Ortiz, Dodgers great Hodges among Class of '22 inductees
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. » Six months after he got one of the most amazing phone calls in sports, David Ortiz is still awestruck at his good fortune.
The former Boston Red Sox slugger known affectionately as Big Papi will be inducted into the Hall of Fame today.
Maybe then baseball’s highest honor will finally sink in.
“I still can’t believe it. This is like a dream come true,” the 46-year-old Ortiz said. “I grew up tough, man. I grew up tough. My childhood wasn’t that easy, but I had great parents to guide me and keep me away from trouble.”
Ortiz hit 541 home runs in 20 big league seasons and helped the Red Sox win three World Series. He is just the 58th player selected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in his first year of eligibility, and he served as a designated hitter more than any previous inductee.
Six Era Committee selections are also part of the Class of 2022. Minnesota Twins teammates pitcher Jim Kaat and free-swinging slugger Tony Oliva, and late Dodger great Gil Hodges, who managed the New York Mets to their first World Series title in 1969, are among them.
Also getting their due: Minnie Miñoso, a star with the Chicago White Sox in the 1950s; Buck O’Neil, who played for the Kansas
First baseman Gil Hodges, a member of the Dodgers when they moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame today.
City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues and was a tireless advocate for the game; and Bud Fowler, a pioneering Black player who grew up in Cooperstown in the 1860s and played in more than a dozen leagues.
It’s a class with three Latino players and two Black players who helped pave the way for today’s stars, and three players with ties to the Twins.
Minnesota holds a special place in Ortiz’s heart because of the friendship he developed with Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett before Ortiz was dealt to the Red Sox after six seasons.
“That was my guy,” said Ortiz, who survived a nightclub shooting three years ago in his native Dominican Republic.
Kaat’s journey to Cooperstown
is rather remarkable. He was 1-4 in 1958 playing for Missoula of the Pioneer League, and he figured he was one start from being sent home. Player-manager Jack McKeon gave Kaat a place in the rotation every fourth day, and he finished the season 16-9.
“I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about pitching,” said the 83-yearold Kaat.
The 6-foot-4 left-hander pitched for 25 years before retiring in 1983 with 283 wins in stints with six teams.
Oliva, a native of Cuba, was on the powerhouse Twins teams in the 1960s with Kaat. The lefty-swinging Oliva spent his entire 15year career with the Twins. He was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1964. He led the league in hits five times and became the first player in major league history to win batting titles in each of his first two seasons, finishing with a lifetime average of .304.
Oliva, 83, got his chance in part because of Miñoso, the Cuban Comet.
Miñoso grew up on a sugar plantation and played ball on weekends. He was a star with the New York Cubans in the Negro Leagues from 1946-48 before debuting with Cleveland in 1949, becoming the first Black Latino player in the majors.
He was a nine-time AllStar, led the league in triples and stolen bases three times each, and finished his career with 2,110 hits and a .299 batting average. He died in 2015.
Hodges, a hard-hitting, three-time Gold Glove first baseman, had 370 homers and 1,274 RBIs to go with a career .273 batting average in 18 seasons — all but the last two with the Dodgers, with whom he won world championships in Brooklyn (1955) and Los Angeles (1959). He retired in 1963 after two partial seasons with the Mets and five years later was hired to manage the Mets, leading them in 1969 to their improbable World Series victory over the Baltimore Orioles.
Hodges died of a heart attack in 1972 at age 47.
The honor for O’Neil comes nearly 16 years after his death, though the Hall of Fame dedicated a statue to him in 2008 and established the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award.