Buck O’Neil takes his rightful place at National Baseball Hall of Fame
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum’s Bob Kendrick contrasts the day his friend and mentor Buck O’Neil was selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the day 15 years ago when O’Neil was overlooked. CLICK HERE to view the video.
By Vahe Gregorian, Kansas City Star
COOPERSTOWN, NY – When I was living in St. Louis in 2001, I had occasion to travel to Kansas City to spend a few hours with Buck O’Neil at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) as part of a project we were doing on race and sports.
We spoke about many things that day, including his recollection of Satchel Paige once arranging for them to visit the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. At a site where thousands of slaves from Africa had been auctioned, the typically chatty duo stood silently for perhaps a half hour, O’Neil recalled. Then Paige said, “I get the feeling I’ve been here before.
John “Buck” O’Neil walks to the field as he is introduced before a minor league all-star game in 2006, in Kansas City, Kansas. O’Neil, a champion of Black ballplayers during a monumental, eight-decade career on and off the field, joined Gil Hodges, Minnie Miñoso and four others in being elected to the baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.
“I said, ‘Me, too, Satch,’” O’Neil recalled. “See, this is where his great-grandfather could have been auctioned off. It was where my great-grandmother might have been auctioned off.”
That tale came to mind for me on Sunday, when O’Neil at last was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
He was ushered in by niece Dr. Angela Terry, who said his “core was brotherly love” — a notion amplified on the plaque bearing his name:
“CHARACTER, INTEGRITY AND DIGNITY DEFINED A LIFE DEDICATED TO BASEBALL …” it read, in part. “IN LATER LIFE, GAVE VOICE TO THE NEGRO LEAGUES, ELOQUENTLY PRESERVING ITS CULTURE AND LEGENDS.”
That scene Buck set in my visit with him didn’t come to mind just because it was easy to get the feeling he was right here on Sunday.
Like NLBM president Bob Kendrick had anticipated and felt since the beginning of the day: The breakfast place across the street turning out to be closed led to a chance meeting with a family from New Hampshire that ultimately invited him to join them at a different restaurant. That was the spirit of Buck, he assumed.
“And I still feel it,” he said on the field after the ceremony.
And that Charleston story didn’t surface because we actually knew he had been on this site before — most memorably in 2006 when he spoke on behalf of the 17 former Negro Leagues players and executives who were recognized posthumously even after he was jilted at the altar. No, that memory came to mind because from that tale in Charleston to this moment speaks to the arc and essence of his epic journey — a legacy now rekindled, even multiplied, for the attention and consideration of new generations.
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