Don Mincher Was A Baseball Guy

The baseball cards of my youth are dying. The players I only knew on cardboard when I was 10, turned out to be flesh and blood, living their lives out of my view, and they were all older than me so now they are old men.

I read somewhere that veterans of World War II, my father’s war, are dying at the rate of 1,000 a day. Sometimes it seems as if Major League Baseball veterans of the 1950s and 1960s are disappearing equally as swiftly.

Don Mincher passed away on Sunday. I am sure fans of a younger generation don’t even know his name. But I recall him well. He was not a great player, but a good one during his 13-year career with the Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers, Seattle Pilots, Oakland A’s and Washington Senators. I remember him best as a Twin and I remember him best as a guy who always seemed to hit a home run at the wrong time against the Boston Red Sox, the team was rooting for.

Mincher was 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, but played bigger. He not the best player on his team. Harmon Killebrew and he overlapped, making it difficult for Mincher to get playing time at his best position, first base, before there was a designated hitter. Mincher retired in 1972 with 200 career home runs, 643 RBIs, and a .249 average in 1,400 games. He was a two-time American League All-Star and five times it more than 20 homers in a season.

There were a couple of unusual aspects about Mincher’s playing career. He was the only player who competed for the original Washington Senators, the Twins after the franchise moved, and the Rangers after the second Washington Senators moved. That’s an only-in-baseball type of uniqueness. Mincher also played with the 1972 World Champion Oakland A’s. Oh yeah, and anyone who played for the Pilots deserves special mention because the club lasted just one year, the 1969 season.

Once Mincher retired I forgot all about him. My bad. Turns out he was a baseball lifer whose post-playing career was probably more intriguing and perhaps more fun than his playing days. Mincher was born in Huntsville, Alabama, graduated from high school in Huntsville, Alabama, and went home to become owner, broadcaster, and general manager of the AA Huntsville Stars. Pretty cool way to make a living and better yet in your hometown.

But Mincher wasn’t done yet. In 2000 he became president of the Southern League and held the job for 11 years. Even cooler. If someone wants to me to take over the presidency of their minor league I am ready to go.

When he died, Mincher had been involved in baseball for longer than most of us have been alive. And only then did I learn that he was far more than the little piece of cardboard that I held in my hands as a youth.

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