Minnie Minoso for the Hall of Fame

An excerpt from The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole

Minnie Minoso deserves baseball's highest honor. He belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Minoso was one of the first black players to star in the major leagues. He was the ninth black major leaguer, the fifth black American leaguer, and the first black player to take the field for the Chicago White Sox. He was also the first acknowledged black Cuban player in Major League Baseball.

Despite a revelation to the contrary in his autobiography, which is probably little more than a publicity stunt, November 29, 1922 is generally accepted as Minoso's birth date. He entered organized baseball in the Cleveland Indians' farm system at the tail end of the 1948 season and was 28 years old when he got his first real shot at the major leagues after being traded to the Chicago White Sox early in the 1951 campaign.

Overcoming the late start, Minoso was a major league regular for 11 seasons, hit over .300 eight times, and was named to the American League all-star team seven times. He led the league in stolen bases three times and scored and drove in more than 100 runs four times each. From 1951 through 1960, he averaged 150 games played per season out of a 154-game schedule, and at the age of 37 in 1960 he led the league in games played. He finished his major league career with a lifetime batting average of .298, blasted 186 homers, and stole 205 bases in 1,841 major league games. Though he never played for a pennant winner, he ranked fourth in league Most Valuable Player voting four times and eighth once.

But the greatest indication of Minoso's excellence is the variety of categories in which he consistently finished among the league leaders. He placed among the top 10 hitters in the league in batting average in 8 of 11 seasons as a regular, including a second, two thirds, a fourth, and a fifth place finish. He also finished among the league's top 10 in on-base percentage, total bases, runs scored, and stolen bases nine times; base hits and doubles eight times; extra base hits seven times; slugging percentage and triples six times; and runs batted in five times. And all this was accomplished despite playing most of his home games at Comiskey Park, a notorious pitcher's haven, for a team that was notorious for its lack of offensive punch.

Like most black players of his era, Minoso had a reputation as a bad-ball hitter. Yet he walked as many as 86 times in a season and finished among the league leaders in free passes four times. Minnie crowded the plate and crouched with his head leaning over the inside corner and his stance as well as the color of his skin made him a frequent victim of wayward pitches. He led the league in getting plunked by errant pitches in 10 of his 11 years as a regular and even finished fourth in 1963 as a 40-year-old part-timer. In 1956 he broke Jake Stahl's 48-year-old record of being hit by 21 pitches in one season. When he retired he'd been nailed 192 times, a major league record that's since been broken.

It was on the base paths, however, that Minoso was at his best. He ran the bases with all-out hustle and reckless abandon. He seemed to instinctively make the right decisions and showed a natural flair for the game that made him a cult figure in Chicago. He worked hard to become a good outfielder after beginning his career in the infield and eventually developed into an excellent defensive left fielder. The Gold Glove Award wasn't introduced until Minnie was already 35 years old, but he captured three of them before he was through.

Induction into the Hall of Fame can only be achieved by vote of the membership of the Baseball Writers Association or selection by the Hall of Fame Committee on Baseball Veterans. The Veterans Committee is charged with selecting players for induction whom the writers bypassed for whatever reason. To be eligible for election by the sportswriters, a candidate must have played all or part of at least 10 seasons in the major leagues. With the opening of the Hall to former Negro league stars in 1971, a Negro League Committee was established. A rule was introduced that made former Negro leaguers eligible for consideration if they played ten years in the Negro leagues or ten years in both the Negro leagues and majors combined, but only Negro league action prior to 1946 can be counted.

Minoso is one of only five players to qualify both as a regular major leaguer and as a former Negro Leaguer since he played for the New York Cubans in 1945 and spent 13 full seasons and part of four others in the majors. Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Larry Doby, and former Dodgers hurler Don Newcombe are the others.

