,” Falvey said. “What struck me about Kwesi was how inquisitive he was.”
Adofo-Mensah’s first draft as GM was unconventional, largely because he traded within the Viking division. “I’m not surprised,” said Falvey. “I knew Andrew Berry a little, his general manager in Cleveland, and was always very impressed with him. I think Kwesi is thinking: ‘If we do everything the same as everyone else, how can we differentiate ourselves from one another?’ That’s how we think at the Twins.”
Adofo-Mensah joined the sports world when it got fancy. Falvey and Miller experienced the grimmer realities of starting a career in baseball in the 2000s.
At the time, Cleveland was holding spring training in Winter Haven, Florida. It wasn’t fancy. Falvey and Miller worked in side-by-side cubicles in the run-down spring training offices, and one day they were in Chernoff’s office when Miller asked him why there were pins in the ceiling.
“Mike said, ‘So the cleaners know where the rat traps are,'” Miller said. “It was one of those drop ceilings and you don’t want to hit the wrong spot with a broom and have a dead rat fall on you.”
You won’t find many rat traps in the modern sports world. With Adofo-Mensah running football operations and Miller running business operations, the Vikings recently won an NFL Players Association Award for the franchise that treats its players best. Since Falvey arrived, he and Twins President Dave St. Peter have expanded the organization and erased the franchise’s reputation for pride, understaffing and overworked.
These days, the Miller and Falvey families can be seen strolling around Lake Harriet together, and have developed relationships with several of the city’s other sports leaders, including Ethan Casson, CEO of Timberwolves and Lynx, and Matt Majka, President of Wild.
“Andrew is one of the smartest people I’ve ever been with,” Falvey said. “His understanding of culture and processes and how to implement an overall strategy is remarkable.
“I don’t know Kwesi either, but I’m not surprised to see him in this position and I’m not surprised that he and Andrew are so successful.”
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