After 55 years, just call Tony Oliva 'Mr. Twin'

FORT MYERS, FLA. – Tony Oliva was in the last group of ballplayers to leave Cuba legally to pursue a career in American baseball. Papa Joe Cambria, the longtime procurer of Cuban baseball talent for the Griffith organization, had sent 22 players out of the country on April 9.

The young men first had detoured through Mexico, where they spent over a week, before finally arriving in Fernandina Beach, Fla., on April 19.

Fernandina Beach is the northernmost town on Florida's Atlantic Coast. It served as the spring training home for the Washington Senators and then Twins minor leaguers through 1963.

The Twins' top minor league teams — Syracuse, N.Y., Nashville, Tenn., Charlotte and Wilson, N.C. — already had left to start their seasons. There were only a handful of spots left on the rosters for the Class D teams about to leave for Fort Walton Beach, Fla., and Erie, Pa.

Oliva played in four Class D exhibitions and had seven hits. He was released from the "contract" he had signed and was told to go home to Cuba.

That was complicated. The debacle of the Bay of Pigs invasion had taken place on April 17. All travel was suspended to Cuba, and there was no way for Oliva to get home.

Oliva was told to go to Charlotte, where he could work out there for a time. Phil Howser, the Griffiths' general manager at Charlotte, paid Oliva's small expenses, watched him hit and convinced the Twins to give Oliva a place on the one short-season rookie team in Wytheville, Va.

Tony batted .410 with 10 home runs and 81 RBI in 64 games. This intrigued Twins owner Calvin Griffith to the point that he brought Oliva to the Twin Cities in September.

"I worked out with the Twins at Met Stadium when the team was at home that last month," Oliva said. "When they went on the road, I had nothing to do. I didn't know English. I lived in a room in a house in St. Paul."

Later that fall, Oliva was sent to St. Petersburg, Fla., to play for the Twins team in the Florida Instructional League.

"The instructional league was different," Oliva said. "Jim Kaat was there, Pedro Ramos was there … working on new pitches. There were many major leaguers playing there. We played 50 games, real games."

Oliva was among only a handful on nonroster invitees to the Twins' big-league spring training in Orlando, Fla., in 1962. And he has been in a Twins uniform in spring training since then.

That makes this his 55th spring with the Twins.

Oliva was sitting in a locker room that is part of the home clubhouse at Hammond Stadium. This smaller room houses coaches who are assisting in spring training.

Tony was sitting next to next to Rod Carew, his teammate and road roommate for nearly a decade with the Twins. Carew has been here despite the near-fatal heart attack of last fall that now has him wearing a vest under his uniform — a vest containing the batteries that operate his mechanical heart.

They started talking about the grand facilities the Twins players now enjoy in Fort Myers compared with what was in place at Tinker Field in Orlando.

"Rod, if you took this room and knocked out the wall to the next coaches room, it would be as big as the whole clubhouse in Orlando," Oliva said.

Carew agreed with Oliva's architectural assessment. Rodney's first big-league camp was in 1966, four years after Tony's.

"We didn't even have that clubhouse at the start," Oliva said. "We had sort of an old barracks behind the stadium and dressed in there.''

There was another complication when Tony arrived for his first big-league camp in 1962: The Cherry Plaza, the Twins' headquarters hotel on Lake Eola in downtown Orlando, was segregated.

"If you were a white Cuban, you could stay there," Oliva said. "If you were a black Cuban, like me, you could not. Same with Earl Battey and Lenny Green and the black American players. We stayed together in a rooming house in the black part of town."

In 1963, Henry Sadler, a bellman at the San Juan Hotel in downtown Orlando, opened the first motel in the black part of town. Legend has it, much of Henry's financing came from Griffith.

"The rooms were nicer, there was a lounge area and a swimming pool," Oliva said. "It was better."

By 1966, the Civil Rights movement was in full force, and the Twins' segregated living became a major issue back in Minnesota. Hubert Humphrey, then the vice president, made a call.

"Hubert Humphrey told Calvin it had to change, and it did," Oliva said. "We all lived together in the Downtown Hotel, which wasn't much of a hotel."

Tony smiled. "Calvin and the team officials kept staying at the Cherry Plaza," he said.

Eventually, team officials and players (black and white) all stayed at the Kahler Hotel, on the opposite side of Lake Eola from that stately citadel of segregation, the Cherry Plaza.

Oliva played through the 1976 season. With his terrible knees, he would've been done in 1973, if the designated hitter rule had not come to the American League.

He limped through four seasons, still able to produce line drives. He was a part-time DH as well as the hitting coach in 1976, and also served as hitting coach in 1977-78.

For the next half-dozen seasons, from 1979 to 1984, he spent most of spring training in Melbourne, Fla., as the Twins minor league hitting instructor. He was the big-league hitting coach again from 1985 to 1991, and has been a presence at spring training in the 25 ensuing years — counselor to hitters, ambassador to fans.

"Tony, Tony," those fans shout as Oliva, now 77, moves from the side field where batting practice is taking place toward the big-league clubhouse.

"Can you sign, Tony?" they shout. "Can we get a picture?"

Over he comes, to offer an earnest signature, to embrace an older fan or a young kid for the endless photos now taken by cellphones.

It takes Tony O. longer to travel these 75 yards than anyone, and not because of his knees.

"Two new ones from Mayo Clinic," Tony says. "My knees feel great."

It takes Oliva longer because he stops to work the crowd, to show appreciation for the fans' interest. After 55 years, he is Tony O. to generations of Minnesotans, and he is also this:

Mr. Twin.

Patrick Reusse can be heard 3-6 p.m. weekdays on AM-1500. preusse@startribune.com