Maybe This Time

Believe it or not, I was too young to see Minnie Minoso in his prime. My only real memory of him, outside of the Bill Veeck stunts in 1976 and 1980, was when he returned to the South Side for a third time, a cup of coffee in 1964. I was too young to understand, Minoso was too old to make an impression. But that didn’t stop me as an adult from seeing that No. 9 deserved, deserves, enshrinement in Cooperstown. This is pretty much an article of faith for any real White Sox fan, not that HOF voters care; they’ve passed over him too many times to count. And now he’s up for reconsideration as part of the “Golden Days” ballot (really, you couldn’t come up with a better name?). This time may be different. Why? Because the NYT says so. How nice of them. Consider the headline from Monday’s story: Baseball Gets Another Chance to Honor a Legend. And this sentence: “ The Hall of Fame is considering Minoso again this off-season, reviving one of its most curious candidacies.” Curious how, you might ask. That the East Coast didn’t see what was obvious from the start to Sox fans in Chicago? Yeah, that is curious. Minoso broke barriers like Jackie Robinson did, only he didn’t have the benefit of English as a way to express himself as Robinson could. Being Black and Cuban constituted two strikes against him. Not playing in New York earned him strike three. Consider Minoso’s rookie year stats from 1951: 173 hits; .326 BA; 112 runs scored; and 76 RBIs. Yet Minoso finished second to the Yankees’ Gil McDougal for Rookie of the Year. Now, compare McDougal’s stats: 123 hits; .306 BA; 72 runs scored; and 63 RBIs. You mean to tell me the East Coast fix wasn’t in? Minoso finished fourth that year in the AL MVP vote that Yogi Berra won with fewer hits and runs and only twelve more RBIs. Four times Minoso landed fourth in MVP balloting, and three of those times he had a solid case for being first. Berra won in 1954, despite Minoso having the better WAR, 8.2 to 5.3. Roger Maris in 1960? Really? Yes, so it would be nice if that part of the baseball establishment east of the Alleghenies would get on the Minoso bandwagon. Better late than never.