Minnie in Chicago Side Sports

Read the article: “36 Years With Minnie Minoso” in Chicago Side Sports

The Kickstarter project…Only four days to go!

Minnie and Me and You

Thanks to all who have pledged your support–either financially or by spreading the word–for “Baseball’s Been Very, Very Good To Me.” We are so pleased that our project has been emailed, facebooked, tweeted, tumblr-d, and blogged about all over the world, particularly in the last few days.

We have only seven days to make the do-or-die goal with Kickstarter, so for those of you have been thinking about pledging, do it now! All levels are deeply appreciated.

We hope you’ll enjoy this conversation between Tom Weinberg and Roger Wallenstein, two old pals who reveal they still love baseball as much as they did when they were kids.

MINNIE AND ME AND YOU
By Tom Weinberg and Roger Wallenstein

Tom Weinberg and Minnie Minoso, 1976

Tom: Hey, Roger, remember when we were seven and sat under the biggest oak tree in Highland Park trading baseball cards…and there was no card for our favorite player, Orestes Minoso? All through the ‘50s, he was the most exciting compelling, daring, gutty, player. And he always looked like he was having fun. Just like we did when we played ball four or five hours every day until it got dark.

Roger: Yeah, Tommer, just about all the faces on the cards then were white. There were no black players on the White Sox. Each league had only eight teams, and 25-man rosters. We knew every player in both leagues from those Topps cards that still smelled like that skinny cheap pink gum. When Minnie hit a homer on May 1, 1951 in his first appearance as third baseman for the Sox, we didn’t know who he was. We found out pretty soon.

Tom: In those days, TV and baseball cards were most of what we knew. We were pretty insular: nobody in our town was black, except the maids. And I had never heard anyone speaking Spanish there. First time I did was when my parents took us to the desert near Palm Springs, and we met the people who picked the dates and took away our plates.

Roger: Well, I did know every player in in the American League and most in National by position and could get pretty close to telling you their current batting averages. Plus, my brother John and I studied them quite carefully in the off-season. Especially the black players. The Indians had the most, probably because Bill Veeck signed them. Easter at first and Doby and Al Smith in the outfield. Satchel Paige pitched for the St. Louis Browns.   The National League was quicker to integrate than the American, and they had better players, too. The Dodgers led the way not only with Jackie, but Roy Campanella, Big Don Newcombe, Junior Gilliam, Joe Black, and Sandy Amoros.  Those guys were major parts of “The Boys of Summer.”

Tom: For us, though, Minnie Minoso was in a class by himself. Of course, we didn’t know that he wasn’t allowed to live in the same hotel at the time. We’d never heard of Jim Crow. George Crowe, yeah, but not Jim.

Rog: When Minnie showed up, he not only was the third or fourth black player in the entire league, but he could play! I don’t remember our seeing him as being black so much as considering him simply as the best player on the White Sox. And those teams were pretty good. When our dads took us to Comiskey Park, we loved watching Nellie Fox and Looie Aparicio, but Minoso was the biggest attraction. I think back to other black pioneers in the American League.  Sure, guys like Doby and Easter were good hitters, but other players like Carlos Paula, another black Cuban who broke the color barrier for the Washington Senators, had little of Minnie’s talent. Minnie was better than any of them.

Tom: I gotta tell you…he still IS! 89, going on 40, he’s a Chicago treasure. And a terrific guy.

Rog: I guess that’s why you wanted to make a documentary with him.

Tom: For sure. There’s nobody like him, then or now. He played pro ball in the ‘40s(Indians), ‘50s (Sox), ‘60s (Sox and Cardinals),’70s and ‘80s (DH for Sox) and in the ‘90s and in 2003—-he was 81–he played in the minors, for Mike Veeck and the St. Paul Saints. Seven decades…nobody else EVER did that.

Minnie Minoso in his seven decade hat, 2012

Rog: When we were kids, hanging out with Minnie would have been inconceivable. But you have become friends with him. I remember the video of you playing shuffle board with Minnie during a rainy spring training day in the 70’s. He seemed surprised that you remembered Opening Day in 1960 when he returned to Chicago after playing two seasons in Cleveland. (“I hit a home run, way over there.”) How could anyone forget that homecoming?

Tom: “You was just a little guy,” he said then. It was also the same day time he held out his huge Cuban cane-cutter hands and said, “These are 54-year old hands.” That was March, 1976. So, on that day, he volunteered his “real” age…born in 1922. That same year, 1976 in Sarasota, in spring training, Bill asked me to record a few commercials for various TV channels encouraging fans to come to Opening Day. Minnie did one in Spanish and another in English.

Rog: His 90^th birthday is November 29…let’s have a party. Of course, the party I’d really like to attend would be to celebrate Minnie getting into the Hall of Fame. When you look at his record, a few things really stick out. Like playing every day. Minnie led the American League ten times in getting hit by a pitch. And we certainly saw him crashing into walls and diving to make circus catches. So you know he had his share of bumps and bruises. But he always wanted to be in the lineup. At different times he led the league in hits, triples, and stolen bases, and on four occasions he drove in more than 100 runs. For the whole decade of the fifties, only Mickey Mantle had better offensive stats than Minoso. Is it any wonder that as kids we thought he was super human? Shoot, even when he swung and missed, I remember Bob Elson saying, “Wow, he went around like a corkscrew,” or “he swung so hard he almost fell down.”