Because of his late start, Minoso's final major league numbers were not impressive enough to generate the necessary support for regular election by the writers. Furthermore, the now defunct Negro League Committee never seriously considered him because he hadn't played that long in the Negro Leagues. The Veterans Committee, which inherited the responsibility for nominating former Negro Leaguers from the Negro League Committee, is his only chance. Under current rules the Veterans Committee meets every other year and can't consider a candidate until he's been inactive for 23 years. Because of his brief major league appearances in 1976 and 1980, Minoso wasn't even eligible for consideration until 2003. Unfortunately when the Veterans Committee finally got a chance to consider Minnie Minoso, he finished in a tie for eleventh place in a 26-player field - none of whom were tapped.

The argument that Minoso deserves to be in the Hall of Fame is based on the following analysis that compares the best ten consecutive years of his major league career against the best ten consecutive years of several of his contemporaries. The format of the analysis doesn't give Minnie credit for the years he was denied access to the big leagues because of the racial attitudes of the time, but using a fixed, yet substantial, timeframe provides a consistent basis for comparison. The 10-season period was selected because it's the minimum number of years required for Hall of Fame eligibility and it also conveniently corresponds to the number of full seasons that some of the stars were active.

Larry Doby was a Veterans Committee selection for the Hall in 1998. Doby and Minoso were true contemporaries, only a year apart in age. In fact, the careers of Minoso and Doby mirrored each other to a remarkable extent. Both players started as infielders in the Negro Leagues and later made their mark in the Major Leagues as hard-hitting outfielders. Both started their big league careers with the Cleveland Indians and ended it with the Chicago White Sox, with trips back and forth in between. Furthermore they were teammates, briefly in 1949 and 1951 with the Indians, for the entire 1956, 1957, and 1958 seasons with the Sox and Indians.

The analysis indicates that Minoso was a superior or at least comparable offensive player to Doby. Doby began playing regularly in 1948 and was a full-timer for 10 years, through 1957. Minoso broke into the starting lineup after being traded from the Indians to the White Sox in 1951 and played regularly for 11 seasons, through the 1961 campaign. In their best ten consecutive years, Minoso's batting average was 22 points higher than Doby's. He also scored more runs, hit more doubles and triples, amassed more total bases, struck out less often, had a higher on-base percentage, and dominated his counterpart in stolen bases. The more powerful Doby slammed 75 more homers and had a higher slugging average, but he drove in only 15 more runs than Minnie.

Another comparison that further bolsters the case for Minoso's inclusion in the Hall of Fame is how his numbers stack up against those of the illustrious Jackie Robinson. Like Minoso, Robinson was a 28-year-old rookie. His big league career lasted 10 years and his lifetime stats are amazingly similar to the figures compiled by Minoso for his first 10 full seasons. In fact, Minnie ended up with small advantages in most major offensive categories including homers, runs batted, runs scored, hits, and total bases and even owns a slight edge in slugging percentage. Robinson comes out ahead by narrow margins in batting average, stolen bases, and on-base percentage.

The validity of the Minoso/Robinson comparison is reinforced by the fact that they were similar players, slashing .300 hitters with extra base power and speedy, daring base runners. In addition the two players were exactly the same age during the ten-year comparison period.

In regard to longevity and durability, Minnie wins hands down over both Robinson and Doby. Robinson was retired by the time he was 38 years old while Minnie was still playing regularly - and productively - at that age, scoring 91 times and driving in 82 runs in 152 games. Doby was through as a regular at 33 and out of the majors at 35 years of age. Despite the fact that Minnie was a year older than Doby, he outlasted him by five years. For their entire careers Minoso appeared in 1,841 major league games, Doby in 1,533, and Robinson in 1,382. And while there's no denying that Robinson and Doby generally played more important and demanding defensive positions, Minnie's three gold gloves attest to the fact that he was no slouch in the field.

The Hall of Fame credentials for Robinson and Doby were certainly bolstered by the fact that they were the first black players in the major leagues. But Minoso was also a trailblazer. In fact, Minnie may have debuted with the White Sox under as much pressure as any player in the history of the game - Robinson and Doby included. When he joined the White Sox he was one of only four black players in the American League. The other three played for the Indians, the only other integrated team in the league. For a rookie trying to succeed as the first black player in the second largest city in the country, the strain on Minoso had to be intense. But in addition, Minnie bore the burden of replacing slugger Gus "Ozark Ike" Zernial, an immensely popular figure in Chicago after setting the Sox home run record the previous year.

