On the heels of Bert Blyleven’s induction in to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, three more former Twins have renewed chances to join Bert, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew and Kirby Puckett in Cooperstown. Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat and Luis Tiant have been nominated for consideration by the Baseball HOF’s new “Golden Era Committee”.
The Committee, made up of 16 voters consisting of executives, veteran media members and existing HOF members, will be choosing from among ten players and executives that made their greatest contributions to the game of baseball between the years 1947 and 1972.
The committee will be meeting during MLB’s winter meetings in December and each member can vote for anywhere from zero to five candidates. It takes being included on 75% of ballots cast to gain election. This committee will be holding similar elections just every three years, so anyone who doesn’t gain election this year will have to wait another three years just to find out if they’ll be considered again. Given the age of most of these guys, that could literally be a lifetime.
Oliva, Kaat and Tiant are joined on the ballot by Ron Santo, Buzzie Bavasi, Ken Boyer, Charlie Finley, Gil Hodges, Minnie Minoso and Allie Reynolds. For a fan in his mid-fifties like me, those names bring back a flood of memories and it’s hard to believe that none of them are in the HOF already.
Interestingly, the three former Twins all played together, along with Blyleven, Carew and Killebrew, on the 1970 team that won the AL West Division. Think of that for a moment… it could very well turn out that the 1970 Twins included SIX future Hall of Famers!
At a time when many of us are trying to figure out how the Twins should rebuild their roster in an effort to regain some level of competitiveness, take a look at some of the numbers that members of that 1970 team put up:
Tony Oliva: .325/.364/.514 .878 OPS, 23 HR, 107 RBI in 157 games.
Harmon Killebrew: .271/.411/.546 .957 OPS, 41 HR, 113 RBI in 157 games.
Rod Carew: .366/.407/.524 .930 OPS, 4 HR, 28 RBI, in just 51 games.
And just to prove they weren’t the only guys hitting the ball…
Cesar Tovar: .300/.356/.442 .798 OPS, 10 HR, 54 RBI and 30 stolen bases in 161 games.
The pitchers had some pretty decent seasons, too:
Jim Kaat: 14-10, 3.56 ERA, 34 starts, 4 complete games, 230.1 IP
Bert Blyleven: 10-9, 3.18 ERA, 25 starts, 5 complete games, 164 IP
Luis Tiant: 7-3, 3.40 ERA, 17 starts, 2 complete games, 92.2 IP
Not bad, but not one of those pitchers was even the ace of that staff in 1970. That honor went to…
Jim Perry: 24-12, 3.04 ERA, 40 starts, 13 complete games, 278.2 IP… and a Cy Young Award.
Congratulations to Tony-O, Kitty-Kaat and El Tiante on their nominations and here’s hoping the voters recognize that all three of these guys are deserving of the honor to stand with their peers as among the best to ever play the game.
– JC