A Powerhouse Team of Stars, Ring or No Ring
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A Powerhouse Team of Stars, Ring or No Ring
With Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva set for Hall of Fame consecration, the Minnesota Twins of the 1960s and '70s will smoothen in Cooperstown despite no World Series titles.
COOPERSTOWN, Due north.Y. — A humble lilliputian baseball sits at the lesser of a display case for David Ortiz on the third floor of the Hall of Fame. No hologram, no elaborate markings. In thick blackness ink, simply beneath the red-seam horseshoe, someone scrawled "Start Hr." Nether that, in lighter pen: "Big Testify."
The Large Papi Show was however in preproduction that mean solar day, Sept. 14, 1997, when Ortiz swatted the first of 541 home runs on his mode to first-ballot induction here on Sunday. His years with the Boston Carmine Sox made him a transcendent star, but when he hit that first homer, he was playing for the Minnesota Twins.
The other inductees this weekend took the long way here, elected through a small-committee vote in December: Bud Fowler, Gil Hodges, Minnie Miñoso, Buck O'Neil and the two other living members, Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva, who will represent the Twins — the same franchise that released Ortiz in 2002, merely before his Boston breakthrough.
"I'g not going to be getting many endorsement opportunities like Large Papi," Kaat said recently, "unless they have, similar, Duracell Battery for long life."
Kaat and Oliva were born in 1938 and spent a combined 30 seasons with the Twins' franchise. Their consecration means that v Hall of Famers played for the Twins from 1970-73, including Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew and Bert Blyleven.
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According to inquiry by the Hall of Fame, no team has had more than than five Hall of Famers at once in the division-play era. Besides the Twins, the others with 5 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 iii times with the Reddish Sox, but the 1970 Twins, who were 98-64, had the all-time regular-season record of the group.
"You had to play really well to beat them," said the Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer, whose Baltimore Orioles swept the Twins in a best-of-five American League Championship Series that fall, repeating their feat from 1969. "They had really good balance — power, a little bit of speed, well-managed, and great fans in the one-time ballpark."
Kaat played his first two seasons for the original Washington Senators, who moved to Bloomington, Minn., about two weeks afterward Nib Mazeroski homered for Pittsburgh to beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series. It was the start of the expansion era and function of a surge of franchise motility.
"I reported to the clubhouse in the instructional league on Oct. 26, 1960 and I had Senators across my chest — and by the end of the day, it was Twins," Kaat said. "That was the day that the Washington Senators became the Twins.
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"Nosotros, as players, thought information technology was a great move considering we remembered what a positive move it was for the Braves to go from Boston to Milwaukee. Little things, like we'd hear they go these deals to get a machine to drive for the season, stuff like that. And then coming upwards here with M.Fifty.B. being new, beingness welcomed with open artillery, I hateful, the performance was secondary. Fans here were but happy to take big league baseball game."
After a xc-loss debut season, though, the functioning was extraordinary. The Twins won 817 games from 1962 through 1970, more than every other A.L. team except the Orioles. Kaat was among the era's top pitchers, winning 146 games in those seasons, trailing only Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal.
Oliva arrived for good in 1964, winning the Rookie of the Twelvemonth award and the first of three batting titles. He was 1 of several Cuban players signed by the Senators/Twins sentinel Joe Cambria, including the 1965 winner of the A.Fifty.'s Most Valuable Actor Award, shortstop Zoilo Versalles. The environment helped the transition for Oliva, who never played for another team.
"I remember Jim Kaat told me, 'Yous're going to feel similar home, considering one-tertiary of the ball club is Cuban," Oliva said. "I was and so happy to exist here with the Minnesota Twins, considering it made me feel like home. In those days I didn't speak one word of English, and they took intendance of me, they babysitted me. They were very nice, all those Cubans."
Prototype
Genu injuries robbed Oliva of the longevity of many of his contemporaries; he finished with a .304 average, just merely 1,917 career hits. He was non a singles hitter, either, once leading the league in slugging percentage and finishing with 220 homers, more than 13 members of the 3,000-hit social club.
"Everybody says, 'What'south the highlight of your career, the shutout against Sandy Koufax in the World Series?'" Palmer said. "I'll tell Tony, 'No, the day I struck you out twice.' Wally Bunker used to say, 'Tony Oliva — oh, exit united states of america solitary!'"
Oliva hit .344 for his career against Palmer (though he never homered off him) and punished some other Hall of Famer, Catfish Hunter, for a .333 average and 8 homers. He hit .314 in 3 postseason series.
Before the two A.L.C.South. defeats to the Orioles, the Twins fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1965 World Series. Kaat vanquish Koufax in Game 2 (after Koufax had refused to pitch the opener because it savage on Yom Kippur) only lost to him in Games 5 and 7.
"I was pretty realistic in '65 — I mean, to try to get a couple runs off Koufax, we were fortunate to get ii of them in Game 2 and 1 of them was unearned," Kaat said. "And so information technology's not like we blew the series or anything like that. And so of class I thought we'd get back. When you lot're in your 20s and y'all've got a good team: 'Oh, we'll get back.'"
Epitome
The Twins declined in the early 1970s, even with all those Hall of Famers, and waived Kaat in 1973. He revived his career with dorsum-to-back 20-win seasons for the Chicago White Sox under the pitching omnibus Johnny Sain, then bounced to the Philadelphia Phillies, the Yankees and, finally, the St. Louis Cardinals.
There, in 1982, Kaat earned a championship ring when the Cardinals trounce the Brewers and their Cooperstown quartet of Paul Molitor, Ted Simmons, Don Sutton and Robin Yount (closer Rollie Fingers was injured). Past then, everybody else from the 1965 Globe Series had retired.
"That 17-year look was the longest any player's had to look to get dorsum to the World Series," Kaat said. "And and then getting that Earth Serial ring — I found this out from the Elias Sports Agency — no athlete in whatever professional sport has played 24 seasons before getting a title ring. So that's what made that '82 season worth the wait and very rewarding."
The Twins would finally win the World Serial in 1987, with Kirby Puckett leading the fashion, and once more iv years later. Simply those teams could not match their early-'70s predecessors for membership in the Hall of Fame, where Kaat and Oliva — that long-life duo — will at present accept plaques forever.
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On Sunday, vii former players will be inducted into the Baseball game Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. The three living inductees — David Ortiz, Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva — will be on hand.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/sports/baseball/kaat-oliva-twins-hall-of-fame.html
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