Episode 2 - Hemingway and Oliva (Introduction)

Ernest Hemingway loved to tell stories. Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker called these stories “yarns.” His good friend, Aaron Hotchner, called them “practical joke fantasies.” Like all good storytellers, Hemingway exaggerated. Often, though, such talk gave him inspiration, and sometimes found its way into his writing.

Tony Oliva tells a few good stories, too, but his greatest story wasn’t a joking matter, nor one that he has shared, to this day, with anyone but his closest family members. The most plausible story is the one recounted by  Oliva’s biographer, Thom Henninger. In Tony Oliva: The Life and Times of a Minnesota Twins Legend (2015). In order for likeable young Oliva to have a realistic chance of being signed to a long-term contract by the Twins, he needed legal documentation showing an age approaching twenty. The Minnesota Twins weren’t interested in older prospects—if a prospect were over twenty, the Twins would likely pass. Oliva, though, was actually approaching his twenty-third birthday, an age that would most likely be out of the ballpark for Twins owner Calvin Griffith. Papa Joe Cambria believed in Oliva, though. The young man could hit almost any pitch in and out of the strike zone, and he could drive the ball to every nook and cranny in the stadium. If the Twins saw what he saw, Cambria knew that Oliva was major league material.