[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 212 (Wednesday, December 8, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H7466-H7467]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             HONORING BASEBALL HALL OF FAMER MINNIE MINOSO

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, in 1954, I was stricken with polio. In 1955, 
not quite 6 years of age, I went to a baseball game in a segregated 
Memphis, Tennessee. I had crutches, a White Sox cap, and a White Sox T-
shirt. A player gave me a baseball, a White player.
  I went to my dad and told him about it, and we went down to thank 
him. He said: Don't thank me. Thank that player over there, No. 9.
  He was the blackest player in the stadium in the first integrated 
game in Memphis, Minnie Minoso.
  Minoso didn't feel comfortable giving a baseball to a White boy in 
Memphis in 1955 at the exhibition game. That lucky moment for me gave 
me a hero and an angel who stayed with me all my life.
  Later in 1960, when he came to Memphis, we visited not at the Peabody 
where the White players were but at the Lorraine Hotel where the Black 
players stayed. He was a nine-time all-star baseball player in the 
segregated Lorraine Hotel.
  We maintained our friendship over the years.
  This is a picture of me giving him a certificate in Comiskey Park, 
where he played seven decades, the most decades of anybody playing 
professional ball.
  In this picture, we were in Memphis at the Civil Rights Baseball 
Game.
  One of the first things I did when I was a Congressman was to 
introduce a resolution to honor the Negro League

[[Page H7467]]

Baseball Hall of Fame in Kansas City. In it, I said that Minnie Minoso 
would have been in the Hall of Fame but for segregation and spending 
years in the Pacific Coast League and the Negro Leagues when he should 
have been in the major leagues. It was killed in the Senate by Jim 
Bunning, a Senator who was also a Hall of Famer.
  On Sunday, Minnie Minoso was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
  I took Minnie to Cuba when I went there and handed out No. 9 pins, 
and I handed out baseball cards to Cuban fans when I was there for the 
baseball game that President Obama put together. The Cuban people loved 
him. He was their Jackie Robinson.
  On January 24, he goes in the Hall of Fame with Jim Bunning. I thank 
the Baseball Hall of Fame, and I thank Minnie Minoso. He has been my 
hero.

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