March 02--A documentary about White Sox great Minnie Minoso, whose death was reported Sunday, will air Monday night on the local PBS affiliate, WTTW-Ch. 11.
"Baseball Has Been Very, Very Good to Me: The Minnie Minoso Story" (comprising footage shot by producer Tom Weinberg over the last four decades) offers a portrait of the Cuban-born athlete who became Chicago's first black major league baseball player in 1951. The doc includes home footage of Minoso off the field as well as interviews with everyone from Bud Selig to Richard M. Daley to Jerry Reinsdorf.
A 2012 story about the film by my colleague John Owens revealed that Weinberg and Minoso first met in the spring of 1976 at a motel in Sarasota, Fla., where the White Sox formerly convened for spring training:
"We had a deal to do a TV show about (White Sox) spring training, but it rained every day," Weinberg recalled. "So I played shuffleboard with Minnie and ended up interviewing him."
The documentary, wrote Owens, "pulls no punches when looking back at the racism Minoso encountered throughout the country during his first few years with the Sox in the early '50s. Even in Chicago, Minoso wasn't allowed to stay in Hyde Park's Piccadilly Hotel, where many Sox players lived during the season, because of his race."
The doc will broadcast 10:30 p.m. tonight (Monday) on WTTW and is streamable through Sunday here.
