Tony Oliva finally feels the Hall of Fame love after too many years of waiting

Tony Oliva is in post-election hubris. He's spent the summer preparing for a moment he didn't believe would happen.

The doors of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., are finally swinging open for him this weekend after being closed since his career ended 46 years ago. His numbers didn't get better during that time — the voters did.

Oliva, 84, finally gets his day in the sun along with former Twins teammate Jim Kaat, who was also voted in back in December by the Golden Days Era committee. David Ortiz, who broke in with the Twins in the late 1990s before starring with the Red Sox, will be the third living inductee Sunday.

As Oliva prepares for that induction ceremony, he has realized the enormity of his achievement. All the years of him waiting for "The Call" have ended, but he's not the only one who agonized over his Hall of Fame candidacy. At Target Field ballgames and on his travels around town, he's seen and heard how others have had an emotional stake in his path to the Hall. And he's feeling the love now that his time has come.

"The biggest thing for me is how people react," Oliva said before a recent Twins game. "How happy they are for me. Young people. Middle-aged people. People my age. Everybody. It's unbelievable. They go out of their way to tell me congratulations.

"I'm having this experience with many, many people."

The young fans get to Oliva the most. He last played in 1976, so someone would have to be in their late 40s to have seen him play. Behind every young Oliva fan, there is a parent with a story. He's thinking about those people as his day comes. Like the game last year when he was approached by a fan who wanted to have his daughter take a picture with him, and Oliva obliged.

"He said, 'You know, you're my idol. In 1972, I was 8 years old, and I took this picture with you,' " Oliva said. "He opens his wallet and he takes out the picture. He still has it. These are the experiences I have with people."

Oliva has played and coached for the Twins, his only team. He's also been an ambassador for the organization. Heck, he's been a model of what Minnesota nice should be. While several hockey dignitaries were announced during the evening of the Winter Classic NHL game between the Wild and Blues on a frozen Target Field on New Year's Day, it was Oliva who received the loudest applause.

The fans will be on Oliva's mind during induction weekend as much as teammates, contemporaries and a Twins organization he's been associated with for 61 years.

"Now, everywhere I walk, I've lost my name," Oliva said. "Now people call me, 'Hall of Fame'. Not, 'Hey No. 6,' or 'Hey, T.O.' but 'Hall of Fame.' Sometimes I feel embarrassed.

"Something happened to me that I never thought would happen."

Oliva, an outfielder, needed two things from today's game that would have made his path to Cooperstown shorter and less winding: advances in medicine and exit velocity measurements.

His hands were fast. His bat speed was ferocious. He could hit good pitches and pitches off the plate. In 15 major league seasons, Oliva made eight All-Star teams. He finished in the top five of American League MVP voting three times. He won three batting titles and was the first player to win a batting title in each of his first two seasons.

It's rare that a player begins a career with such authority. In his rookie year, Oliva led the league in batting average, runs, hits, doubles and total bases. He strolled to the Rookie of the Year award. He batted .321 his second season, and over his first eight seasons, Oliva batted .313 with an .867 on-base-plus slugging percentage. Dozens upon dozens of hits were lasers that would top today's exit velocity charts.

Oliva was not blessed with the greatest of knees and could have used today's methods to keep him on the field. But he dived for a ball against Oakland during the 1971 season and tore cartilage in his right knee. It happened on June 29 that season, when he was batting .375. He still won the batting title with a .337 average. His body, however, betrayed him. Bone chips, loose cartilage, torn cartilage, torn ligaments. Oliva went through it all during his career, and 1971 was the beginning of his downfall. He played in just 10 games in 1972 and never hit .300 again.

This is why Oliva's Hall of Fame case has been a tricky one. Dominant at his best, but his best was unsustainable because of injured knees. He didn't even collect 2,000 hits in career, falling short at 1,917.

In 15 years on the Hall of Fame ballot, the most support Oliva received was 47.3% of the vote in 1988. His case fell into the hands of the veterans' committee, where he failed to break through eight times. I was covering the winter meetings in 2014 when it was announced that Oliva and Dick Allen had missed induction by one vote. Sighs were audible in the media workroom when the results were revealed.

Was it ever going to happen for Tony O? We weren't optimistic. But, after meetings were delayed due to the pandemic, there was another Golden Days Committee ballot in 2021.

Oliva thought this would be it. If he doesn't get in this time, he never would. But his phone rang on Dec. 5 with Jane Forbes Clark, the chairwoman of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, on the line with news that he was in.

"This is something that anyone who has been a baseball player dreams of," Twins All-Star outfielder Byron Buxton said, "and it took him THIS long to finally get in? To me, it's like: enjoy every second of it. All you can do is be happy for him."

The combination of Oliva fans, Kaat fans and Ortiz fans will all add Minnesota spice to the Cooperstown weekend, as thousands of local followers are expected to make the trip.

"I think half of Cooperstown will be people from Minnesota," Oliva said. "People are coming from all over the country. People have called me who are coming from California, Florida, Texas. People are coming from all over. It's beautiful."

Visitors will include Oliva's younger brother Juan, who received a visa to come to the United States to attend the ceremony and visit his brother in Minnesota for a couple of weeks afterward. Juan Oliva received assistance from state Sen. Amy Klobuchar's office to obtain the visa.

The Twins traveling party will number more than 40 and is ready to celebrate with gusto.

"I don't know if we have had a detailed plan, per se, prepared," Twins president Dave St. Peter said. "What we did have is a commitment to Tony and maybe more importantly to (his wife) Gordette and the Oliva family and everybody that has loved Tony for so long that once he got elected, we were going to throw Cooperstown's biggest party."

The Oliva-Kaat party is set for Saturday night, with the induction ceremony on Sunday.

Oliva said his speech is pretty much ready. Inductees have been asked to keep their remarks to around 10 minutes. He has not timed his speech. And he's not sure if he will get emotional, which usually guarantees a longer speech.

But Oliva is going to walk to the podium, see thousands of fans and realize that many of them are there for him. At that point, anything can happen to the lifelong Twin.

"It's been 61 years," Oliva said. "It's unbelievable to have that big, big, big of a family."

Injuries plagued Tony Oliva in the second half of his career, but they could not diminish the impact he had on the Twins in his first eight seasons. He was an All-Star in all of them, but 1964 was Oliva's defining season. The left-hitting right fielder from Cuba was named the AL Rookie of the Year and led the league with a .323 batting average, 217 hits, 109 runs and 43 doubles.

1st: Player to hit a home run as a designated hitter. The DH rule extended Oliva's career. He hit this home run off Oakland's Catfish Hunter on April 6, 1973.

1: Gold Glove for the right fielder (1966), notable because Oliva was considered a defensive liability as he came up through the minors.

8: All-Star selections, in his first eight full seasons (1964-71). A right knee injury late in 1971 limited him to 10 games in '72.

220: Career home runs for Oliva, with a high of 32 in his rookie season. Oliva also drove in 947 runs, with a high of 107 in 1970.

23: Times Oliva was on a Hall of Fame ballot and failed to get inducted, before this year. The first year he was eligible was 1982.

$105,000: Single-season high salary for Oliva, in 1972 when he played only 10 games. He earned less than $1 million total in his 15-year career.