Book Review: Baseball's Best Kept Secret, (1997) and Life Is a Hit; Don't Strike Out, (2014) by Al Oliver

Life Is a Hit; Don't Strike Out, by Al Oliver, 2014.

Baseball's Best Kept Secret, by Al Oliver and Andrew O'Toole, 1997.

A handsome head shot of Al with the Pirates. This photo makes it look like he records for Motown Records in the off-season.

Al Oliver enjoyed some of his best seasons with the Texas Rangers, hitting .319 for them over 4 seasons. And yes, his necklace says "Scoop." That's his nickname because he was so good at scooping up low throws to first base.

Al's 1983 Topps card, after winning the 1982 NL batting title with the Montreal Expos.

Al Oliver was one of baseball’s most dangerous hitters in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Oliver was a 7-time All-Star, a 3 time Silver Slugger award winner, and the 1982 National League batting champion. During Oliver’s career from 1968 to 1985, only Pete Rose and Rod Carew had more hits than he did. Oliver finished his career with 2,743 hits and a .303 lifetime batting average. So why was he dumped from the Hall of Fame ballot after failing to win 5% of the vote in his first year on the ballot? Good question. I think Al Oliver deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and I think he’s one of the most underrated players in recent baseball history. 

Al Oliver just published an autobiography in September called Life Is a Hit; Don’t Strike Out: The Al Oliver Story. Oliver published an earlier autobiography in 1997 called Baseball’s Best Kept Secret: Al Oliver and His Time in Baseball, written with co-author Andrew O’Toole. Both books shed light on the man off of the baseball diamond. Baseball’s Best Kept Secret is the better book, as Oliver goes into much more detail about his playing career. If you’re reading Life Is a Hit without having read Baseball’s Best Kept Secret, you will be missing a lot of information. Unfortunately, just reading the books will be more work than it should be, as it is painfully obvious that neither book was professionally proof-read. Grammatical errors abound, and co-author Andrew O'Toole has an interesting interpretation of correct comma usage. That being said, if you can overlook the sloppy mistakes, the books offer a look at an interesting athlete. 

One thing that makes Baseball's Best Kept Secret interesting is that Oliver and O'Toole include other voices in the book-there are interviews with Oliver's teammates, sportswriters who covered the teams he played for, and excerpts from contemporary news articles about him. Not all of these other voices are complimentary to Oliver, and some of them quite pointedly criticize him. I applaud Al Oliver for including these other voices, and for not just creating an echo chamber of "Al Oliver should be a Hall of Famer." Oliver does the same thing in Life Is a Hit, sometimes enlisting some of the very same people quoted in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret. The problem is that most of the voices in Life Is a Hit do blur together, as they repeat the same thing: “Al Oliver should be a Hall of Famer.” Oh well, I can’t blame Oliver for wanting to be in the Hall.

Oliver grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he played baseball and basketball against another future All-Star, Larry Hisle. Oliver dealt with tragedy early on, as his mother died of a heart attack when he was 13, and his father died on the same day that Oliver was called up to the major leagues. Oliver makes it clear in both books that his parents’ influence on him made him the man he was.

Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of high school in 1964, Oliver quickly moved up the minor league ranks to earn a September call up in 1968. Oliver would never return to the minor leagues. A superbly gifted line drive hitter, Oliver could hit the ball hard to all fields. Oliver was a first baseman in high school and the minor leagues, but with the Pirates he alternated between first base and the outfield. In 1971, Oliver played a majority of his games in center field, where he was flanked by Hall of Famers Willie Stargell in left field and Roberto Clemente in right field. The outfield of Stargell, Oliver, and Clemente generated a lot of offense for the Pirates that year, as they beat the Orioles in the World Series. Late in the 1971 season, Oliver made history as he was part of the first all African-American and Latin starting lineup. Oliver blossomed as a hitter as the 1970’s went on, and beginning in 1972, he batted .300 or more in 11 of the last 14 years of his career. Traded to the Texas Rangers after the 1977 season, Oliver thrived in the hot Texas summers, batting .319 over 4 years with the Rangers. He had one of his finest seasons at the plate in 1980, getting over 200 hits for the first time in his career, and also hitting 19 home runs, which helped him finish the season with 117 RBI. During spring training in 1982, Oliver was traded to the Montreal Expos. He responded with his best season, as he led the NL in hits, doubles, RBI, batting average, and total bases. Oliver hit .331, the highest average of his career, and he finished in 3^rd place in the MVP voting. During his last two years in baseball, 1984 and 1985, Oliver bounced from team to team, as he spent time with the Giants, Phillies, Dodgers, and Blue Jays. He was one of many veteran players who were not offered a contract for the 1986 season because of collusion among baseball’s owners. 

