When
Buck O'Neil appeared in the PBS documentary 'Baseball' in 1994, one thing was obvious about the former Negro leagues player and manager, who was then 82: The camera was his friend. In the late innings of his life, he was comfortable in his own skin.
And how could he not be? In a long baseball career, he had triumphed time and again over the heap of inequities he faced because of the color of his skin. Beyond his distinguished profile as a player, manager, coach, and scout, O'Neil had helped win recognition of black players in the Hall of Fame. And for history's sake, he had helped found the
Negro League Baseball Museum
in Kansas City and served as its chairman.
But it was his gracious storytelling and ease with narrative in Ken Burns' 'Baseball' that revealed him to a wider audience as both a tower of affection for baseball and an unmatched vessel of memories of "Shadow Ball."
It would have been easy, perhaps even fitting, for anger and bitterness to tinge his memories. But O'Neil was possessed of such grace and generosity that he could acknowledge the suffering of an era, and still convince you that it wasn't folly to be hopeful. Though
Jackie Robinson's signing by the
Brooklyn Dodgers rang the death knell for
Negro League baseball,
O'Neil saw it as progress, he told filmmaker Burns. He was elated for Robinson: "I can't go, but I'm so happy you are there 'cause I know that means my son and my grandson will be there."
Often O'Neil returned to the theme of his place in time and even titled his 1996 collaborative autobiography 'I Was Right on Time.' People would ask him about being born in an era when racial segregation denied him a career in the major leagues. "Waste no tears for me," he wrote. "I didn’t come along too early -- I was right on time."
Many baseball fans were disappointed and angered by his not being elected to the Hall of Fame in early 2006, but his reaction was characteristically benign. "I did have a chance, you know. If I hadn’t had a chance, now I would have been bitter, like, oh, I couldn’t attend Sarasota High School. They didn’t give me a chance. But with this, they gave me a chance to get into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown," he told a cable-TV journalist.
It was 1924 in Sarasota, Fla., where O’Neil faced an early disappointment, which he described to former baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent in Vincent’s book 'The Only Game in Town.' O'Neil was so joyful, he recalled, because he saw a brand-new high school in his future, and he was running around saying, "I'm going to Sarasota High School, I'm going to Sarasota High School." He wept when his grandmother broke the news: The new Sarasota High was for white students only. Sixty-four years after his class' graduation, O'Neil accepted an honorary diploma from Sarasota High.
John Jordan O'Neil was born Nov. 13, 1911, in Carrabelle, Fla. He learned baseball and became attached to it through his father, John O'Neil, a sawmiller who played on a sawmill team. Young O’Neil was the batboy, and even then, the future first baseman had good hands. The team played catch with him and sometimes threw him pennies and nickels.
After moving to Sarasota, where O'Neil was introduced to the joys of spring training, he was thrilled by the feats of Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson and by the managers John McGraw and Connie Mack. But a bigger thrill awaited -- the day in West Palm Beach when he would see professional players of his own race who would plant the germ of the idea: I'm going to be a baseball player.
While still in school, O’Neil went north during the summers to play with semi-professional teams. Eventually, he left
Edward Waters College in Jacksonville and barnstormed with several teams before signing with the Memphis Red Sox in 1937. The next year marked both the start of his career with the iconic
Kansas City Monarchs
and the beginning of a string of pennants (1938-1942) in the Negro American League. In 1942, O’Neil led the Monarchs to victory over
Josh Gibson
and the
Homestead Grays
in the Negro Leagues World Series.
Numbers are big in baseball, and Buck O'Neil's numbers were good: He compiled a .288 batting average and won two batting titles with averages of .345 and .350. After returning from service in the Navy, O’Neil managed the Monarchs to five pennants and two World Series titles. When integration slowly began to transform the major leagues, he joined the Chicago Cubs as a scout in 1955, and in 1962 made history by becoming the first black coach in the major leagues, with the Cubs.
But numbers don’t come close to revealing the makeup of the constellation in which Buck O’Neil shone: Traveling in the
Jim Crow
South, competing with players like
James "Cool Papa" Bell
, taking throws at first base when a pitcher name
Satchel Paige
was on the mound. He might run into Count Basie at a jam in Kansas City; in Harlem, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson would tap dance on the top of the dugout. He could play ball in the afternoon and go to the Apollo that night. He was on top of the world.
It was a tragedy that racial inequality forced men who wanted to play baseball to compete in the parallel world of the Negro leagues. But Buck O’Neil was no tragedian. Through his decades-long work to bring the scenes of black baseball out of the shadows with his unique illumination, he embraced and celebrated the lives that were lived, not the lives denied. And so do I.
