Shame on Baseball
by KevinMarch 1st, 2006
I am still well under the weather, but I wanted to mention this. Yesterday, baseball announced that a collection of scholars assembled to recognize Negro League and Pre-Negro League contributors to baseball had inducted seventeen people into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Buck O’Neil was not among them. That is inexcusable. Buck O’Neil had a great, if not necessarily Hall of Fame playing career, but his involvement with baseball did not stop there. O’Neal was the first Black scout in MLB, he was the first Black coach in MLB, and he was tireless in his efforts to garner the Negro League players the recognition they deserved. It is not an exaggeration to say that the reason MLB has embraced the Negro Leagues, at long last, is because of Buck O’Neil. His contribution to baseball has been greater than almost anyone currently in the Hall. Keeping him out is inexcusable.
I don’t really know anything about him, but a lot of people have been making the same comment. That may increase support for him next year - he remains eligible for quite some time, right? I suspect we’ll see a movement to include him in the next year or two.
Remember also that it’s the baseball writers, not MLB itself, that make up the voting body. Likely a lot of today’s writers don’t remember that era, and don’t know much about figures who weren’t renowned as players. The world will get out. They’re already getting an earful on it.
I too know little about Buck O’Neil, but if he made those contributions, then I agree with you.
I just hope that my boyhood idol will eventually get in - doubt it, but hope it will happen.
He’s definitely been the most prolific ambassador for the accomplishments of the players in the Negro Leagues; without him, the current crop of well-deserved inductions probably wouldn’t have happened. In addition, he was a very good player, a successful manager, and the first black coach (Cubs, 1962) in the major leagues. What’s a guy gotta do?