It was just last month, Oct. 5th to be exact, that Dan Tiant placed a call to his father, legendary Boston Red Sox right-hander Luis Tiant, about the Baseball Hall of Fame.
This time, it wasn’t about the family’s decades-long quest to see El Tiante stand on the Cooperstown stage as a Hall of Fame enshrinee. This time, it was about visiting the Hall of Fame, solely for the joy of celebrating baseball.
“My mom and my sister were supposed to go on a cruise,” said the younger Tiant, 50, a baseball agent based in St. Augustine, Fla. “So I was going to fly up to Boston and have a guy’s week with my dad.
“One of the things we talked about doing,” Dan Tiant said, “was driving out to Cooperstown to visit the Hall of Fame.”
The trip was going to take place on Wednesday, October 16, which was Luis Tiant’s day off from dialysis treatment.
“It had been a while since we’d been out there, and he said, ‘Yeah, come on, let’s go,’” Dan Tiant said. “There were times in the past when he had made up his mind he didn’t want to go. He was hurt that he hadn’t been (inducted) yet … but this time I said let’s just go, father and son, and have some fun. It was our own little thing we were going to do.”
Three days after that phone conversation, on Oct. 8, Luis Tiant died. He was 83. And now comes the news, announced on Monday, that Tiant is among eight candidates under consideration by the Hall of Fame’s “Classic Baseball Era Committee.” A 16-member committee will determine which candidates, if any, are voted into Cooperstown. A candidate will need to be named on at least 75 percent of ballots cast, or to put it another way, get a thumbs up from 12 of the 16 voters. The election will take place on Dec. 8, with the results announced later that night.
“Mixed emotions,” Dan Tiant said, this in response to my question about how he felt after being informed by the Red Sox his father was again under consideration for Cooperstown. “There’s some anger and disappointment because even though my dad had some health problems going on, mentally, to me, he could have gone on another 20 years. He was taken away from us too soon.
“So my emotions are like a rollercoaster,” Dan Tiant said. “For his legacy, to have a plaque in Cooperstown would have meant the world, but I also know he was very direct about asking where the joy is once the family member is gone. He was upfront about (the late) Ron Santo and why he wasn’t voted in when he was still alive.”
And yet Luis Tiant’s interest in wanting to make a pleasure trip to Cooperstown tells us something. It tells us that while El Tiante always believed he was worthy of being inducted into Cooperstown, his love of the game was on a separate level from everything else. Which should come as no surprise. From the way Tiant walked and talked to the fluky manner in which he pitched the ball, the man’s very presence was a love letter to the game, so much so that I don’t think there was ever a fan in any big-league city who disliked him. Tiant left the Red Sox after the fateful 1978 season to sign with the Yankees and still got cheered at Fenway Park.
Before continuing, I should get this out of the way: Yes, I believe Tiant should be in the Hall of Fame. Further, I believe he should have been enshrined years ago. But he never received more than 30.8 percent support during the 15 years he was on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot, and he has been passed over by several veterans committees.
The BBWAA does an excellent job with the Hall of Fame ballot, but, OK, I’m a Hall of Fame voter … so consider the source. But this is a group that knows the game and has a passion for the game, yet brings just the right amount of eyebrow-raising to the assignment. There have always been misses, though, such as the decades that passed before all the writers, as in 100 percent, could agree on one candidate. Mariano Rivera finally received an honor that should have gone to Tom Seaver, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Henry Aaron and so many others. I further submit, respectfully, that we missed on Fred McGriff, who was later voted in as a unanimous selection by the Contemporary Baseball Players Committee.
Tiant was a 20-game winner on four occasions. He twice led the American League in ERA. He had 2,416 strikeouts against 1,104 walks. He had a 66.1 career WAR. Those are not slam-dunk statistics. But there are players whose numbers weren’t as good as Tiant’s who did get into Cooperstown, just as there are players with numbers eerily close to Tiant’s who also are in. The late Jim “Catfish Hunter” is one of them. The late Don Drysdale is the other.
Hunter’s career record was 224-166, a .574 winning percentage. Drysdale’s was 209-166, a .557 winning percentage. Here’s Luis Tiant: 229-172, a .571 winning percentage.
Hunter gave up 2,958 hits in 3,449 1⁄3 innings. Drysdale gave up 3,084 hits in 3,432 innings. Tiant allowed 3,075 hits in his 3,486 1⁄3 innings.
Hunter had 2,012 strikeouts and issued 954 walks. Drysdale had 2,486 strikeouts and issued 855 walks. Tiant: 2,416 strikeouts, 1,104 walks.
Tiant’s 66.1 career WAR is tick a below Drysdale’s 67.1 but much greater than Hunter’s 40.9.
But, again, numbers are tricky. Drysdale played on three World Series winners. Hunter played on five World Series winners. As for Tiant, he made three starts in the 1975 World Series, going 2-0, but it was the Cincinnati Reds who won the big prize in seven games.
I generally shy away from posting the stats from this or that Hall of Famer in an attempt to champion the cause of this or that would-be Hall of Famer. But Drysdale went in on his 10th try. With Hunter, it was only three tries. Yeah, I get it: Those guys were in the spotlight more often. But I said then, as I say now: Tiant deserved a closer look.
Geez, look at me. I promised myself I wouldn’t make the case for Tiant … and here I am, making the case for Tiant. In the end, though, nobody did a better job of making the case than Tiant himself. And he did it without speeches, without statistical rollouts, without PowerPoint presentations. He did it just by being Luis Tiant.
Now then, please allow me, for the one-millionth time in my life, to state how much I hate this line: If you have to ask if he’s a Hall of Famer, he’s not. That’s like saying, “If I have to do my homework, he’s not a Hall of Famer.” Thankfully, that’s more of a talk-radio thing; as for the actual voters, they generally do the homework. It’s just that Tiant’s case is a tougher assignment than most others.
Yes, Tiant long believed he was a Hall of Famer. Yes, he often talked of driving out there with his family for the induction ceremony. That won’t happen now, just as the planned father-son trip to Cooperstown — Luis Tiant, Dan Tiant — won’t happen. Would that trip have somehow illustrated that Luis Tiant had made his peace with not being elected to the Hall of Fame? That’s not knowable. What it does illustrate is how breathtakingly real Luis Tiant was.
Close your eyes and form an image of El Tiante twisting and spinning his body as he delivers each pitch to the plate. Close your eyes and form an image of Tiant sitting in the whirlpool with a comically oversized Cuban cigar dangling from his mouth. Close your eyes and form an image of that time you met Luis Tiant — and you probably did meet Tiant at some point, right? Didn’t everybody?
Now then, close your eyes and form an image of Luis Tiant and Dan Tiant making that just-for-the-hell-of-it drive out to Cooperstown. It’s downright Rockweliian. It never did happen, that trip, and yet the very idea of it happening is something I can’t get out of my head. And it carries more weight than whatever the Classic Baseball Era Committee decides on Dec. 8.
(Top photo: MLB via Getty Images)
