But Minoso’s lack of counting stats is also a byproduct of another key component of his candidacy–Minoso was a pioneer.  Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, a titanically important and heroic achievement.  However, Robinson’s first game in the majors wasn’t the flicking of a light switch wherein baseball went from “hostile to minorities” to “fine” overnight.  The struggle of integration persisted for decades, and there is a case to be made that it is still ongoing.  The Red Sox would not employ a black player until 1959–after Jackie Robinson had retired.  And for perspective on how recent the preliminary phases of integration were, Larry Doby was the first black player in the American League in 1948.  His rookie season was the last year the Cleveland Indians won the World Series.

Minoso was attempting to break into the majors in this world.  Before he became the first black Cuban in the major leagues, and the White Sox’ first black player, Minoso was left to waste his age-23 and 24 seasons accumulating almost 1,300 plate appearances in AAA.  He earned the opportunity to languish in the minors after being an All Star in the Negro Leagues.  Indeed, in 1950 despite hitting .339/.405/.539 in AAA, he didn’t get called up for even a cup of coffee. The Indians clearly weren’t averse to playing black players in the absolute sense, given the presence of the aforementioned Doby, and in many ways Minoso was blocked.  Al Rosen had third for Cleveland in ’50, and those Cleveland rosters were pretty robust top to bottom.  However, in ’49 they ran out a mediocre Ken Keltner, and in ’50 a corner outfield slot was also pretty underwhelming.  One need not attribute Minoso being blocked by fungible veterans to racial animus, but I wouldn’t rule out the lack of finding room for a versatile defensive player with an elite bat being a result of unfair skepticism either.

Then, after a trade to the White Sox in 1951, Minoso immediately posted a 7.5 WARP season in his rookie year, finishing 4th in MVP voting and 2nd in Rookie of the Year. I think it is fair to posit that if he had been allowed to play a full season in the majors in 1950 when he was obviously ready he would have been a 4 or 5-win player, and it isn’t unreasonable to suggest he would have been an above-average major leaguer in 1949 as well.  Given that he averaged 7.5 WARP over his first four seasons in the majors, these estimates may be conservative.

Even without the benefit of these two lost years in his 20s, Minoso’s career WARP sits at 65.1.  For reference, Carlos Beltran is currently at 67.9 and Tim Raines was at 70.4, while Andre Dawson posted an even 60.  Minoso was their equal on the field, and given that MLB teams were not required to have Spanish translators until 2016, it is easy to underestimate his other contributions.

By Jay Jaffe’s JAWS metric, Minoso ranks 22nd All Time amongst left fielders, which puts him about even with Lance Berkman, ahead of Hall of Famers Joe Kelley and Jim Rice, and only slightly behind Hall member Ralph Kiner.  Another thing to keep in mind when looking at this ranking is that some of the most absurdly dominant players of all time were left fielders. The top four at the position by JAWS are Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, Rickey Henderson, and Carl Yastrzemski.

A common fallacy in Hall of Fame debates is the, “You had to be there” argument for a player who isn’t qualified on paper, an appeal to style over substance. “Sure, Mickey Morandini had a sub-.700 OPS but you should have seen him lay down a sac bunt!” Setting aside the fact that Minoso’s high-OBP was likely not as appreciated in his day as it would be now, and that he is qualified, Minoso was so freaking cool that it leaps off the stat page. After all, he lead the league in triples three times, stolen bases twice, caught stealing six times, and in hit-by-pitch ten times. I am too young to have seen him play live, but I can appeal to his style because his panache is there in the numbers.

It is also true that arguing for someone to be in the Hall because they are better than its weakest members–like Jim Rice–is not very persuasive. Two wrongs don’t make a right.  Kiner is an interesting point of reference in that he had approximately 1,000 fewer PAs than Minoso playing in roughly the same era.  For what it is worth, I think Kiner deserves to be in, partially because I think a blinding peak is worth quite a bit, which JAWS attempts to capture above and beyond just adding up a player’s career WAR.

I will point out, however, that Minoso’s JAWS score, 45.0, is essentially identical to that of Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter who weighs in at 45.1.  In the Jackie Robinson story, Slaughter has been cast as one of the leaders of the faction of regressive sneering racists standing in his way.  There is dispute over what actions if any Slaughter took to stop Robinson, but it is undisputed that Slaughter spiked Robinson at first base during his rookie year.  Whether or not it was intentional is something that we cannot know.

The consensus, however, is that Slaughter was probably a jerk.  By contrast, Minoso was an absolute delight, playing with tremendous flair and infectious charisma, paving the way for Latin players and Cubans specifically in MLB.  The former is in the Hall and the latter is not.  Minnie Minoso passed away in 2015, and so the opportunity to induct him into the Hall during his lifetime has irretrievably been lost.  But the individuals with the power to do so should correct this error as soon as they’re able.

Lead Image Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki // USA Today Sports Images

It was also likely the last time for the foreseeable future we’ll see a player enter Cooperstown with a White Sox cap adorned on his plaque.

