Red Sox legend Luis Tiant, a titan of baseball and life, remains deserving of baseball’s highest honor

There goes one of the greatest pitchers who ever lived.

Not just in Red Sox history, but in all of baseball’s storied past.

Luis Tiant may not be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, which to me seems like a gross injustice. Nevertheless, the seemingly always smiling right-hander from Marianao, Cuba who died Tuesday morning at the age of 83 deserves nothing less than the designation of one of the best to ever do it.

More so, the name nicknamed “El Tiante” was as gracious and humble as they come.

That’s how I will remember him. I wouldn’t be born for nine more years by the time Tiant pitched his final big league game in 1982. I never saw him pitch at Fenway Park, but make no mistake, Luis Tiant remained a beloved and steady presence at America’s Most Beloved Ballpark.

Many of the welcomed back Sox legends of yesteryear would offer a simple smile and a wave or two. Not Tiant. No, El Tiante would grasp his hands together, raise them in a self-clasping handshake and wave them repeatedly while often mouthing “thank you.”

It’s a gesture most often correlated with the winning fighter at a boxing match — something I’d imagine the Cuban native witnessed plenty of in his day. The gesture has also been used to symbolize friendship.

What a fitting blend for a man who overcame so much, and did so with a champions’ resolve and a tender heart.

Tiant, a member of three separate Hall of Fames — inducted into the Red Sox Hall in 1997, the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Hall in 2002, the Venezuelan Baseball Hall in 2009 — and a member of Baseball Reliquary’s “Shrine of the Eternals,” was passed over by Cooperstown from 1988 through 2002, then again by eras committees in 2011, 2014, 2017, 2021 and 2022.

What on earth were they thinking?

To be a Hall of Famer, of course, means that you were among the best of the best of your era. Tiant was unquestionably that.

From his debut in the majors with the Cleveland Indians in 1964 — he spun a four-hit, 11-strikeout shutout in a 3-0 victory over the Yankees (a splendid foreshadowing of his famed Boston days to come) — until the early years of the 1980s, Tiant was sheerly dominant.

In 533 games and 445 starts in a 16-year span from his rookie season until 1979, Tiant posted a double-digit win total 13 times — winning 20 games four times across a nine-year span — while going 217-156 with a 3.21 ERA and 2,270 strikeouts — that’s an average of just about 142 punch outs a year.

At his peak, there may have been no one better. His 1968 season with the Indians, his fifth in the majors and the first of only three All-Star nods (how???), remains one of the greatest feats in baseball history.

Tiant rewrote the record books with a 1.60 ERA that was the lowest in the American League in nearly a half century — the best since Walter Johnson posted a 1.49 ERA in the dead-ball era in 1919. He finished that campaign with a 21-9 record and a career-high 264 strikeouts.

Oh, and he finished off the year with four consecutive shutouts for good measure…

Three years later, he would join the Red Sox coming off two shoulder injury-riddled seasons. Then an eight-year veteran, who had pitched to an 82-67 record, a 2.88 ERA and logged 1,091 strikeouts, a 30-year-old Tiant found himself at a crossroads.

I’ve said in the past that there is a difference between a “hurler” and a “pitcher.” Tiant, at his peak, could hurl and zip pitches with the best of them. But at some point, Father Time catches up to us all, and what a pitcher could once do in their 20s, they can no longer replicate with regularity in their 30s.

So Tiant reinvented himself — his windup, anyway. It was at that point after spring training in 1971 when released by the Twins and signed to a minor-league deal with the Braves that Tiant made the leap from a thrower to a crafty veteran pitcher. He adopted his now-famous contorted pitching motion to adapt for a loss in velocity.

The results speak for themselves. Tiant got off to a good start in the minors that year before being acquired by the Sox’s minor league affiliate Louisville Colonels and recalled to the majors. His first season in Boston wasn’t anything to write home about, producing a 1-7 recording 4.88 ERA.

To their credit, the Sox — an organization that did not have the best history with minorities as the last team in the majors to integrate — didn’t waiver in their commitment and brought Tiant back for the 1972 season.

(Tiant was once quoted while playing in Charleston, W Va. during his minor league days with the Indians as saying, “I couldn’t speak very good English, but I understand racism. They treated me like a dog.”)

In turn, Tiant rewarded them tenfold.

Over his next seven seasons with Boston, Tiant dazzled with a 121-74 record, a 3.30 ERA and 1,016 more strikeouts to earn him two more All-Star selections. Perhaps his most significant moment in a Red Sox uniform came in the 1975 pennant run.

After shutting down the defending champion Oakland A’s to the tune of a three-hit, eight-strikeout shutout in an eventual 7-1 victory in Game 1 of the ALCS, Tiant took the mound for the first of three World Series starts in Game 1 against Pete Rose and the “Big Red Machine.”

Tiant held baseball’s late hit king hitless in four at-bats while turning in another shutout performance, allowing five hits and a pair of walks with three strikeouts in Boston’s 6-0 victory at Fenway Park.

The most notable part of that day, though, as far as Tiant is concerned was who was there to witness it. Tiant’s father, a former Negro League star and pitcher himself in Luis Tiant Sr., and mother were in the stands courtesy of a special visa that allowed them to visit from Cuba.

That must have meant the world to Tiant, who once went 14 years without seeing his parents from the beginning of his run with Cleveland in the minors in 1961. To have them with him during what was arguably his crowning moment was wholly just.

Tiant went on to play four more seasons, including two with the Yankees, before retiring after the 1982 season at the age of 41. His involvement in the game continued after his playing career, serving as a minor league pitching coach with the Dodgers and White Sox, a pitching coach for the Nicaraguan team in the 1996 Summer Olympics and later as a minor league pitching coach and special instructor for the Red Sox.

Beloved by Boston, Tiant even made an appearance on the sitcom most synonymous with the city — Cheers in 1983. He stayed in the area, living with his family in Southborough for years before ultimately moving to Maine, where he died at his home in Wells.

And of course, the story of El Tiante wouldn’t be completed without mentioning his “El Tiante” brand cigars. A quote from none other than All-Star pitcher Tommy John in his biography accurately sums up Tiant and his love affair with cigars.

“Luis would smoke these horrendous, long, Cuban cigars,” TJ wrote of their time as teammates in the Cleveland organization. “We’d be on the bus all night, and wake up to a thick blue haze from Tiant’s ropes. Tiant had an almost supernatural ability for keeping a cigar lit. Luis would cut up in his high-pitched voice, joking, cackling, and the eternal flame held true. He could even take a shower and keep his stogie going. In the confined space of a bus, the smoke would gag you. He’d fall asleep on the bus, but the cigar would somehow stay alive all night.”

All told, Tiant was a faithful servant to the game of baseball. He gave it his all, even at times when the game wasn’t faithful to him.

He did so with a smile.

I think it’s time that the game of baseball returns the favor to him. I sincerely hope the Baseball Hall of Fame will take the entire body of work of this titan of sport — and titan of life — under careful consideration when he is next considered in 2025.

Rest in peace, El Tiante.