COOPERSTOWN, NY – A small baseball sits at the bottom of a display case for David Ortiz on the third floor of the Hall of Fame. No hologram, no elaborate markings. In thick black ink, just below the red stitching horseshoe, someone scribbled “First HR.” Below that, in lighter pen: “Big Show.”
The Big Papi Show was still in pre-production that day, Sept. 14, 1997, when Ortiz hit the first of 541 home runs on his way to first-ballot induction here Sunday. His years with the Boston Red Sox made him a transcendent star, but when he hit that first home run, he was playing for the Minnesota Twins.
The other nominees this weekend made the longest journey here, elected by subcommittee vote in December: Bud Fowler, Gil Hodges, Minnie Miñoso, Buck O’Neil and the other two living members, Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva, who will represent the Twins: the same franchise that launched Ortiz in 2002, just before his breakthrough in Boston.
“I’m not going to get a lot of support opportunities like Big Papi,” Kaat said recently, “unless they have, like, the long-life Duracell battery.”
Kaat and Oliva were born in 1938 and spent a combined 30 seasons with the Twins franchise. His induction means five Hall of Famers played for the Twins from 1970-1973, including Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew and Bert Blyleven.
According to Hall of Fame research, no team has had more than five Hall of Famers at one time in the division game era. Besides the Twins, the others with five are the 1970 Chicago Cubs, the 1980 Boston Red Sox and the 1982 and 1984 Milwaukee Brewers. None of those teams won the World Series, as Ortiz did three times with the Red Sox, but the 1970 Twins, who were 98-64, had the best regular season record of the bunch.
“You had to play really well to beat them,” said Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer, whose Baltimore Orioles swept the Twins in a best-of-five American League championship series that fall. repeating his feat of 1969. very good balance – power, a bit of speed, well managed and great fans at the old stadium.”
Kaat played his first two seasons with the original Washington Senators, who moved to Bloomington, Minn., about two weeks after Bill Mazeroski homered for Pittsburgh to beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series. It was the beginning of the expansion era and part of a wave of the franchise movement.
“I showed up in the clubhouse in the instructional league on Oct. 26, 1960, and I had Senators on my chest, and at the end of the day, it was Twins,” Kaat said. “That was the day the Washington Senators became the Twins.
“We, as players, thought it was a great move because we remembered what a positive move it was for the Braves to go from Boston to Milwaukee. Little things, like we would hear that they get these deals to get a car to drive for the season, things like that. So to come here with MLB being new, to be welcomed with open arms, I mean, the performance was secondary. The fans here were happy to have big league baseball.” .
After a 90-loss debut season, however, the performance was extraordinary. The Twins won 817 games between 1962 and 1970, more than any other team in the AL except the Orioles. Kaat was one of the best pitchers of the era, winning 146 games in those seasons, behind only Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal.
Oliva finally arrived in 1964, winning the Rookie of the Year award and the first of three batting titles. He was one of several Cuban players signed by Senators/Twins prospect Joe Cambria, including 1965 AL Most Valuable Player Award winner shortstop Zoilo Versalles. The environment helped the transition of Oliva, who never played in another team.
“I remember Jim Kaat telling me, ‘You’re going to feel right at home, because one-third of the ballclub is Cuban,” Oliva said. “I was so happy to be here with the Minnesota Twins, because it made me feel like at home. In those days I didn’t speak a word of English, and they looked after me, looked after me. They were very nice, all those Cubans.”
Knee injuries robbed Oliva of the longevity of many of his contemporaries; he finished with a .304 average, but only 1,917 career hits. He wasn’t a one-off hitter either, once leading the league in slugging percentage and finishing with 220 home runs, 13 more than members of the 3,000-hit club.
“Everybody says, ‘What’s the highlight of your career, the shutout against Sandy Koufax in the World Series?'” Palmer said. “I’ll tell Tony, ‘No, the day I kicked you out twice.’ Wally Bunker used to say, ‘Tony Oliva, oh, leave us alone!'”
Oliva hit .344 for his career against Palmer (although he never homered) and punished another Hall of Famer, Catfish Hunter, for a .333 average and eight homers. He hit .314 in three postseason series.
Before the two ALCS losses to the Orioles, the Twins fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1965 World Series. Kaat struck out Koufax in Game 2 (after Koufax had refused to pitch the first goal because it fell on Yom Kippur), but lost to him in games 5 and 7.
“I was pretty realistic in ’65 — I mean, to try to get a couple of runs off Koufax, we were fortunate enough to get two in Game 2 and one of them was unearned,” Kaat said . “So it’s not like we blew the series or anything because of him. And then, of course, I thought we were going to come back. When you’re 20 years old and you have a good team, ‘Oh, we’re going to come back.'”
The Twins declined in the early 1970s, even with all those Hall of Famers, and waived Kaat in 1973. He revived his career with consecutive 20-win seasons for the Chicago White Sox under pitching coach Johnny Sain, and then bounced back. to the Philadelphia Phillies, the Yankees and finally the St. Louis Cardinals.
There, in 1982, Kaat won a championship ring when the Cardinals beat the Brewers and his Cooperstown quartet of Paul Molitor, Ted Simmons, Don Sutton and Robin Yount (closer Rollie Fingers was injured) . By then, everyone else in the 1965 World Series had retired.
“That 17-year wait was the longest a player had to wait to get back to the World Series,” Kaat said. “And then getting the World Series ring, I found out at the Elias Sports Bureau, no athlete in any professional sport has played 24 seasons before getting a championship ring. So that’s what made it that ’82 season was worth the wait and very rewarding.”
The Twins would finally win the World Series in 1987, with Kirby Puckett leading the way, and again four years later. But those teams couldn’t match their early 1970s predecessors for Hall of Fame membership, where Kaat and Oliva, that long-lived duo, will now have plaques forever.