Come mid-December, the Baseball Hall of Fame plans to play tribute to four of its members who emanate from Latin America. Those ballplayers will have their plaques removed from the museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., and will be shipped to Puerto Rico as part of a four-day, touring display of the Caribbean island.
Which is nice for fans of Roberto Alomar, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente and Tony Perez (who’s actually Cuban, not Puerto Rican). Not everybody can get to upstate New York to see the baseball collection assembled there.
BUT I CAN’T help but wonder if the idea of noting the significance of Latin Americans with that action will seem a little obsolete by the time the tour is conducted.
For there is a chance that come Monday, there will be a new Latin American member of the baseball Hall. For among the 10 people up for consideration by the Hall’s veterans committee are three Cubaños who were among the last wave of ballplayers from the island nation before the rise of Fidel Castro managed to complicate so many things in our society.
There are those who think the presence of the three – Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva and Luis Tiant – could complicate the situation so that none of them are able to reach the “75 percent” standard required for membership in the Hall of Fame.
They may well be correct. For that matter, none of the 10 may make it because of the differing factions each in support of a different ballplayer.
RON SANTO IN before Gil Hodges? What about Ken Boyer or Jim Kaat? And some Yankees-backers will think it absurd that anyone gets in ahead of pitcher Allie Reynolds.
All of which is a shame.
Because there are some worthy candidates who could easily get dumped on yet again come Monday – the day that the results will be announced.
As for the three Cubans, I’ll be the first to admit I can’t pick from among them. A part of me thinks that legitimate arguments can be made for all three – them, and one-time Oakland A’s owner Charles O. Finley.
WHICH PROBABLY MEANS that none of them will get in.
But in the cases of Tiant and Miñoso, both didn’t make it to the major leagues until the “relatively” advanced ages in their late 20s. In part because while there were some Cuban ballplayers in the U.S. major leagues, nobody was looking to build rosters around them like today.
These Latin Americans were supposed to fill a roster spot or two. Which all three of these guys managed to do, with Oliva being a significant part of those strong Minnesota Twins teams of the 1960s, Miñoso a part of the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians teams that were perennial contenders of the 1950s, and Tiant being the best pitcher the Boston Red Sox had in the mid-1970s – particularly that one year they went to the World Series.
It’s easy to try to reduce the ballplayers to mere numbers (although those statistics can be read in ways that make all three look extremely worthy). Although all have their own stories that add to the culture that is beisbol.
WITH MIÑOSO, HE was the first dark-skinned Latin American ballplayer in the U.S. major leagues (prior to him, Latins had to pass a sensibility where they could – from a distance, at least – appear to be white), while Oliva nearly got released while in the minor leagues except that the Minnesota Twins weren’t anxious to have him sent back to a Cuba that had just been taken over by Castro.
And as for Tiant, he could literally join Hall of Fame member Orlando Cepeda in terms of being the sons of ballplayers who starred in the Latin American leagues AS WELL AS the Negro leagues of old in this country.
So yes, I’m looking forward to Monday to see if any of the Cuban Trio manages to get into the Hall of Fame. It would be a much more interesting moment than knowing the bronze plaques honoring four Puerto Rico natives are touring the island this month.
Now if only we can get these people to realize the baseball worthiness of yet another pelotero, Fernando Valenzuela. Yet that argument will have to be the subject of another day’s commentary.
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