On January 24th the Minnesota Twins announced that former Twins first baseman Justin Morneau has been elected to the club’s Hall of Fame. Morneau will become the 34th member of the Twins Hall of Fame when he is inducted during an on-field pre-game ceremony at Target Field before the Twins host the Chicago White Sox on Saturday, May 23. This is all well and good because Justin Morneau is certainly deserving of the honor.
However; one player that stands out in my mind that played for the Minnesota Twins from 1965-1972 that has been left out of the Twins HOF once again is Cesar Tovar. Tovar passed away in 1994 at the age of 54. Cesar Tovar entered the Venezuelan Sports Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame as part of its first class in 2003. He is still remembered as one of the greatest players in the history of his nation’s winter league. As Tony Oliva said of their days with the Twins, “If we’d had nine players like him, we wouldn’t have needed any others.” Yet as we enter 2020 Tovar is still not in the Minnesota Twins HOF, what an injustice!
Calvin Griffith acquired Tovar from the Cincinnati Reds on December 4, 1964 in a one-for-one trade in which the Twins parted ways with pitcher Gerry Arrigo. So why after all these years is Cesar Tovar still on the outside looking in at the Twins HOF? Simply put, the Minnesota Twins organization has a bad system in place for their HOF. The Twins open their voting for the Twins HOF on their web site in December I believe and voting ran through January 5th this year. The Twins provide little to no information on their site explaining how the voting process works. It all sounds good but in reality we fans are just wasting our time voting because “fan votes” amount to next to nothing in the process, it is basically a sham. Here is how Patrick Reusse, one of the media members with a vote explained in a tweet to the Twins Almanac how the Twins HOF voting works. As far as I know, no vote totals have been announced.
I have tried to get more information from Minnesota Twins President Dave St. Peter via e-mail on how the voting process actually works and why the Twins do not announce their vote totals but as yet (a week later) I have heard nothing back. The Twins apparently have zero interest in making their Twins HOF election process transparent to their fans. The MLB HOF voting is made public but apparently the Twins organization feels that they don’t need do this. Why? I am not sure, maybe they feel it will embarrass the players or the voters.
The bottom line is that the voting process does not seem to be working and the Twins organization is leaving some of their best players out of the Twins Hall of Fame. The perception is that player popularity is more important than what the players did when they were wearing the Minnesota Twins uniform. Worst of all, the Twins organization is telling Twins fans “that you have no clue in who belongs in the Twins Hall of Fame” so we will let you vote all you want but your vote really doesn’t count for anything. The fans total vote percentage of total votes of 01.04% makes that crystal clear. And I (foolishly apparently) thought that what the fans thought in regards to the Twins HOF amounted to something. Until this broken process is corrected, Twins fans should not waste their time voting in future Twins HOF balloting. The process is a joke and the Twins HOF will be the same if this selection process remains in place.