Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition

Tony Oliva

by Paul Finnicum

Cuban-born athlete

A hard-hitting outfielder, Oliva spent his entire Major League Baseball career with the Minnesota Twins, compiling a lifetime batting average over .300.

Latino heritage: Cuban

Born: July 20, 1938; Pinar del Rio, Cuba

Also known as: Antonio Oliva Lopez Hernandes Javique; Pedro Tony Oliva, Jr.; Tony-O

Area of achievement: Sports; baseball

EARLY LIFE

Tony Oliva (oh-LEEV-uh) was born Antonio Oliva Lopez Hernandes Javique in Pinar del Rio, a western province in Cuba. There were ten children in the Oliva family, five boys and five girls. Although Oliva's given name was Pedro, when he signed his first professional baseball contract he needed a passport in order to travel to the United States. He didn't have one and didn't have time to get a birth certificate that was necessary to get the passport, so he used his older brother Antonio's birth certificate and passport. That is why everyone started calling him Tony.

Oliva started playing baseball because his father, Pedro, Sr., loved baseball and encouraged all his children to play. Oliva started playing baseball at age seven and began playing organized baseball on a country team at age fifteen. He signed a contract to join the Minnesota Twins when he was nineteen. A former outfielder in the Washington Senators' farm system, Roberto Fernandez, recommended Oliva to Joe Cambria, a top scout in Cuba for the Twins.

Oliva was in the last group of baseball players allowed to leave Cuba before Fidel Castro began prohibiting such emigration. Oliva was among twenty-two Cuban baseball players who left Havana for Jacksonville, Florida, in early 1961. He got to play in four games as part of his tryout but was released. He was picked up by the Wytheville, Virginia, team, a Twins affiliate in the Appalachian League. In his first season as a professional baseball player, he won the Silver Louisville Slugger for leading all of organized baseball with a .410 batting average. He then played the 1962 season with Charlotte of the Sally League and was named the player of the year after hitting .349.

LIFE’S WORK

Oliva was a September call-up for the Twins in 1962 and 1963, but his first full season in major league baseball came in 1964, and it was outstanding. He started the season with an eight-game hitting streak and was elected as a starter in right field for the All-Star Game. He went on to lead the league in hits (217), times at bat, batting average (.323), total bases (374), doubles (43), and runs scored. He walked away with rookie of the year honors in the American League, getting nineteen out of twenty votes. He was the first black to win an American League batting title and the first black to be named rookie of the year in the American League.

Tony Oliva (Wikimedia Commons)

GLLatin2e_p0767_1.jpg

He had even greater success in his second season as he won another batting title in 1965 with a .323 average. He is the only player ever to win batting titles in his first two seasons. He was named Player of the Year by The Sporting News and helped lead the Twins to an American League pennant and a spot in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

While he didn't win the batting title in his third season, he did lead the league in hits with 197 and won his only Gold Glove award for his play in right field. He continued to excel year after year, eventually retiring in 1976 after playing all fifteen of his major league seasons with the Twins. He finished his major league career with a .304 batting average, 1,917 hits, and 220 home runs. Among his many career highlights: he holds the major-league record for being named to the American League All-Star Team his first eight seasons in the league; he led the American League in hits five times; he won the American League batting title three times; and he was the first rookie to win the batting title in 1964.

SIGNIFICANCE

Hundreds of Latin American-born players have played in Major League Baseball. However, when Oliva left Cuba in 1961 with little money and scant knowledge of the English language, he became part of a group that would break down many racial barriers within baseball as well as the nation. During his last year in baseball he began to make the transition to coaching, becoming a player-coach in 1976. As a coach, Oliva served the Twins as a first-base coach and batting instructor and also served as a hitting instructor in the Twins' minor-league system. He helped pave the way for other Latin Americans to serve as coaches and managers. However, Oliva was best known for his ability to hit the baseball, and the only team he ever played for, the Minnesota Twins, acknowledged his unique ability when the team retired his number 6 in 1991.

Further Reading

1 

Brackin, Dennis, and Patrick Reusse. Minnesota Twins: The Complete Illustrated History. Minneapolis, Minn.: MVP Books, 2010. A comprehensive review of the teams, the players, and the highlights through the years.

2 

Oliva, Tony, and Bob Fowler. TONY O! The Trials and Triumphs of Tony Oliva. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973. A look at Oliva's life from his beginnings in Cuba to his career with the Twins.

3 

Regalado, Samuel O. Viva Baseball! Latin Major Leaguers and Their Special Hunger. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008. A combination of existing literature and interviews that describes the efforts of Latin American professional baseball players in the United States from the late 1800's to the present.

4 

Thielman, Jim. Cool of the Evening: The 1965 Minnesota Twins. Minneapolis, Minn.: Kirk House, 2005. A series of interviews with players from the 1965 team that won the American League Championship.

See also: Felipe Alou; Juan Marichal; Minnie Minoso; Luis Tiant.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Finnicum, Paul. "Tony Oliva." Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition, edited by Trudy Mercadal, et al., Salem Press, 2021. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLLatin2e_0396.
APA 7th
Finnicum, P. (2021). Tony Oliva. In T. Mercadal, C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Finnicum, Paul. "Tony Oliva." Edited by Trudy Mercadal, Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2021. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.