Today, at the Lifetime Fitness on 98th Street, I did a double take when Tony Oliva mounted the stationary bike next to the one I was pedaling. As I was thinking of what to say to him, the fellow sitting on his other side started chatting him up, so I fell into mute Scandinavian adoration of my boyhood hero. He's now 75, still knock-kneed, and willing to kibbitz with fellow exercisers at his down market health club. I think he should be in the Hall of Fame.
Tony-O was the American League's Rookie of the Year in 1964. His numbers that season were more like those of a league MVP than mere Rookie of the Year: he led the league in batting average, hits, doubles, extra-base hits, runs scored. The next year he was second, to teammate Zoilo Versalles, in the MVP balloting. He won the batting championship that season, too. He'd win a third batting crown in 1971, when he hit .337 while also leading the league with a .546 slugging percentage. His lifetime average of .304, over fifteen seasons, is in the stratosphere when you consider that his career spanned years dominated by pitching. In 1966, Oliva's third season, his .307 mark was second to Frank Robinson's .316. Two years later Carl Yastrzemski led the American League in batting with an average of .301; Oliva was third that year, at .289. Robinson's lifetime batting average was .294. Yastrzemski's was .285.
A couple years ago, on a day the Twins unveiled a statue of him outside Target Field, Tony-O was the subject of this column by Patrick Reusse. It sheds some light on my brush with fame in a Bloomington health club where you sometimes see guys putting away their gym clothes in a bag meant for a bowling ball.
