Baseball Legend Recalls Legacy of Negro Leagues

This day is much like any other for Buck O’Neil, and that means he’s busy. Busy signing scores of posters, bats and books. Photos too--when he’s not posing for them.

O’Neil strides into the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and begins working the crowd. He spots a boy of about 10 and ruffles his hair. The boy presses his hair back into place, and a smile sweeps over his face when he recognizes O’Neil, who is still doing his summer waltz.

A hand clasp here, a hug there. A wide grin that’s as warm as home plate in August.

The crowds have come to the museum on a day reserved for announcing the Buck O’Neil Classic baseball tournament, named after the former Negro Leagues first baseman and manager of the Kansas City Monarchs.

One of 236 Negro Leaguers alive today, O’Neil has spent decades bringing the leagues to life for the younger generations.

He tells stories about the barnstorming days when teams would play as many as 300 games a year, nearly double the number of regular-season games played in the majors today. He wistfully recalls the leagues that produced Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe.

Paige, the tall, lanky right-hander who became the first player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame from the Negro Leagues.

Robinson, who broke baseball’s color line as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Double Duty, who pitched for the Memphis Red Sox and in the 1932 Negro World Series caught Paige in the first game of a doubleheader before pitching a shutout in the closer.

Talent that for many years went unrecognized because the major leagues didn’t want anything to do with black players.

“These men played not for the money, but because they loved the game,” Aaron, who hit a record 755 home runs during a 23-year career in Milwaukee and Atlanta, told the Associated Press in 1990.

O’Neil, chairman of the museum, even recorded his memories in a book, “I Was Right on Time: My Journey from Negro Leagues to the Majors,” published in 1996 by Easton Press.

Filmmaker Ken Burns, whose 1994 documentary “Baseball” highlighted O’Neil and his years with the Monarchs, calls O’Neil “a holy man who is a gift to us all.”

O’Neil, who turns 90 in November, says it wasn’t until Burns’ movie that people started paying attention to his stories. “It’s kind of nice to be discovered when you’re 82 years old,” he says.

O’Neil played on nine championship teams, starred in two Negro League World Series and in 1962 became the first black to coach in the major leagues, for the Chicago Cubs, where he signed future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks and Lou Brock. He has worked as a special scout for the Kansas City Royals.

“Of all the accomplishments, I would have to say, being the first black [coach] was the best,” O’Neil says as he settles into a chair in his own private sanctuary that is the museum.

There is a pause while he says hello to fans and children who pass by and stare.

“It was bittersweet,” he adds. “Sweet, because here I was now riding in nice trains and flying too, and being paid real well for coaching. But it was bitter because I knew there were a hundred other men before me, a hundred who could have done that job better than me a long time before me, and where were they? They were nowhere.

“The history. The history and the waste--that was the bitter part.”

Although black leagues were in existence as early as the 1880s, the Negro National League officially began in 1920 and spun off other black leagues, all of which disbanded in 1950, three years after Robinson broke the color barrier. The best black players followed him into the National League, and the Negro Leagues, with its top-notch talent gone, financial troubles mounting and its fan base dwindling, no longer could survive.

“When we played, the greatest athletes in the world were playing black baseball,” O’Neil once told the AP. “We didn’t get paid and we had no coaches or training. But we did have natural ability.”

O’Neil, who was born John Jordan O’Neil, grew up in Sarasota, Fla., where the high school stadium is named after him, the same stadium that banned him as a child because of his race.

Today, he lives alone in a two-story home on Kansas City’s south side, the same home he and his wife, Ora, shared during their 51-year marriage. Ora, a school teacher, died in 1997, one day after the grand opening of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in the city’s historic 18th and Vine district.

When he isn’t out working on behalf of the museum or baseball or making appearances across the country, O’Neil spends a fair amount of energy dodging questions about a recent petition to get him into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The effort, started last spring, is based on his coach and scouting skills and his dedication to the Negro Leagues.

“I don’t know much about that Hall of Fame petition, you know,” he says. “That’s not my thing. But sure, it would be nice. I’d have to say it would be just fine with me.”