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T ►— — Minoso Believes Sox, Baseball And Outfield Are All Ho-Kay Keystone Pictures LARRY JANSEN— Will be on the mound for the New York Giants this afternoon when they face the Cubs at Wrigley Field in the second of their three-game series. Cuban Rookie Has Trouble With His English, But Not American League Pitching By OSCAR FRALEY United Press Sports Writer NEW YORK, N. Y., June 22.— If you no habla Espanol, youre quite likely to have as much difficulty conversing with Orestes "Minnie Minoso of the Chicago White Sox as American League pitchers have pitching to him. Thats plenty, too. For Minnie at the moment is hitting a lusty .365 which isnt anything much except the top batting average in the league. I dont know how your Spanish is, but mine is limited to Agua Caliente, manana, hasty luigi and Carmen Miranda. But I can tell you absolutely that with "Minnie" baseball "she is ho-kay" and he owes much of his amazing rookie performance to "good fellas who am much help." The White Sox have one other Cuban and a Venezuelan in addition to Minoso. Shortstop Chico Carrasquel is from Venezuela and pitcher Luis Aloma stems from Cuba. The latter is the most fluent of the trio so he acts as interpreter. Things really can be accomplished if you get an interpreter for the interpreter. However, Minoso is struggling with a Spanish-English dictionary and, while he doesnt hit anywhere near .365 in the grammar department, he manages to get the idea across. Currently, he is commuting between third base and the outfield, playing mostly in the garden, because the Sox cant do without that big bat. But Minnie manages to make it perfectly clear that hed rather be in where the fireworks are. Greenberg, Carrasquel His Heroes "The outfield is ho-kay," he pronounces with a glint of flashing gold teeth. "But the business out there she nos so much. If no balls come, all the time its with you the stand around." The slender, 27-year-old slugger has two heroes. One, a long-time idol is Hank Greenberg of the Cleveland Indians. The other is Carrasquel, who is well on his way to being "the" shortstop in baseball. "Greenberg I like the long time," Minoso relates. "I remember when hes go for breaking the record and hits the 58 homers. I pull him good. Poor fella. He no can did." As for Carrasquel, Minnie glows when he approves : "Heem real good shortstop." But despite his conversational pop-ups, Minnie is doing great for a lad off a Cuban sugar cane plantation who quit high school and went off to conquer "el beisbol" with 00 borrowed from his daddy. "My father, he tell me I be sorry if I queet school," Minnie recalled. "But I tel heem I got to play. I not sorry yet." So Minnie rove over to Havana and, with the wares he learned in high school, got a job as an infielder in the Cuban League. A year later, in 1946, he was signed to play in the Negro leagues. Late in 1948 the Cleveland Indians signed him and sent him to Dayton. Minne responded by hitting .525. The next year he batted .297 for San Diego and last year had a brief trial before being sent back. This time he hit .339, stole 30 bases with a pair of real hot feet and battered 20 home runs. This spring with the Indians he hit .377 and then went to Chicago after the season in a complex trade among the As, Indians and White Sox. Since then he has been terrific, a key slugger in the Chicago attack. His ambition is to own a Havana motel and the way hes hitting it will be quite a string of car cabins. To put it in his own words — Minnie, hes ho-kay.
