Good morning, Chicago.

On this date in 2021, Orestes "Minnie" Miñoso — nicknamed "The Cuban Comet" — was finally voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame along with two others with Chicago connections, Jim Kaat and Buck O’Neil.

Miñoso spent parts of 12 seasons with the White Sox and was the first Black player for the team in 1951. He quickly emerged as one of the game’s first Afro-Latino stars. Miñoso was a nine-time All-Star and won three Gold Glove Awards as an outfielder during 17 seasons with the Sox, Cleveland, St. Louis and Washington. Before that, he made the All-Star roster in two of his three Negro Leagues seasons with the New York Cubans and was part of a championship team in 1947.

The addition of Miñoso’s Negro League stats pushed him over the 2,000-hit mark (2,113), while his career OPS of .848 was ahead of Hall of Fame outfielders including Reggie Jackson (.846), Carl Yastrzemski (.842) and Kirby Puckett (.837).

The on-field statistics are plentiful for Miñoso, who died in March 2015 at 90, but are only a fraction of his story.

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