2022 Early Baseball and Golden Days Era Committee Results

 

Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat, 1966. 55 years later, they'll be entering the Baseball Hall of Fame together.

On Sunday, the Baseball Hall of Fame added 6 new members: Bud Fowler, Buck O’Neil, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Minoso, and Tony Oliva. In my most recent blog post, I went through the ballots for the Early Baseball and Golden Days Eras. The Early Baseball Committee elected Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil, two Negro Leagues stars. I will admit I don’t know much about Bud Fowler, but I’m thrilled that Buck O’Neil got in.

The Golden Days Era Committee elected four players: Gil Hodges, Minnie Minoso, Jim Kaat, and Tony Oliva. When this committee last met in 2014, they pitched a shutout and elected no one. Electing Hodges, Minoso, Kaat, and Oliva is huge. This committee just elected 4 of the best players who weren’t in the Hall of Fame. All 4 have compelling cases for induction, and I’m very glad they got in.

I’m glad Gil Hodges finally got in, after so many years. Hodges received 50% or more of the vote in 11 of the 15 years he was on the BBWAA ballot, so it’s very odd that it took him so long to get in. Minoso was one of the best players in the American League during the 1950’s, and baseball’s first Cuban star.

While Hodges died in 1972, and Minoso passed away in 2015, the Golden Days Era Committee wisely decided to vote in 2 players who are thankfully still alive: Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva. I’m a Twins fan, so I’ve wanted Kaat and Oliva to get in for a long time. The knock on Kaat was that he was merely a “compiler,” not a truly dominant starting pitcher. And Jim Kaat would agree with you on that. But he stuck around for 25 seasons and won 283 games. If there had been 2 Cy Young Awards handed out in 1966, instead of just one, Kaat surely would have won in the AL award, as he led the league with 25 wins. Kaat also lead the AL in starts, complete games, and innings pitched. But since there was only one Cy Young Award in 1966, it inevitably went to the masterful Sandy Koufax, in his final season. Kaat’s longtime teammate on the Minnesota Twins, Tony Oliva, finally received the call this year. Like Minoso, Oliva was also from Cuba. Oliva was a superstar from 1964-1971, until a knee injury basically ended his career. Had it not been for the adoption of the DH in 1973, Oliva most likely would have retired. He was still a good hitter, but not quite the same dangerous one he had been in his prime. And in his prime Tony O was very good indeed. Oliva led the AL in hits 5 times, doubles 4 times, led in slugging and total bases once each, and won 3 batting titles. Had he not been injured, Oliva most likely would have reached the 3,000 hit milestone. As it turned out, Oliva didn’t even reach 2,000 hits. From 1964 through 1971, Oliva finished in the top 3 in batting average every year except for 1967, when he finished 8^th. That’s an impressive run. Despite the fact that Oliva basically only appeared in the top ten of AL statistics from 1964-1971, his run was so impressive that he still outperforms the average Hall of Famer in “Black Ink” (when a player leads the league in a category) and “Gray Ink” (when a player finishes in the top ten of the league in a category). Oliva’s Black Ink score is 41. The average Hall of Famer is 27. Oliva’s Gray Ink score is 146. The average Hall of Famer is 144. An impressive career indeed.

Once again, just like in 2014, Dick Allen fell one vote short of getting inducted. It’s too bad that Allen didn’t get elected this time, but I’m very happy that Hodges, Kaat, Minoso, and Oliva are all getting in.

An Appreciation of Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 1935-2021

 

Jim "Mudcat" Grant, firing one in there for the Minnesota Twins.

Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 1935-2021.

Jim “Mudcat” Grant died on June 11, 2021. I never met Mudcat, but he’s always been an important player in the history of the Minnesota Twins. I saw Grant a couple of times, at a reunion of the 1965 Twins in 2005, and at Harmon Killebrew’s memorial service at Target Field in 2011. It was clear that he had a larger-than-life personality, and a charisma that drew people to him.

Mudcat Grant only pitched for the Twins for 3 full seasons, and half of a 4^th, but he’ll always be remembered for his 1965 season, in which he led the American League in wins with 21, and led the league with 6 shutouts. Grant also started 3 games of the 1965 World Series against the Dodgers. In Game 1, in Minnesota, Grant outdueled future Hall of Famer Don Drysdale. (Sandy Koufax famously didn’t start Game 1 because it fell on Yom Kippur.) Drysdale was knocked out of the game in the 3^rd inning, while Grant went the distance, holding the Dodgers to 10 hits and just 2 runs. Game 4 was a rematch of Grant versus Drysdale, this time in Los Angeles. Drysdale emerged the victor, as he pitched a complete game, held the Twins to just 5 hits and 2 runs, and struck out 11. Grant lasted 5 innings and gave up 5 runs. With the Twins down 3 games to 2, Grant came up big in Game 6. On just 2 days’ rest, he pitched a complete game gem, holding the Dodgers to a measly 6 hits and 1 run. In the bottom of the 6^th, with the Twins up 2-0, Bob Allison walked and then stole second base. With first base now open, the Dodgers intentionally walked Frank Quilici, to bring Grant to the plate with 2 outs. Grant made the Dodgers pay, launching a 3-run homer to left-center field. The Series would go to a Game 7. Unfortunately, the Twins had to face Sandy Koufax in Game 7. Working on just 2 days’ rest, Koufax threw his second shutout of the Series, striking out 10 Twins, even though over the last few innings Koufax’s curveball wasn’t working and he was only throwing fastballs.

After the 1967 season, the Twins traded Grant to the Dodgers. Grant pitched all of 1968 for the Dodgers, and then bounced from the expansion Expos to the Cardinals, to the A’s, the Pirates, and then the A’s again. Grant was very effective pitching in relief for the A’s and Pirates in 1970 and 1971, but he was released by the A’s after the 1971 season ended. Grant’s career record was 145-119, with a 3.63 ERA, 18 shutouts and 54 saves.

