Tony Oliva: The Life and Times of a Minnesota Twins Legend

Description

If not for the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, Minnesota might never have known one of its most popular baseball players, Twins three-time batting champion and eight-time All-Star Tony Oliva. In April 1961, the twenty-two-year-old Cuban prospect failed to impress the Twins in a tryout, but the sudden rupture in U.S.-Cuba relations made a return visa

Thom Henninger, a St. Paul native and lifelong Twins fan, is associate editor at Baseball Digest. His work has appeared in ESPN Insider, and for more than seventeen years he wrote for STATS LLC, where his column "Thom's Take" ran weekly. He has authored player profiles for Baseball America and contributed to Play It Again: Baseball Experts on What Might Have Been. Patrick Reusse is a sportswriter and radio personality in the Twin Cities. He writes weekly columns for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.

"Thom Henninger did a marvelous job telling Tony's story. It will remind readers what a special person he is and how he had to deal with so much adversity to find his way to the major leagues. I am so proud to have been his teammate and be his friend. All of us who played with Tony know he is a Hall of Famer and was the best hitter of his era."-Jim Kaat "The value of this book resides in the portrait Henninger paints of the man himself: a ceaselessly positive and selfless person who adapted admirably to his adopted country while never forgetting the needs of family members left behind in Castro-ravaged Cuba."-Spitball Magazine "An entertaining read."-Sports Book Guy "This is a story that was worth telling and one that is in many ways well told."-Sport Literature Association "Henninger nicely summarizes the crucial moments without getting bogged down in baseball-book minutiae."-SB Nation "Tony Oliva: The Life and Times of a Minnesota Twins Legend is an enjoyable book, one that Twins fans and baseball history fans will relish."-The Writer's Journey