Didn't see this anywhere but wanted to pay homage to a great ambassador of baseball - Minnie Miñosa, who passed away March 1st at age 89.
Miñosa was the 9th black player to reach the majors, and played 17 years - spanning 5 decades (to be sure, his last 2 stints of 2 games each in 1976 and 1980 at the age of 50 and 54, respectively, were both something of publicity stunts pulled by the White Sox), for the Indians, White Sox, Cardinals, and Senators (as a wide-eyed 8-YO, I met him in 1963 when he was with the latter).
He put up very respectable numbers: .298 / .389 / .459 over 1,835 games and 7,712 PAs, He was a ROY runner up in 1952 and won 3 GGs, despite the award not being created until he was 32.
But the thing for which Minnie was probably best known was being HBP 192 times, placing him 9th on the all-time list.
Comedian Robert Klein acknowledges him in this skit (at the 4:30 mark).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzKUm3c3wM4 (Edit: Apologies, for some reason my video embed is not functioning correctly).
Edit #2: My apologies singaporesoxfan...the editor did not paste the tilde accent. I have manually corrected with alt key.
Miñosa was the 9th black player to reach the majors, and played 17 years - spanning 5 decades (to be sure, his last 2 stints of 2 games each in 1976 and 1980 at the age of 50 and 54, respectively, were both something of publicity stunts pulled by the White Sox), for the Indians, White Sox, Cardinals, and Senators (as a wide-eyed 8-YO, I met him in 1963 when he was with the latter).
He put up very respectable numbers: .298 / .389 / .459 over 1,835 games and 7,712 PAs, He was a ROY runner up in 1952 and won 3 GGs, despite the award not being created until he was 32.
But the thing for which Minnie was probably best known was being HBP 192 times, placing him 9th on the all-time list.
Comedian Robert Klein acknowledges him in this skit (at the 4:30 mark).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzKUm3c3wM4 (Edit: Apologies, for some reason my video embed is not functioning correctly).
Edit #2: My apologies singaporesoxfan...the editor did not paste the tilde accent. I have manually corrected with alt key.
