Billy Pierce is also my all time favorite White Sox player. I got a chance to meet him in 1999 at the ball park. He was intelligent, witty and a gentleman in every way. After our meeting I almost floated back to my seat. I never saw a left handed pitcher with such perfect mechanics, the way he would rock back and get every ounce of leg and arm motion that his small frame would allow, maximum effort with minimum strain. I doubt that the White Sox ever had a player more beloved than Minnie Minoso. I remember as a kid buying a pack of baseball cards at the drug store in my neighborhood. As I turned the corner and looked over my new cards I noticed that Minnie Minoso was in the bunch. "I got Minnie Minoso!" I yelled loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.
The way both players were treated by HOF voters was both a sham and a shame. Imagine pitchers like Harvey Haddix or Don Larsen getting more votes than Billy Pierce. Or Alvin Dark, Phil Cavaretta and Mickey Vernon out polling Minnie who was getting all of 1.8% of the vote in 1969. What a joke baseball HOF voting can be at times.
If you are slavish in your devotion to WAR, SABER, Analytics and the whole new stats thing, as the vast majority of fans on sites like this seem to be then I would suggest taking a much closer look at more than just the raw numbers. Minnie accumulated his 50.5 WAR in just 6579 ABs. Billy Pierce was in the top ten for so many categories for many years. 5 times in the top 10 WAR for all players, 7 times for pitchers including twice at number 1. At or near the top in such stat geek loving categories as WPA and WPA/LI for many years. The lords of analytics were passing out WAR points stingily for 1950s players. If you love WAR you also need to look at how many years a player is in the top 5 or 10 percent of his peers. The stars of Billy and Minnie will shine much brighter if you do that. If Catfish Hunter is worthy of the HOF then dammit so is Billy. If Heinie Manush is enshrined then why not Minnie? I could give more examples but this is already too long.