The collusion scandal started because baseball’s owners were annoyed at the high salaries free agency had brought. They retaliated by illegally colluding with each other to not offer contracts to free agents and to coordinate their offers to free agents in an attempt to keep salaries down. Two of the most famous cases of collusion were against Tim Raines and Andre Dawson, both of the Montreal Expos. After the 1986 season, Dawson and Raines were not offered contracts by any teams, despite the fact that they were two of the best players in baseball. Raines had just won a batting title, and yet he received no offers until the Expos finally re-signed him on May 1^st, a month into the 1987 season. When no one offered Dawson a contract, he and his agent wrote a blank check to the Chicago Cubs and told them Dawson would play for them for any amount they would offer. Dawson ended up being the NL MVP in 1987 for the Cubs. 

Throughout his career, Al Oliver was regarded by the press as an overly confident braggart. Al's response to that was his great quote: "There's no such thing as bragging. You're either lying or telling the truth." Oliver always felt he was telling the truth about his abilities on the baseball diamond, even when that truth was predicting every day that he would get 4 or 5 hits. In his two books, Oliver shows us where that self-confidence and relentlessly positive attitude came from. Al Oliver was an African-American man who was raised by his parents to be very proud to be an African-American. When Oliver came to the major leagues in 1968, this was a rarity in the pro sports world. Oliver was not a militant, but as far as major league baseball was concerned, he might as well have been leading protest marches in the outfield. Oliver and other outspoken African-American baseball players of the 1970’s like Dick Allen, Reggie Jackson, and Oliver's teammate Dock Ellis would feel the brunt of white baseball writers' casual racism. 

One of the key passages in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret is a conversation that Oliver had early in his career with Roberto Clemente about the press. Oliver quotes Clemente saying to him, “They did it to me at the start of my career; the writers will give you a personality that they perceive.” (p.72) Baseball writers had decided early on in Clemente’s career that he was a hypochondriac who didn’t always give 100%. That label would dog Clemente his entire career. Likewise, Oliver was portrayed as arrogant, when he thought he was simply expressing confidence in his abilities. In both books, Oliver comes off as an affable, likeable man who was a quiet leader on his teams through his positive attitude and his generosity towards his fellow players.

Oliver was one of baseball’s steadiest hitters during his career, and he put up some really great numbers. Baseball’s Best Kept Secret lists where Oliver ranks in several categories during his career from 1968-1985. But since Oliver only played in 4 games in 1968 and collected just 1 hit, it’s a little more fair to Oliver to look at his stats from 1969-1985. 

Most Hits 1969-1985:

Pete Rose-3,095

Rod Carew-2,777

Al Oliver-2,742

Most Doubles 1969-1985:

Pete Rose-553

Al Oliver-529

Most RBIs 1969-1985:

Reggie Jackson-1,521

Tony Perez-1,342

Al Oliver-1,326

Johnny Bench-1,288

That’s very impressive company to keep. And while some might disregard those stats as just being cherry-picked to highlight Oliver’s career, the fact that the time span of those stats is 17 seasons makes the point that over 17 seasons Al Oliver was one of the best hitters in baseball. 

