Afternoon Baseball

Because I was so stunned and outraged that he was not selected for the Hall that I waited almost a week to write about it, for one.

Because I think there should be riots in the streets over his omission from the Hall of Fame. Because he didn't get to play in the white major leagues. Because at 94 years old, he, who saw Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth play, and yet was in Minneapolis when I was this summer, doesn't have a plaque. It almost leads me to believe that Buck O'Neil is just another example of how nice guys finish last.
Now that's a little harsh. O'Neil will be the first to say that he's not bothered by the blatant snub from the Hall of Fame, made all the worse by the fact that it was a special election for players and contributors from his era. He's a gracious, incredible human being, who doesn't campaign for himself and always puts baseball first. That link is his excerpts from Ken Burns' Baseball series. Fascinating stuff.

But the fact is that USA Today's Hal Brodley is correct when he calls this an embarassment. "The idea was to further correct the age-old embarrassment that excluded African-Americans from the major leagues for so long," he writes. Well, when you elect relative unknowns and omit one of only two living candidates (the borderline Minnie Minoso being the other), then you're really not correcting anything. It's a shuffling of paper -- inducting a bunch of names that have no connection to the present.
This is not a diminishment of those inducted. But they are not alive, their names are not known, and they do not inspire those around baseball like Buck O'Neil does.

This is no pity vote, either. O'Neil was good enough to be a bonafide star in the heyday of the Negro leagues, when the competition was as good at the top as the cream of the white leagues. He also was one of the great scouts of his era, discovering Ernie Banks and Lou Brock, among other -- players who were not merely taken from the established Negro Leagues, but were young, outstanding black players that O'Neil recognized for their talent.
He won five pennants as a KC Monarchs manager, and was the first black coach in the Major Leagues. As an all-around contributor, there's little to argue with for the Hall -- and he could have been picked solely as a Negro league player.
In his later years, O'Neil has been a bulwark of the Veterans committee, helping to get Negro players recognized (and no doubt helping overlooked players of all backgrounds) by the Hall.

So it's a shame. But the silver lining is that all this attention lets us hear Buck O'Neil some more, lets him educate us more, and lets us realize what a great history, a great game, baseball is, especially when seen through the eyes of a man who's lived most of it.