Despite a lack of team success for the better part of the team’s history, the Sox are far from deficient when it comes to inductees in the Baseball Hall of Fame. 12 different players have gone into the Hall of Fame with the White Sox as their primary team (this is including Carlton Fisk, who has a Red Sox logo on his cap but whose primary team is listed as the White Sox), tied for the seventh most all-time.

In fact, since the first Hall of Fame class in 1936, the White Sox have never gone more than 14 years between Hall of Fame inductees, with Thomas breaking the latest streak after 14 years between him and Fisk.

That said, after Thomas, finding the next White Sox Hall of Famer is an incredibly difficult exercise.

There are plenty of players who have or will enter soon who spent some of their careers with the White Sox, mind you. Tim Raines had four successful seasons in Chicago, and Jim Thome will likely join him in his first year of eligibility next year. But logos for the Expos and Indians will likely don those two caps.

So, who is the next White Sox inductee? That’s pretty tough to figure out.

The recently retired

The only two players from recent White Sox history who will generate any sort of Hall of Fame discussion are Paul Konerko and Mark Buehrle, and, unfortunately, both likely fell short of Hall of Fame-worthy careers by varying degrees.

Both are incredibly beloved on the South side, and that’s perfectly fine. Statues, number retirements, all that is great! Konerko and Buehrle are White Sox legends, but that doesn’t necessarily make them baseball legends.

When guys like Fred McGriff, Larry Walker, Mike Mussina, and Curt Schilling are having trouble sniffing 50 percent of the vote, Konerko and Buehrle just aren’t going to cut it.

The recently traded

The most obvious candidate for next White Sox Hall of Famer until about six weeks ago was Chris Sale, and even then, it still might be!

Sale spent the first seven years of his career with the White Sox, tossing 1,110 innings, won 74 games with a 3.00 ERA while accumulating 31.1 WAR. The path to him entering the Hall as a member of the White Sox is tricky, however.

Step 1: Become a Hall of Famer. This one’s easy. While Sale has been stellar through his first seven seasons, it will take a lot more before we start buying tickets to Cooperstown.

Step 2: Bounce around. It’s safe to say if Sale spends more than seven years in Boston, that’ll wind up where he’s most remembered.

Step 3: Don’t be too good for Boston (or wherever he plays after Boston). Randy Johnson played 10 years in Seattle and eight in Arizona, but he wore a Diamondbacks hat in his plaque because, as good as he was for the Mariners, Johnson won four straight Cy Young awards and a World Series in Arizona. That stuff matters. If Sale only plays a few years in Boston but rips off some Cy Young seasons and a World Series or two, it’s game over.

So, yeah, a lot needs to happen. But the chances of Sale wearing a White Sox hat at his 2032 Hall of Fame ceremony are still there.

The current roster

It’s safe to say if someone on the White Sox as currently constructed winds up in Cooperstown it will take quite a bit of A) luck and B) time.

There’s Jose Quintana, of course, and there’s at least one alternate reality out there where he spends the rest of his career with the White Sox. He’d have to become a Hall of Famer, of course (I’m going to stop pointing that out for the duration of this article, because you get it).

Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, Reynaldo Lopez, etc., etc., you get it. If one of these guys becomes a Hall of Famer, it won’t be until, say, 2037 at the earliest. A 23-year drought!

The actual answer

The next player to enter the Hall of Fame with a White Sox cap on his plaque will be Minnie Minoso. Some how, some way, Minoso, who died in 2015, will be elected to the Hall of Fame. And it will be long overdue.

Despite a worthy resume, not to mention his significant cultural impact to the game as the first black Cuban to play in the majors and the first black player in White Sox history, Minoso never garnered more than 21.1 percent of the vote from the BBWAA ballot before falling off the ballot after the 1999 cycle.

The most recent opportunity the Hall had to elect him was in 2014 when the Golden Era committee failed to elect any of its 10 candidates. Minoso garnered eight votes from the 16-person committee.

Minoso’s next opportunity will come when the Golden Days committee votes again in 2020 (the Hall recently altered its Veterans Committee standards), and unless those panels come to their senses sometime soon, the next time we see a Hall of Famer come from the White Sox is likely far, far away.

Lead Photo Credit: Rob Grabowski-USA TODAY Sports

“A commitment to branding is why the signs going up this week around the 25-year-old stadium look virtually the same as the company’s logo, except for the word ‘field’ at the end.

Ciardelli said the design was a joint effort between the company’s in-house creative team and the Sox, who suggested replacing the arrow with an image of home plate. ‘But I told the White Sox that it’s our company logo, and they were respectful of the decision’ to keep the arrow after all, Ciardelli said.”

Given the dominance sports teams have enjoyed in stadium deal negotiations with municipalities in the past few decades, and that this sponsorship agreement will solely benefit the previously neglected state-run Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, there might be some karmic pleasure in seeing the White Sox swatted aside in a situation where they have no leverage. They made a deal with a company that has no interest in the arrangement beyond their own promotion, and are now reaping the reward. But then there’s still the part where we’re all stuck looking at this silly logo.