The Veterans' Committee for the Hall of Fame has put Oliver on their ballot in the past, and he deserves to be considered for election to the Hall of Fame. Oliver had a very similar career to another one of my favorite overlooked players, Vada Pinson. I’ve written about Pinson before, and I was excited to read in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret that Pinson was one of Oliver’s favorite players when he was growing up. For whatever reason, neither Oliver nor Pinson drew much support from the sportswriters who vote for the Hall of Fame. Oliver dropped off the ballot in his first year, and Pinson’s vote total never exceeded 16%, far short of the 75% of the vote needed for induction. Oliver and Pinson had similar skills; they were both hitters who slashed line drives all over the field and didn’t walk or strike out much. Because they didn’t walk much, their Hall of Fame candidacies have never gained much traction with the sabermetric writers. On the flip side, Pinson and Oliver have not had a lot of support from old school baseball writers either. There aren’t many people making the case for them, which is hurting future consideration of their candidacies. As the cases of Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris have shown, having a debate about a player’s stats is a vital part of getting into the Hall of Fame. While Blyleven is now in the Hall, and Morris fell just short, both players gained tons of votes because writers debated about them for years, even though their numbers hadn’t changed. But because no sabermetric writers are pushing for Pinson and Oliver based on recently developed stats like WAR and VORP, and no old school scribes are banging out stories about what great clutch hitters they were, they remain two of the best players not in the Hall of Fame.

Vada Pinson-A Great Baseball Player

While I was thrilled that Ron Santo was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame last month, I was also annoyed that Vada Pinson was not on the ballot. The Veteran’s Committee that voted Santo in examined the careers of players active during the “Golden Age,” defined by the Committee as 1947-72. Pinson’s major league career started in 1958 and ended in 1975, putting the bulk of his career within that time span. Apparently, the ballot went through a screening committee, and the committee felt that Pinson wasn’t good enough to be on the ballot. I strongly disagree with the decision of the screening committee, and I feel that Pinson should have been on the ballot. The extremely overdue election of Ron Santo proves that the writers and the Veteran’s Committee sometimes get it wrong, and it can take a long time to correct that wrong.

I don’t know if Vada Pinson should be a Hall of Famer, but he was a great player who should at least still be considered for the Hall of Fame. I’m too young to have ever seen Vada Pinson play, so I can’t sprinkle this post with anecdotes about the time I saw him make a game-winning catch in center field or hit a game-winning home run. I’ve never even seen film footage of Pinson playing. All I have are Pinson’s numbers, and they’re pretty darn good. I’m not quite sure why Pinson became a favorite player of mine. I got to know of him through his baseball cards, which I collected when I was a little kid. I always liked players with unique names, and Vada Pinson’s name was certainly unique. I also remember looking at his stats and seeing how high Pinson ranked among the all-time leaders in various categories. I thought, “Wow, he seems pretty good. Why isn’t he in the Hall of Fame?” (Pinson still ranks among the top 100 players in Games, At Bats, Runs, Hits, Total Bases, Doubles, and Triples.) I remember being saddened to read of his death in 1995, at the age of just 57. The notice of his passing that I read in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune was just a line or two. I want to shine more light on Vada Pinson and his career-he deserved much more than just a line or two.

As an adult baseball fan I look back at Pinson’s stats and I’m still very impressed. Pinson was a truly great player for the first half of his career, and an above-average player for the second half of his career. Pinson finished his career with 2,757 hits. If he could have remained a great player for just two or three more seasons he would have reached the 3,000 hit milestone and he would be a Hall of Famer for sure. (Although he would probably be the most obscure member of the 3,000 hit club.) Pinson’s career breaks almost exactly in half-from 1959 to 1967 he was a terrific player, and from 1968 to 1975 he was merely pretty good. After appearing in more than 150 games in every season from 1959-67, from 1968-75 Pinson never again appeared in 150 games in a season. Were nagging injuries the cause of his decline as a player? I’ve read online that he played with a broken leg for most of the 1969 season. I’m not quite sure how that’s possible, but that’s what I read.

