Great article. It brought back my own baseball-card/Minnie Minoso memory. I was 8 years old and had just purchased a ten-pack of cards, including Minoso's. Unfortunately, the Topps 1960 card of Minoso had a very unflattering photo of the player. For some reason the picture (a close-up of his face) showed him with a very wrinkled forehead. My brother and I both started laughing. My mother came over to see what was so funny with a baseball card, so we showed her the card. My brother and I then received an extremely serious lecture regarding not laughing at people because of the way they look, and that it could be very hurtful to their feelings. My mother (who was a baseball fan), then went on to assure me and my brother that she had seen photos of Minoso and that he was a handsome man. In any event, because of that incident I began following his career for the next few years until he retired.
On the subject of the "Hall" Bill James wrote an article 2-3 years ago in which he advocated the strength of Minoso's Hall candidacy, especially in light of the fact that he would surely have been in MLB years earlier but for the color/ethnic barrier previously in place.
I always thought that Bruce Bochey and the actor that played the Manager in Major League, not only looked alike, but that their voices were extremely similar.
Molitor didn't play a majority of his games at DH, just more than at any other single position. He played 1,174 games there, and just under 1,500 games at regular defensive positions, while being an above-average defensive player.
Let's see . . . an undersized righty with three-pitch command whose last name begins with an "M" starting for the Braves . . . sounds familiar, doesn't it!
I enjoy the HOF/analysis articles--both before and after the vote. Keep them coming. It\'s an absolute disgrace that Ron Santo isn\'t in the Hall (and I\'m not even a Cubs fan). I\'m also hugely frustrated by the lack of support for Blyleven & Trammell (plus Lou Whitaker only got 2.9% of the vote in 2001!!!). Perhaps the problem of uninformed BBWAA voters could be partially alleviated by the HOF sending the voters more complete statistical summaries of the players\' careers. That way the voters wouldn\'t just be going by the \"seat of their pants\" or by 1960\'s back-of-the-baseball-card stats. BruceG
David: How about Nate Berkenstock? One game for the ATH in the NA in 1871--went 0 for 4 with 3 K\'s and then he was gone. Into the shoe business perhaps? Bruce Gilbert
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