In a 1976 "Esquire" magazine article, sportswriter Harry Stein published an "All Time All-Star Argument Starter", consisting of five ethnic baseball teams. Oliva was the right fielder on Stein's Latin team. In 1981, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book "The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time". They explained what they called "the Smoky Joe Wood Syndrome", in which a player of truly exceptional talent but whose career was curtailed by injury, in spite of not having had career statistics that would quantitatively rank him with the all-time greats, should still be included on their list of the 100 greatest players.