Vada Pinson made his major league debut with the Cincinnati Reds in 1958, at the age of 19. Pinson began the 1958 season as the Reds’ starting right fielder. However, he quickly slumped and was sent down to the minors in May. After hitting .343 in the minors, he returned to the major leagues to stay in September of 1958. In 1959 Pinson shifted to center field, and he would go on to play 1,681 games in center field during his career. Pinson had a huge year in 1959, hitting .316, good for 4^th in the National League. Pinson also cracked 20 home runs, collected 205 hits, and lead the league with 47 doubles and 131 runs scored. He might have easily been Rookie of the Year, but he had slightly too many at bats in 1958 to be considered a rookie in 1959. Pinson quickly became friends with the Reds’ other African-American superstar, Frank Robinson. Ironically, Pinson and Robinson had attended the same high school, Oakland’s McClymonds High. McClymonds also boasted Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood and NBA great Bill Russell among its alumni.

Pinson and Robinson tore up National League pitching during the early 1960’s. The Reds went to the World Series in 1961, and Pinson and Robinson both played key roles in getting the Reds to the Series. Pinson hit a career-best .343 and led the league in hits. Robinson led the league in slugging, hit 37 home runs, and was voted the MVP. Pinson floundered in the World Series against the Yankees, getting just 2 hits as the Reds lost in 5 games. His batting average for the Series was an anemic .091. This would prove to be Pinson’s only post-season experience. Robinson was traded to the Orioles after the 1965 season, just after he turned 30. The Reds’ General Manager famously pronounced Robinson to be “an old 30.” (Robinson went on to win the Triple Crown and lead the Orioles to the World Series, where they swept the Dodgers.) Pinson was traded just after he turned 30 as well, after the 1968 season. Pinson had suffered through a lackluster 1968 season, hitting just 5 home runs. He was dealt to the Cardinals, where he teamed with Lou Brock and Curt Flood to make up an awesome outfield. (The second photo posted above is of Brock, Flood, and Pinson, from left to right.) However, 1969 would prove to be another disappointing season for Pinson, as he broke his leg and slumped to a .255 batting average, the lowest he had ever hit in the majors. Pinson was sort of a victim of bad timing in his trade to the Cardinals. Had the Reds traded Pinson after the 1966 season, Pinson could have played for the pennant-winning Cardinal teams of 1967 and 1968. On the other hand, if the Reds would have kept him for his entire career, Pinson would have played for the Big Red Machine team that won pennants in 1970, ’72, and ’75. After the 1969 season, Pinson was traded to the Cleveland Indians, and he rebounded, hitting 24 home runs-the most he ever hit in a season-and hitting .286. 1970 was Pinson’s last really good year. He spent the rest of his career in the American League, playing for the Indians in 1971, the Angels in 1972 and ’73, and finishing with the Royals in 1974 and ’75. He was reunited with Frank Robinson in 1973 when they both played for the Angels. (Robinson had a better year that Pinson, as he slugged 30 home runs.) After being released by the Royals after the 1975 season, Pinson was signed by the Brewers in early 1976. However, he was released by the Brewers on April 4, 1976, just 4 days before the season began. No other teams were interested in signing Pinson, and he retired.

That’s a short summary of Pinson’s major league career. He was a good hitter who usually hit for a pretty high average and he had good power, putting up solid totals of doubles, triples, and home runs. He was fast on the base paths, stealing 305 bases. He played most of his career in center field, a very demanding defensive position. From everything I’ve read about Pinson, he was a good defender who was quick and graceful in the outfield. So why isn’t Pinson a Hall of Famer? I think there are several reasons why Pinson has been so overlooked by the baseball writers and the Veteran’s Committee. (Of course, you could simply say that Pinson clearly isn’t a Hall of Famer, but I think it’s more complicated than that.) Pinson seems to have been underrated for just about his whole life. During the best years of his career, he was overshadowed by his teammate Frank Robinson. Pinson was also overshadowed by his fellow National League outfielders. Pinson played in the All-Star games in only two seasons, 1959 and 1960. However, from 1959 to 1962 2 All-Star games were played, so Pinson is either a 2-time or 4-time All-Star, depending on how you look at it. The outfielders that Pinson was competing against for the All-Star selection were Frank Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, and Billy Williams, among others. Robinson, Mays, Aaron, and Clemente were some of the very best players to ever play the game, and Pinson simply wasn’t as good as they were. Pinson was also up against the same competition when it came to winning Gold Gloves for fielding excellence. Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Curt Flood, and Roberto Clemente had virtual locks on the Gold Gloves while Pinson played. Pinson won one Gold Glove, in 1961.