Tom: Yup. As Minnie says, “Nobody hustles more than me.” Your friend and mine, Joel Cohen, and I have been recording interviews with Minnie for more than a year…maybe 30 hours’ worth. The amazing thing is that he’s never bitter about the Hall of Fame (which he lost out on by three votes last December) or the way he was treated in the early days by quite a few players. (It’s not entirely an accident that he was hit by all those pitches.) He has been saying that “Baseball has been very, very good to me,” for about 40 years.And he believes it to his core. This is a lovely human being, and we (and our kids) all have life lessons to learn from him.

Rog: So, Tom, when can we see this documentary?

Tom: I’m confident that we will have it ready to be on TV before the 2012 World Series.

Rog: I know that you’ve been doing this as a labor of love―not to make big dough.  But, don’t you still need some money and to make a deal?

Tom: For sure. We have no corporate sponsor. We need at least $20,000 to finish the post-production, including editing, mastering, sound finishing, licensing fees, and getting a ready-to-broadcast documentary in the hands of a few decision makers.

Rog: So, that’s what you’re doing with the Kickstarter campaign, right? Explain that.

Tom: It’s a cool way to raise money online for creative projects. Ours is at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/235602734/minnie-minoso-the-documentary-0 Nearly 100 people from all over the world have pledged more than $12,000 in the past three weeks. But, the way Kickstarter works, we gotta raise our complete funding goal ($20,120) or all those pledges go away and we get nothing. We definitely don’t want to even consider that possibility, but we only have about eight days to go…we need it all by 8 a.m. on May 12.

Rog: Is it complicated to do?  How does it work?

Tom: Three things: 1) it takes about two minutes to pledge and you can pledge using your Amazon account…the charges won’t go through until we get the full goal amount.
2)  Depending on the level of support, you can get some really unique stuff…lots of it signed by Minnie. All that is on the Kickstarter site.
3) When we get the full amount, you can deduct your contribution from your 2012 income taxes because the producing entity (Fund for Innovative TV) is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

Rog: Seems like it could be great thing for the literally thousands of Minnie Minoso fans.

Tom: Let’s hope so.

Rog: Seeya at the ball park…maybe May first, the 61^st anniversary of Minnie’s first White Sox at-bat.

Tom Weinberg is a Chicago TV producer with more than 500 programs to his credit, including portraits of Bill Veeck, Studs Terkel, Vito Marzullo, Dan Rostenkowski, and Joe Cummings. At WTTW, he created and produced Image Union for its first ten years and the two-time Emmy winning sports series, Time Out. His work has been aired on WGN-TV, PBS nationally, MTV, Tokyo Broadcasting, and others. He has taught documentary and television at Columbia College Chicago since 2000 and is the founder of the Media Burn Independent Video Archive, which has preserved all of the Minoso archival footage that Tom has shot over the last 35 years. Media Burn currently has about 2000 documentaries online at mediaburn.org.

Roger Wallenstein actually played baseball…at the University of Iowa, 1965-66. He claims he still could throw out a runner or two. He had a gun! He also has been writing sports and done sports radio since the early 1970s. His career has included teaching English for nine years at Francis Parker School in Chicago; coaching baseball at Parker and Kelvyn Park High School (2005) and for the past seven summers at Welles Park in the Chicago Park District. He and his wife Judy owned and operated Camp Nebagamon in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin from 1988 until 2003. His weekly blog, the White Sox Report, is at http://www.beachwoodreporter.com/sports/the_white_sox_report/

Chicago Tribune on Minnie Minoso: The Documentary

We’re excited about the enthusiastic piece by John Owens about our Minnie Minoso documentary on page 6 of the A&E section of today’s Chicago Tribune and the terrific video he made for Tribune online.

(photo: Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune)

Check it out and please pledge your support to help finish this documentary.

We only have 14 days to raise about $10,000 and we can’t do it unless YOU help us. We know we’re going to make it!

It’s easy and fast. Go to:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/235602734/minnie-minoso-the-documentary-0

To the 80 or so of you who have already made generous pledges, we are so grateful… and we ask that you send the Tribune link to a bunch of your email and Facebook friends…now!

As you know, unless we meet our full goal by May 12, we don’t get any of the money that has been pledged.

Thanks for all you do.

Ben Hollis shows us the real Chicago

Today we’ve got a video featuring Chicago TV personality Ben Hollis, who you may know best as the host and co-creator of Wild Chicago. We worked with him in 1995 on a show we produced called Weekend TV.

We recently discovered this camera original footage of Ben, shot by Andrew Jones, in the archive. It was not used in the show, but it’s one of the best things we’ve seen in awhile. We edited a short clip that should not be missed.