Minnie was obtained in a three-team deal between the White Sox, the Indians, and the Philadelphia Athletics, in which the Sox gave up Zernial and outfielder Dave Philley to obtain Minoso and journeyman Paul Lehner. On the surface the deal appeared incredibly one-sided against Chicago. Philley was a crowd favorite - a speedy, hustling outfielder who'd been a Sox regular since 1946. Lehner was a relatively undistinguished fly chaser who'd played three full seasons with the woeful St. Louis Browns before spending the 1950 campaign with the equally inept Athletics. At best the swap of Philley for Lehner might be considered a wash for the Sox, which meant that they had essentially traded Zernial for an aging, unproven rookie who was actually older than the all-star slugger.

Minoso had other obstacles to overcome that weren't a problem for Robinson and Doby. After their first year of integration, the rosters of both the Dodgers and Indians included several top notch black players. Minoso, on the other hand, was the Sox' lone black player through much of his early years and was the club's only prominent black player until 1956. In addition, while Robinson and Doby had attended college, Minoso had little formal education and barely spoke English when he arrived on the big league scene.

There's also the fact that Minnie was usually the primary - sometimes it seemed the solitary - offensive threat in the Sox' light-hitting lineup during his prime years in Chicago. Robinson and Doby, on the other hand, broke in with powerful veteran teams. Robinson spent his career in the middle of the Dodgers lineup protected by the likes of Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, and Carl Furillo, while Doby spent most of his career surrounded by offensive stars like Lou Boudreau, Joe Gordon, Al Rosen, Luke Easter, and Al Smith.

Minoso's best-10-year stats also compare favorably with some other old outfield rivals who already have plaques hanging in the hallowed Hall. Two like-talented contemporaries were Roberto Clemente and Al Kaline, both of whom were voted into the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. As the analysis indicates Minnie matches up well with Clemente and Kaline in most key offensive categories and actually led both of them in on-base percentage, runs scored, and stolen bases. The similarity of the numbers is even more impressive when it's considered that Minoso was 38 years old, while Clemente was 35 and Kaline was only 30 at the conclusion of their best-10-year periods.

For additional comparison purposes the best-10-year figures for Hall of Fame outfielders Enos Slaughter and Richie Ashburn, as well as first baseman Tony Perez are also included. Master statistical analyst Bill James favorably compares Minoso to Slaughter, a 1985 Veterans Committee selection, in his Historical Baseball Abstract and their best-10-year, as well as lifetime totals, are very similar. The Veterans Committee selected Ashburn, a prototypical leadoff man, in 1996. But Minnie scored more runs, stole more bases, and had a higher on-base percentage - categories in which a leadoff hitter would be expected to excel. Perez is listed because he had the honor of becoming the first Cuban player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame when the Veterans Committee selected him in 2000. His lengthy career was beginning as Minoso's was ending so they can't be considered contemporaries and weren't similar type of players. Perez's best-10-year numbers are included only for an interesting comparison to those of his countryman. Perez holds a substantial edge in homers and runs batted in, but Minnie leads by significant margins in batting average, runs scored, on-base percentage, and steals. Surprisingly, the long-ball hitting Perez's slugging percentage is not that much greater than Minnie's. Of course Slaughter, Ashburn, and Perez all benefited from starting their careers at considerably younger ages than Minoso.

In summary, Minnie Minoso was an extremely popular and tremendously exciting performer. If the term "impact player" had been in vogue during his prime, it would certainly have been applied to him. During his career he was recognized as one of the best players in the game and subsequent analysis indicates that his numbers were comparable to other great outfielders of his era. The difference is that Minnie didn't get a chance to display his talents for as long a time due to the color of his skin - a factor that the Veteran's Committee can and should take into account.

Links to other related articles:
The Forgotten Generation
Minoso's Age