Pinson is also a player without a “signature stat.” He fell short of 3,000 hits, which so far has ensured Hall of Fame election to everyone who surpassed it. Pinson had good power for his era, and he hit more than 20 home runs in a season 7 times. But his career high in a season was just 24, and he finished his career with 256 home runs, which is certainly a respectable total, but that alone won’t get you into the Hall of Fame. Pinson was also a gifted base stealer, swiping 305 bases during his career. But, like his home runs, this stat alone is not enough to get him in the Hall. In short, Pinson’s career numbers are very, very good, but he doesn’t have any stat that really stands out. And his totals have since been dwarfed by the numbers put up by players during the offense-heavy 1990’s and 2000’s.

After he retired, Pinson stayed in the game as a coach, and he coached nearly every season from 1977 until 1994. So he was at the major league level as either a player or coach for about 35 years. Oddly enough, Pinson’s visibility after his retirement did not help his Hall of Fame vote totals. Pinson got less than 5% of the vote his first 4 times on the HOF ballot, which now would get him kicked off the ballot. However, the rules were different at that time, and Pinson stayed on the ballot. After those first 4 votes, he was always above 5% of the vote, but seldom above 10%. His highest total was 15.7% in 1988, which is a long ways from the 75% of the votes required for election. I’m not sure what Pinson’s relationship with most of the press was, but he once punched Cincinnati beat writer Earl Lawson. Lawson had been riding Pinson in his columns, and they got into an argument in the locker room. Lawson said to Pinson, “If you want a piece of me Vada, come and get it.” And Vada did. Which begs the question: Why would you say something that dumb to a pro athlete? If I were a betting man, I would always put my money on the athlete to win the fight rather than the sportswriter. Judging from his baseball cards and just about every picture I’ve ever seen of him, Pinson looks like a really nice, happy guy. But if he were mad at me, I wouldn’t provoke him. Anyway, I wonder if the incident with Lawson hurt Pinson’s reputation with the press. Pinson seems to have had a quiet personality, which could be another factor in why he didn’t get much support for the Hall of Fame. He never seemed to get much attention from the press, and he never wrote an autobiography. I haven’t been able to find out much about Pinson’s life, and just about everything I know about him I’ve repeated in this post. Pinson was so quiet during his first spring training with the Reds that coach Jimmy Dykes thought Vada didn’t speak English. (Pinson was not foreign and was raised in Oakland.) Dykes attempted to communicate with Pinson using gestures and broken English until Vada said, “Mr. Dykes, if there is something you want me to do with my stance, please tell me.” Dykes was shocked.

Another reason why the baseball world is not clamoring for Vada Pinson to get into the Hall of Fame is that the new sabermetric stats don’t really help Pinson’s case very much. Sabermetric stats tend to place a great importance on drawing a walk, and that wasn’t one of Pinson’s strong points. His career OBP is .327, which is really low for someone with a lifetime batting average of .286. Pinson’s selling points for the Hall of Fame are not found in the “new stats,” they’re found in the old stats like batting average and hits. Pinson’s stats don’t get any better when you view them through the sabermetric lens. In this way, Pinson is very similar to Al Oliver, another player with over 2,700 hits who didn’t walk very much and also didn’t get much support for the Hall of Fame.

So, what’s the conclusion? Like I said at the beginning of this post, I’m not really sure if Vada Pinson is a Hall of Famer or not. I’d like to see him elected to the Hall of Fame partly because he’s one of my favorite players. I think he was a really great player who deserves to still be considered by the Veteran’s Committee. Pinson was not an “inner-ring” Hall of Fame player like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, and his friend Frank Robinson were. However, Vada Pinson was a better player than many players who are in the Hall of Fame. Sure, some of the players I’m thinking of are widely regarded as terrible choices for the Hall of Fame, but putting Vada Pinson in the Hall of Fame would not blemish the reputation of the Hall of Fame one bit. Hopefully Vada Pinson will be on the ballot the next time the Veteran’s Committee votes on players from the Golden Age of baseball.