A common defense to having a large downward arrow stamped to the side of the stadium into the next decade is that it would not matter if the team was winning. If the Sox had made the playoffs for the last eight years in a row, rather than missing them, we would care less about the seemingly negative logo, the clunky name and the previously anonymous local company. This is true, just as if they had taken Frank Firke’s idea and named it Minnie Minoso Field, it would not suddenly wash away the angst of the Sox lack of recent success and clear direction. This is because the name of the baseball team’s stadium matters much less than the quality team playing in it, and this incredibly obvious observation does not prevent bad things from being acknowledged as bad.

But it’s wise to remember that U.S. Cellular Field was also a bad and clunky name, and that we were once desperate enough to float “The Joan” as a nickname due to omnipresent Joan Cusack advertisements before the forces of familiarity and yes, the Sox winning games, pushed its badness to the back of our minds. Corporate sponsor names have been with us for decades, and nothing could be worse than the .com boom, so the stink of this name will die out of the news cycle in a day or two, and resurface at the start of the season, and any time the Sox actually find themselves on national television in the form of pithy jokes. Of course, we’ll probably quip about it on here a couple times per week.

As has been noted elsewhere, the length of the naming rights deal (through 2029), and the expiration of the agreement on competitive upgrades in 2026, make this likely the last name the stadium bear while the White Sox are its primary tenant. While it’s impossible to look 10 or 13 years into the future and know where the White Sox will play given the changes that could take place in ownership in that time, this deal at least leaves open some possibility for the Guaranteed Rate arrow poking out from the vines and wreckage of a post-apocalyptic society centuries from now. For example:

Now that’s a legacy worth paying for.

Lead Image Credit: Guaranteed Rate’s Twitter Account

Getting the practical side of things out of the way: with the White Sox not disclosing the terms of the deal, we’re forced to guess at the exact magnitude, but the number getting kicked around was $88 million, or which would be a bit less than $7 million per year. That’s about twice what they were getting from U.S. Cellular, though the opacity of the deals (what the actual yearly rate on the current deal was, what sort of buy-out was involved, what the switching costs are) means there’s some uncertainty.

If that $3 million in marginal gain or so goes to baseball ops, it’s neither hugely substantial nor a drop in the bucket. It’s filling a roster spot with a minor contributor like Alex Avila or Zach Duke, or it’s a few new front office personnel and a couple extra bonuses to international free agents. Of course, the White Sox have still never given out a $70 million contract and have refused to spend either on free agency or player development, so it’s hard to justify expecting them to get much out of this money, but at least it shouldn’t reduce their spending. The only unambiguous upside to this deal is that some of it will go to the state to replace the rent the White Sox don’t pay, slightly reducing the ongoing sting of seeing taxpayer money spent on a profitable private enterprise–and this enterprise in particular.

The downside manifests in less tangible ways. With the tacky name and unfortunately apropos logo, the White Sox are the butt of national jokes for the third time this year, following L’affaires LaRoche et Sale. Adding insult to insult, Guaranteed Rate joins fellow mortgage company stadium sponsors Quicken Loans and Ameriquest in having compliance problems in its past. The jokes won’t last 13 years, and people will figure out a nice nickname (there’s always Comiskey Park), but proper names matter—that’s why we fight about terminology regardless the subject. It’ll be a small blow every time I hear Jason Benetti read off “Guaranteed Rate Field” on the air, and a slightly larger one every time it slips into a conversation among fans. It’s especially grating when two of the other major Chicago franchises play in stadia that haven’t changed names in 90 years and the other two play in maybe the least-obtrusively sponsored stadium in sports courtesy of United’s very generic name.

It’s not a causal relationship, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the franchises that don’t have proper corporate sponsorship on the stadium—the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Cardinals, the Dodgers, even the Cubs—have stronger national profiles and greater prestige than nearly all the teams that have ceded some dignity for annual seven-figure payments. Not all traditions are worth preserving, but the ones that don’t involve corporate defacing usually are. Names that have been around decades give the franchise a touch of gravitas that the White Sox are sorely lacking.

What makes this so disappointing is that the White Sox have foregone an obvious opportunity to inexpensively stand on principle and start a new tradition. Comiskey has the history, but given the many black marks on his record, he shouldn’t be the first choice to go back on the marquee. Why would he, when the White Sox could honor someone with an even longer association with the franchise, who made a more unambiguously positive impact on the game, who’s been largely underappreciated on a national level? One whose name wouldn’t represent either corporate greed nor an owner’s egotism, but instead a recognition that the players are the reason the game means anything to anyone? Sadly, it seems like a pipe dream to think that at some point in my life I’ll go back to Chicago and get to see a game at Minnie Minoso Stadium.

Lead Image Credit: David Banks // USA Today Sports Images