MINNIE MO: brought excitement to the Major Leagues in an era of black exclusion

Cesar,

I thoroughly enjoyed your piece on the late Minnie Minoso.  I’d like to relate to you the story behind my first professional ball game that I attended as an eight year old.

My father and grandfather took me to the old Briggs Stadium in Detroit to see the Tigers vs White Sox.   As a little kid growing up in an all white working class part of NW Detroit, I knew nothing about African American people and didn’t even know there was such a person as an Afro-Cubano or Black Cuban.   We had only one Puerto Rican family in our school district and they could hardly be called “people of color”.   I don’t believe Latino was even in our vocabulary.  I’m not saying I never saw black people or Latin Americans; most of the people in our neighborhood were Jewish and many of them had African-American housekeepers and I do have relatives of Mexican heritage.   Also, in those days there were no cross town expressways so whenever we visited my paternal relatives, we traveled though an area that had a mostly African-American population.   But, our family didn’t know any black people personally.

As we approached the stadium, it was clear that most of the local residents were African-American.   In fact, a black man gladly allowed us to park in his front yard for a modest fee.   When we entered the park, it was alive with a buzz of excitement the likes of which I’d never felt before.  The place smelled of cigars which to this day, the smell of a cigar always leads to fond memories of my grandfather who was an avid cigar smoker.   As we were being ushered to our seats, I observed two things about the attendees of the ball game.   First of all, white people were a very slim minority and secondly nearly all of the black people were women and some with children.  At the time it didn’t seem that odd to me.   It was a weekday game and most of the African-American men would have been at work and considering the local population, it shouldn’t have been odd that most of the fans in the stands were black.

Now, keep in mind that in that era, you had a Detroit baseball team that was 100% white in a city of 2,000,000 people with roughly 500,000 of them African-American.   So, the team hardly represented the city’s population.   What totally caught me off guard was early in the ball game when a black man came up to bat for the Sox.   As soon as he left the dugout, the entire stadium erupted with an earthquake-like tremble.   Women were banging on the seats, and screaming “Minnie-Mo”!!!!  I looked around at thousands (back then the stadium held 52,000 people, and it was full on this day) of black women swooning with tears in their eyes and hands in the air.   My dad nudged me and said “the colored women are here to see Minnie Minoso”.   It wasn’t until many years later when I understood something about racial injustice and the color barrier in Major League Baseball that the weight of that moment when a black man came to the plate at Briggs Stadium struck me.

Obviously, Minnie Minoso went on to give fans many many memorable moments with his baseball acumen, but, I’ll never forget what I witnessed among the Detroit women who had come out to support their beloved Minnie-Mo.

Brian Cain, the Michigan Vintner

 Hi Brian,

I’m glad you enjoyed the article.

That’s cool to hear how popular Minoso was, even outside of Chicago or Cleveland.

Thanks for passing that along.

Regards,

Cesar

Cesar Brioso, Digital Producer, USA TODAY Sports