White Sox Legend Miñoso Has Waited Long Enough For Cooperstown

CHICAGO — Minnie Miñoso put the “Go, Go" in "Go, Go White Sox” — a fact baseball historians like Bob Kendrick consider to be God’s honest truth.

But for Kendrick, who runs the Negro Baseball Museum, the fact the National Baseball Hall of Fame has never given the green light to Miñoso represents a serious miscarriage of baseball justice.

Miñoso may be “Mr. White Sox” in Chicago, but his legacy deserves so much more. Miñoso came to be Chicago’s Jackie Robinson when he became the first Black player to don a Sox uniform. Now, more than 15 years after Miñoso and others were passed over for Cooperstown induction by the Hall of Fame's Negro Leagues committee, another group has the chance to finally make things right.

Miñoso will appear on the Golden Era ballot on Dec. 5, when a 16-person committee can finally acknowledge what Miñoso means to baseball more than six years after he died in a parked car from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The numbers that often become the standard for Cooperstown membership are certainly there. But on an often-overlooked and unfairly judged side of Chicago that has experienced more racial injustice than bears repeating, Miñoso’s stature off the field means more than any statistical measure ever could.

And that — especially in a post-George Floyd society — needs to matter not only in Chicago but also in Cooperstown, where baseball's best are honored.

Miñoso, the Cuban Comet, arrived on the South Side in 1951, five years after he broke into baseball with the Negro League's New York Cubans. Miñoso wasted little time leaving his mark on Comiskey Park, where “go, go” became the rallying cry every time he reached base. Miñoso brought a “brash and daring” playing style from the Negro Leagues and made it part of his big-league trademark. By the time his playing career ended, Miñoso played 1,373 games in a Sox uniform, in which he hit .304 with 135 home runs and 808 RBIs.

But Miñoso’s legacy doesn't deserve to be judged by numbers alone. The pioneering fashion in which he played created a pathway for Cuban Sox stars such as Jose Abreu and 2005 World Series champion pitcher Jose Contreras. But the indelible marks left by what Miñoso went through just to reach the major leagues shine a brighter light on what matters most. Baseball, after all, is just a game, but the lessons passed down by Miñoso to those who followed should be what's remembered most.

Contreras remembers when Miñoso walked into the Sox clubhouse and began speaking to him in English. Contreras stopped him and said he didn’t understand. Miñoso reminded his fellow Cuban of the importance for him to learn English because it would help him down the road and make him more inclusive. At the time, Contreras shrugged off the advice before the real message surfaced.

"He wanted to make us better," Contreras said Monday.

Five years ago, Contreras started taking one-hour English-speaking lessons after finally paying attention to Miñoso. Now it's time for the Hall of Fame to do the same.

“You can never reduce Minnie Miñoso’s career to just baseball,” Kendrick said Monday. “Minnie Miñoso was the Latino Jackie Robinson, hands down. …. What he meant to legions of Latino ballplayers knowing that they, too, could have the dream of playing in the major leagues cannot be understated.”

Nor should it be at a time when 27.4 percent of big-leaguers are Hispanic, including 20 who come from Cuba, according to a study done in 2020. Baseball has always been a cultural melting pot filled with a myriad stories of those who found their way to the United States chasing a baseball dream. Sox fans have always placed Miñoso on sacred ground. But now, a man who played such a significant role in bridge-building and shaping the future of baseball in Chicago deserves his rightful spot in a place where historical context is often overlooked, even if Miñoso isn't here to see it happen.

“That’s the beauty of baseball,” Kendrick said Monday. “Out of all of our sports, no sport holds to its history like baseball, and it’s the one sport where we constantly compare those stars of the past to the stars of today.”

If that’s the case, it's time baseball learns from its own history and acknowledges it is time to link Miñoso’s to the present and place him among baseball’s elite. Heaven knows Chicago’s Jackie Robinson has waited long enough.