Oliva, Kaat hoping call from the Hall finally comes

If that call never comes, Tony Oliva says, so be it. He's got no complaints. But if good news is indeed on its way, well, it's uncomfortable to say, but he's on a bit of a deadline.

"I've had a beautiful life for a long time. It's wonderful. But I'm not going to be here forever," the 76-year-old former Twins star said. So if election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame is ever going to happen, "You want to enjoy it a little bit while you're still around. You want to say thank you to the people who are pulling for you all these years."

And there are a lot of those. Oliva is not only one of the best Twins players ever, but he might be the most beloved, given that he has spent his retirement in Minnesota, teaching ballplayers and donating his time and energy to several charities, the Boys and Girls Clubs among them. Some fans, including Oliva's neighbors in suburban Minneapolis, have even organized a letter-writing campaign to help sway the 16 voters who this weekend will debate whether or not he should be inducted in Cooperstown next year.

"To me, Tony has been the absolute model human being, for his compassion and fan-friendliness off the field. He's as good an ambassador as the Twins and Major League Baseball has ever had," Twins President Dave St. Peter said.

Sunday, 16 executives, sportswriters, historians and Hall of Fame players will sequester themselves in a hotel conference room at baseball's winter meetings in San Diego and debate the qualifications of Oliva, longtime Twins pitcher Jim Kaat, and eight other candidates for induction in the Class of 2015. After a couple of hours of discussion, each will mark a ballot in secret.

None will know the outcome until Monday, when any candidate who received at least 12 votes — the standard 75 percent required for Hall of Fame election — will be welcomed onto the game's most prestigious roster.

If Oliva, a three-time American League batting champion and two-time MVP runner-up, is chosen, "I would feel really good for myself and for the Twins. For all the people who have been so good to me," he said. And if he isn't? "I keep my spirits up. I don't give up hope," Oliva said. "But three more years is a long time to wait."

Oliva was on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot for 15 years after his retirement, and he never received more than 47.3 percent of the votes. Kaat, Oliva's teammate for nearly half of the pitcher's 25-season career, never even reached 30 percent. Oliva came close — but never hit 75 percent — in five different elections since 2001, Kaat in four of them. That should settle the question, some say.

"The Veterans Committee should be forever disbanded. It … has gone on long past its mandate and exists now solely to lower the standards of the Hall," Joe Sheehan, a baseball analyst for Sports Illustrated and his own newsletter, wrote in 2011. "I say, close the back door. … There aren't five players in MLB history eligible for election by the Veterans Committee who have strong cases for induction."

Funny thing is, even Kaat, whose 283 career victories includes a team-record 189 with the Twins, seems to agree. When the "Golden Age" committee last met in 2011, Kaat finished with 10 votes, two shy of induction. Yet in an interview with NBC Sports' Bob Costas at the time, Kaat said: "I wasn't Secretariat. I was that No. 3 horse that could go to the post every week and get a check for you. I wasn't a dominant pitcher, or a perennial All-Star. I don't say that to be overly modest. I've just looked at my career pretty objectively."

Standards evolve, though, and statistical analysis has changed how players are evaluated. In Kaat's case, a popular "similarity score" shows that the three pitchers with the most similar career to the lefthander are Tommy John, Robin Roberts and Ferguson Jenkins. The latter two are in the Hall of Fame — and Jenkins is a member of this weekend's committee.

So is Rod Carew, Oliva's longtime roommate with the Twins. Carew is on the record as endorsing his teammate's candidacy, likening Oliva's high-quality, injury-shortened career to Sandy Koufax's.

Will Carew's voice in that room sway votes, and win the former Twins the extra support they need to finally reach Cooperstown?

"He's only one guy. Everyone has to make up their own mind," Oliva said. "I hope they realize, 'Hey, this guy belongs, he did a lot, and he's still doing a lot.'

"But I can't do anything about it. I'll still have my family and friends and the Twins either way, and that's more important."