I knew that Grant won 21 games for the 1965 Twins, but until I read his obituaries, I had forgotten that he was the first Black pitcher to win 20 games in the American League. I thought “That’s a really cool fact.” And then I thought about it more, and it hit me: that was 18 years after Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball. 1965 was the 19^th season played since both leagues integrated in 1947, and it took that long for a Black pitcher to win 20 games in the American League. That’s a very long time.

I’ve known for a long time that the National League was much quicker to embrace Black and Latin players than the American League. This is one of the reasons why the National League crushed the American League in the All-Star Game from 1950-1987, going 33-8-1 over that span. And I’ve known for a long time that it took the Boston Red Sox 12 years after Jackie Robinson’s debut to integrate. Way to go, Boston.

As I was thinking about Grant’s achievement in becoming the first Black pitcher in the American League to win 20 games, I was wondering, who was the Black pitcher who came the closest to winning 20 games in the American League before Grant did it in 1965? I tried to think of Black pitchers in the American League during the 1950’s, and I came up with…not much in the old memory bank. So, I scoured baseball-reference and looked team by team through the AL during the 1950’s. Suffice it to say, there was not a lot of diversity on those teams.

In my searching, I separated players into Black and Latin. This gets a little hazy, especially in the case of someone like Juan Pizarro, a Black Puerto Rican pitcher who won 19 games for the Chicago White Sox in 1964. But I was looking specifically for U.S.-born Black pitchers. What I found was that while there were Latin pitchers like Camilo Pascual and Pedro Ramos who were in the top 10 in the American League for wins, the first U.S.-born Black pitcher to show up in the top 10 in the AL for wins was Connie Johnson, who won 14 games for the Baltimore Orioles in 1957. It was Mudcat Grant himself who was the first Black pitcher in the AL to win 15 games, for the Cleveland Indians in 1961. And that was the closest a Black pitcher in the AL came to 20 wins until Grant won 21 games in 1965.

Reading more about Mudcat Grant made me think a little more about Black players like him, who debuted a decade after Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, but who still had their own barriers to break. Too often with history, we remember the groundbreaking event, but then we don’t follow up on what happened next. “Oh yeah, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and then everything was fine, right?” Nope, not really.

In retirement, Grant wrote a book about the Black pitchers who had won 20 games in a season. The Black Aces came out in 2007, and it tells the stories of Grant, Vida Blue, Al Downing, Bob Gibson, Dwight Gooden, Fergie Jenkins, Sam Jones, Don Newcombe, Mike Norris, J.R. Richard, Dave Stewart, and Earl Wilson. It sounds like a fascinating book, and a fitting tribute to the legacy of the AL’s first Black 20-game winner.

Don Baylor, 1949-2017

Don Baylor, batting for the Minnesota Twins in the 1987 ALCS.

I was saddened to hear that Don Baylor died yesterday at the age of 68. Baylor was one of the great power hitters of the 1970’s and 1980’s. For Twins fans like me, Baylor will always be well known for his game-tying home run in Game 6 of the 1987 World Series. Baylor played in just 20 regular season games for the Twins in 1987, and ironically enough, didn’t hit a home run in any of those games. But he came through when the chips were down in the postseason. 

Baylor had a 19-year playing career, from 1970 to 1988. His best season came in 1979, when he was the AL MVP, leading the league in both runs scored and RBIs, and slugging a career-high 36 home runs for the California Angels. Baylor wasn’t a Hall of Famer, but he was an excellent player for many years, and he put up some pretty awesome career numbers. His 338 home runs are still good enough for 100^th on the all-time list. To give you an idea of how the game has changed over the last 23 years, in 1994 he was 50^th on the all-time home run list. Baylor also had good speed, as he stole 285 bases over his career, with a high of 52 for the Oakland A’s in 1976. Of course, no summary of Baylor’s career would be complete without mentioning his knack for getting hit with a pitch. Baylor was hit 267 times in his career, setting a modern-day record that Craig Biggio eventually broke. 

I met Don Baylor at a baseball card show when I was a kid, it must have been shortly after he retired, probably 1989 or 1990. I can’t remember a lot about him, but I remember him being nice, and all of the pieces I’ve read about him today reinforced that he was truly a nice guy. The signed picture I have of him is with his second stop with the Oakland A’s, in 1988, when he achieved the unique distinction of playing in the World Series in 3 consecutive years with 3 different teams-1986 Boston Red Sox, 1987 Minnesota Twins, and the 1988 Oakland A’s. 

I read Don Baylor’s autobiography when I was a kid, but I can’t say I remember a lot about it. Autobiographies of baseball players made up a lot of my reading back in those days of my childhood. I’ve always been struck by how Don Baylor’s career is kind of a reverse image of Reggie Jackson’s. Granted, Baylor never climbed the ladder of super-duper stardom the way that Reggie did, but Baylor played for all of the same teams that Reggie did. Jackson and Baylor were part of the blockbuster trade that sent Reggie to the Orioles in April of 1976. Jackson played only one year for the Orioles, while Baylor only played one year for the A’s. While Reggie went to the Yankees and then to the Angels, Baylor went to the Angels and then to the Yankees. Jackson and Baylor were teammates for one year, on the 1982 Angels. Jackson led the AL in home runs that year with 39, while Baylor added 24 home runs of his own. Adding to the symmetry of their careers, both played their last season for the Oakland A’s, Jackson in 1987, Baylor in 1988. 

Don Baylor was a great baseball player, and his memory will continue to live on.