Always and Forever with Minnie Miñoso
How an old man knocked a starter into the bullpen for good
1977 Topps Minnie Miñoso (#232) - Card of the Day
In the best of times, September baseball is all about hope — the hope of making the playoffs, the hope of reaching some long-awaited milestone, the hope of making the most of your cup of coffee, the hope of finishing strong and cashing in with a big offseason payday (you know it’s there).
But beneath all that sparkling optimism, there is always a swirling undercurrent of finality trying to sweep men away into that vast darkness of winter and, for some, the even more daunting midnight of a post-playing-career world. It’s here that stories of struggle and frailty and determination and grit and, ultimately for everyone, acceptance grow.
Because September is for the rookies and the young, yes, but it’s also for the game’s old men trying to put together one last run, savor one last moment in the sunshine of their own youth.
Over the years, our baseball cards have done a pretty good job of capturing those fleeting rays of sun, the ones that crinkle faces and crackle knees and bow backs. The ones that make heroes look mortal, look old.
And for many collectors of my generation, no one was ever better at looking old on baseball cards — on some of my baseball cards, even — than Minnie Miñoso.
Sure, Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry looked like grandpas on the mound forever, and Harmon Killebrew was famously white-haired on his 1975 Topps issue, but none of them brought the weight of time to their baseball cards like Miñoso did on his 1977 Topps Record Breaker card.
Those lines on his brow speak of a lifetime’s worth of stress, not surprising considering he was 50 years old when the photo was snapped (or 52, if you believe the Baseball Reference version of events), and 51 when the card came out.
Those heavy eyes, gazing off into the distance at a world that’s maybe better than ours, tell of the struggles he has seen in his life and career. As a black man who came to the Major Leagues with the Cleveland Indians just two years after Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby broke the color barrier, his path had to have been a rough one.
The hunched shoulders speak of a physical burden born of years on the road, chasing his baseball dreams, and catching most of them … and of the years he’s been away from the game, settling into an uneasy retirement as best he could.
And, yes, I realize that this card exists only because of a publicity stunt perpetrated by Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck and Miñoso himself. He would play in four different decades, and then five, the first man to do it!
And he would do it as a member of the Southsiders, by golly.
Retirement couldn’t stop him, either.
See, Miñoso hung up his spikes in 1964 at the age of 38, but Veeck brought him back for three games in 1976 at 50 to make him a four-decade guy. In the middle game of that set, 48 years ago today, Miñoso became the oldest man to get a hit in the majors. That hit came in
Four years later, as the 1980s dawned, Minnie was back for yet another go — two games, two at-bats, two outs.
Ten years after that, Miñoso was scheduled to make a minor league appearance with the Miami Miracle to become a six-decade professional, but Major League Baseball kiboshed the idea, robbing us of the chance to see a 64-year-old man on a baseball card as an active player.
It was an opportunity lost for all of us, because Minnie Miñoso carried the torch for all us old men who thought — think — that if things break just right, maybe … just maybe … there’s still a chance.
From Weird Series to World Series
Miñoso’s record-breaking hit came in the bottom of the second inning off Angels starter Sid Monge in that September 12th game at Comiskey Park. Chet Lemon advanced on the play but ended up stranded at second when Bill Stein struck out to end the inning.
The White Sox, meanwhile, ended up winning a sorta strange game between two teams duking it out with each other and the Rangers for the bottom spot in the old American League West. The White Sox “won” that battle by season’s end, too.
The "sorta strange” was that Monge pitched a complete game — if you’re a 1980s baseball fan, you probably remember him as a reliever. And adding to that overall strangeness was that Rich Gossage also pitched a CG for the Sox.
Gossage, of course, is in the Hall of Fame as a closer.
But the truth is, Veeck’s 1976 Sox used Gossage mostly as a starter. Indeed, 29 of his 31 appearances were starts, and he completed a whopping 15 of them.
Both Gossage and Monge were full-time relievers in 1977, though, and that pretty much stuck for both of them. By the mid-1980s, Monge had become a must-have for teams that wanted to win a pennant.
Don’t believe me? Check out the (flimsy) evidence right here.
—
No matter which version of Miñoso’s birth year you prefer, the bad news for me is that I’m now older than he was when he set his old-man-hit record in 1976.
The good news about that is that I have a clear shot at the mark as soon as I can find a team that recognizes my talents and like-factory-new batting stance. Come to think of it, the 2025 White Sox might be an even more welcoming target than the 1976 version was.
On that note, I gotta go warm up the old Wiffle Ball swing. You know you’re swinging hard when only dogs can hear your yellow plastic bat whistling.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
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