MINNEAPOLIS - At first, baseball told them “No.” The both of them.
As improbable as it might sound, both former Minnesota Twins’ stars Tony Oliva and Rod Carew, who were teammates and roommates for 11 seasons with the Twins, shared the stage Thursday morning at the 52nd Annual SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) Convention here at the Hyatt Regency. Both are Hall of Famers, Carew in 1991, Oliva in 2022.
Yet pretty much, the first important word they heard regarding their baseball careers was “No.”
For Oliva, who came to America from Cuba, said he didn’t play much baseball on the island growing up. Didn’t play in high school, lived out in the country, maybe played once or twice a week. After a brief tryout here with the Twins’ organization, he showed he could hit, but didn’t know how to play the outfield very well and they released him.
He was stung, knew he couldn’t go back to Cuba so he went to Charlotte, North Carolina to work out with a friend. Happily, the Twins thought better of it, gave him a second chance. And three years later, Oliva was the American League Rookie Of The Year.
Hall of Famers Tony Oliva and Rod Carew spoke at the SABR National Convention Thursday.
Rod Carew told a similar tale. He tried out for the team at New York’s George Washington High and the coach cut him. Shortly after graduating from high school, he signed with the Twins in June of 1964 and three years later, he was starting at second base for the Twins, got the nod to start in the All-Star Game and was also named Rookie Of The Year.
As a youngster, he was playing in sandlot games outside Yankee Stadium. “I used to kid with the kids,” Carew said, “and I’d tell them, ‘One day, I’m going to be playing in that stadium.”
And so on Thursday morning, the old friends and roommates, Twins’ legends and Hall of Famers, were off, sharing stories of their own glory days, long, long ago. And everybody lucky enough to be there, ate it up as well they should.
For these two guys, baseball legends, were warriors and each bore the scars and toll of a long life. Carew, approaching 79, walked gingerly with a cane. A heart and kidney transplant recipient, he spoke of his love for the Minnesota area and, solemnly spoke of burying his youngest daughter here (she died of leukemia) because “she loved Minnesota.”
Oliva, 19 days past his 86th birthday, walked slowly, his knees had always been a problem, ending his playing days yet he came into the room with a gentle smile, a nod to everyone and on the stage, spoke again and again of “this beautiful game.”
This “beautiful game” kept him waiting from 1976, when he retired, to 2022 when the Golden Days Era committee elected to the Hall of Fame, 46 years later! He hadn’t gotten a hit, of course, in those 46 years, but happily, the committee recognized that Oliva, who won three batting titles, won himself a Gold Glove in 1966 (something he noted he was very proud of) was simply one of the greatest hitters in the game from 1964 to the middle-seventies and deserved a spot in the Hall, too. Like his roommate.
It seemed common knowledge to anybody who watched baseball then, particularly pitchers, who knew what a tough hitter he was. But despite the wait, there was no bitterness in his voice, no resentment in his manner. He kept talking again and again about “this beautiful game,” he must have said it three times.
He spoke about how thrilled he was to be chosen, after all this time, for the Hall and “how much (him being in) meant to the people. I see people coming to me, in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s 80’s,” he said, his warm Cuban accent flavoring his words. “And they cry. They’d be very happy that I was in the Hall of Fame. And I probably appreciate it more than I would have at 40, when you see how the people react."
“If you have a chance to play this game for so many years,” he said. “I made so many people happy. That’s something nobody can take from you.”
The two of them spoke with the intimacy of lifelong friends, men who’d gone into baseball battle together for so many years, the game that first told each one of them to get lost but they played on anyway.
“Roomie, roomie,” that was how Carew referred to Oliva. “We know each other over 50 years,” Oliva said. “We roommates 11 years…and being roommates for so many years, we were like brothers. And special things that would happen to me. Two, three’o clock (in the morning), sometimes, in the dark, he used to go to find ice for me to put on my knee because it was hurting.”
“When I saw his knee,” Carew said, looking at his longtime friend and shaking his head, “Oh boy. I just had my knee replaced about a month ago and I don’t how he played that much time with his knees the way they were.”
Sitting in the front of the room was a sharply dressed, smiling middle-aged woman, who was scrupulously jotting down all their comments in a notebook, taping it on her cellphone, too. She saw me smiling and nodding as Oliva kept saying “this beautiful game,” and looked at me, and smiled, too. “I could listen to this stuff all day,” she said and kept on writing.
Turned out it was Tony Oliva’s daughter, Olivia. And there she sat, proudly looking at her dad who had to wait for “this beautiful game” to finally give him the Hall of Fame phone call he so richly deserved, as he was turning 84.
She sat there, writing it all down, taking it all in, hearing the joy, the pride in his voice and the absolute grace he showed in accepting baseball’s highest honor after such an unduly wait.
For baseball fans getting to share this moment with these two baseball legends, why, it was just sweet. Sweet, like a Rod Carew steal of home or a Tony Oliva swing. Now, after all these innings, and surgeries and broken bats and games won and lost, hits and outs, baseball was finally saying “Yes.” Yelling it, as a matter of fact.
YES!!!