In the video, Hollis hangs out with residents of Taylor Street as they sit on their stoops and drink beer, eat Italian ice, and reminisce about the old neighborhood and the Chicago Democratic “Machine.”

It’s a portrait of the Chicago we love, but not everyone gets to see.

You can watch the whole 39 minutes at Media Burn.

Ian MacKaye is 50!

Yesterday, punk and hardcore legend Ian MacKaye of the seminal D.C. bands Fugazi and Minor Threat turned 50 years old.

To celebrate, check out Fugazi’s awesome outdoor set in 1989 at the National Mall, shot by THE 90’s correspondent, Eddie Becker.

Minnie Miñoso documentary… a great start!

I am so honored and grateful for the pledges for “Baseball’s Been Very, Very Good To Me.” They have come from all over the world… from  close friends, valued Media Burn supporters, and complete strangers.

I went out with Minnie yesterday and was reminded of how long we’ve been getting together and talking about baseball and life. He was compelling last night in the way he spoke about the Ozzie Guillen controversy. It wasn’t on video, but the documentary will be equally personal and revealing.

I’ve been fascinated by him as a player and a person since his rookie year with the White Sox in 1951. He was the most exciting player I’d ever seen, and the first black player in Chicago.

So far, 60 of you have contributed more than $8,000 so that Minnie’s story can be seen all over the world. Thanks… this is terrific!

We still have $12,000 to go before we reach our goal. As you know, Kickstarter provides all or nothing funding, meaning if we don’t hit our goal, we don’t get any of your pledges!

You can help make it happen by contributing to the project, and we ask all of you to tell others about it via email, Facebook, telephone, or smoke signals. We can’t do it without you!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/235602734/minnie-minoso-the-documentary-0

Thanks… as always, for your support for what you (and of course, we) believe to be important.

Tom

Minnie Miñoso: The Documentary

This is not one of our ordinary video blogs.

It is a request for your help as we finish producing an exciting and important video documentary.

The subject is MINNIE MINOSO…Saturnino Orestes Armas Miñoso Arrieta.

Tom Weinberg with Minnie Minoso, 1976

Minnie was my childhood hero as he broke the color line and became the first Black ball player in Chicago in 1951. Now, he’s 89 and seems just as spry as when he was the ringleader of the Go-Go White Sox.

With your help, Baseball’s Been Very, Very Good to Me will soon become a reality.

Along with Joel Cohen, I have spent the last 13 months shooting dozens of hours of video with Minnie, his family and close friends, as well as interviewing dozens of others who know and love “The Cuban Comet.” Actually, everyone loves him. He’s magnetic. We talked about Minnie with Hall of Famer Tony Perez, Commissioner Bud Selig, Mayor Richard M. Daley, Professor Adrian Burgos, Madison, WI Mayor Paul Soglin, among others, and literally dozens of fans who still love him, 61 years after his Rookie of the Year season with the White Sox.

The story is told through archival videos from the last 36 years that I have been hanging out and making videos with Minnie, the only guy to play professional baseball in seven different decades, who missed selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame by three votes in December, 2011.

We have launched a campaign via KICKSTARTER,  the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects, to raise more than $21,000 that we absolutely need to complete the program—the post-production including editing, graphics and rights expenses. Until we have the money, we can’t finish it. And we can’t secure the distribution (TV, cable, online, dvd/BluRay) until the program/film is completed.

The only way we can do it is if you get involved–so go to KICKSTARTER.com, watch the video trailer, and help us spread the word! There are rewards for contributions at various levels, but we thank you for any amount you give.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/235602734/minnie-minoso-the-documentary-0

Thanks… as always.

Tom Weinberg

How they dye the river green

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

In Chicago, it has been a tradition since the first Mayor Daley to dye the Chicago River green for the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

In 1992, videomaker Patrick Creadon, on assignment for THE 90’s, went downtown at 2:30am to cover the preparation for the parade and to talk with the guys from Chicago Journeymen Plumbers Local Union #110 about this tradition. The footage didn’t make it on the show, but 20 years later, we pulled it out of the archive and cut together a segment.

Since his early work for THE 90’s, Creadon has become an accomplished director of documentary features such as Wordplay and I.O.U.S.A.

You can watch the whole tape, including Streets & San setting up for the parade and an interview with Mayor Daley about the future of the Democratic Party at Media Burn.

Read more about the tradition as recalled by its creators.

Happy 175th Birthday, Chicago!

Chicago is celebrating the 175th anniversary of its incorporation.

Nobody personified Chicago better than Richard J. Daley.  This 1986 special, produced for the 10th anniversary of his death, reveals the life and times of the man who was synonymous with Chicago for 21 years.

You can also watch the full special at Media Burn.

Steven Spielberg didn’t win the Oscar

Steven Spielberg expected to be a big winner at the 1976 Academy Awards. TVTV was in the room documenting his reaction when he got the news that, despite dominating the box office that year with Jaws, he was not nominated for Best Director.

Spielberg’s movies have made more than $8.5 billion at the box office worldwide, but his only Academy Awards for Directing so far were for 1993’s Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan (1998).

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ended up winning both Best Picture and Best Director in 1976.