Minnie Miñoso’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday culminated a long and complicated journey to Cooperstown, N.Y., that few imagined would end this way.
The former Chicago White Sox legend — who will join David Ortiz, Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, Buck O’Neil, Gil Hodges and Bud Fowler in the 2022 class — repeatedly was deemed unworthy from his original retirement in 1964 to his death at 90 in 2015.
Miñoso was an afterthought in the minds of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which originally kept him out of the Hall during his years of eligibility. Early veterans committees shot him down as a viable candidate, as did a revamped veterans committee in 2003 consisting of Hall of Famers and those who had earned plaques in Cooperstown through broadcasting or writing about the game. (The Hall disbanded the 15-member veterans panel after Bill Mazeroski’s election in 2001, feeling it was too political.)
