On the recordMarch 3, 2015
on Sunday, America lost a baseball legend when Saturino Orestes Armas Minoso Arrieta passed away. We knew him as the Cuban Comet, as Mr. White Sox, as the heart and soul of Chicago baseball on the South Side, and a beacon of hope for Cuban athletes everywhere. It is with great sorrow that Chicago loses its South Side White Sox champion only days after the North Side Cubs lost their champion, Ernie Banks. Before Minnie was Major League Baseball's first black Latino star, he was the son of a sugarcane plantation worker in Perico, Cuba. He started his professional baseball career in Cuba, playing for $2 a game with the Ambrosia Candy team in Havana for the 1943 season. He also worked in the company garage for $8 a week. But within a couple of years, he made it to Havana's Marianao team, making $150 a month, which soon became $200 a month to keep him from moving even more quickly in his career. By 1946, Minnie's talent couldn't be kept away from bigger leagues. He signed a $300 deal to play for the New York Cubans of the Negro National League. Minnie played third base for the Cubans, batted .294, played in the All-Star Game, and helped them win the pennant. They would beat the Cleveland Buckeyes in the World Series. The Cleveland Indians hired Minoso in 1949, but the Indians barely used him. He spent the next 2 years in the minor leagues. In 1951, the Indians made a three-team trade with the White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies, and Minnie arrived in Chicago.…
