Buck O’Neil’s Lesson on Dealing With Defeat Like a Man

And we continue with our American Stories. Up next, a story from Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Today, Bob shares with us a story about one of his friends, Buck O’Neil.

Take it away, Bob. Our guests walk into the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and you literally walk through the turnstiles into an old ballpark. And the first thing that you see is the field, the Field of Legends. And the Field of Legends is a mock baseball diamond that houses ten of twelve life-size bronze sculptures of Negro League great, and they are cast in position as if they were playing a game. Now, on the outside looking in is my dear friend, the late great Buck O’Neill, who was the only one of our collection of statues that wasn’t in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Well, thankfully, on December 5, 2021, Buck O’Neill received enough votes to now be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, fifteen years after he missed by one vote.

I’ll never forget that day, as long as my mother would say, ‘I’m in my natural mind.’ It was the morning of February 27, 2006, and Buck O’Neill and I left home with suitcases piled with airline tickets that the Hall of Fame had purchased for us. That’s how sure we were that Buck was going to get in. This was just a mere formality. And so there was a group of twelve Negro Leagues historians, researchers, educators. They were to gather down in Tampa, Florida, where they were gonna make the decision on the final group of Negro leaguers who had gone through the process and made the final ballot. The late great Buck O’Neill and now the late great Minnie Miñoso were the only two living names on that list. And so we were going to fly after the announcement; Buck and I would fly down to Tampa where he would participate in a press conference the very next day. And so at that time, I was the marketing director for the museum, and so I had broken a deal with our partner then Sprint now T-Mobile, and they had provided a Sprint phone for me and a Sprint phone for Buck. And so we’re gonna take the Hall of Fame call on the Sprint phone, and then Sprint was gonna pay us a bunch of money to help build a Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center. And so the call was supposed to come to me that morning at around eleven o’clock. Well, eleven o’clock rolls around. I don’t get a phone call. About noon, my colleague, Dr. Ray Doswell, who was one of the twelve people who had gathered there in Tampa to make this decision, he calls and says, ‘Bob, this thing is looking really tight.’ We’ve done strong vote, and Buck is coming up one vote shy. Former Commissioner Fay Vincent, who was overseeing the committee, didn’t have a vote. He was overseeing the committee, says he’s reconvened us so that we can talk specifically about Buck O’Neill and Minnie Miñoso, the only two guys that were still alive on this list of thirty-plus.

Well, my good friend Joe Posnanski was sitting right where you’re sitting. And as Joe come out and said, ‘Hey, man, I just got a call from Ray,’ he says, ‘this thing is looking tight.’ Buck is coming up one vote shy. He’s in disbelief. Finally, around two o’clock, I get a call from Jeff Idelson. Jeff Idelson was then Vice President of Marketing for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. And Jeff calls me and he says, ‘Bob, Buck didn’t get enough votes.’ And I felt like someone had kicked me in my gut because now I got to come back in this conference room and tell my friend that he didn’t get enough votes when I know, in his heart, he thought he was in. Why wouldn’t he? And so I come back in. I excuse a few folks. Buck was seated right there at the head of the table, and I sit down and I am literally trying to collect my thoughts. I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. And so I finally look up at Buck and I said, ‘Well, Buck, we didn’t get enough votes.’ And he looks up at me and he smiles. He said, ‘Well, that’s how the cookie crumbles.’ And in the next voice, he asked me how he had gotten in. I said, ‘Seventeen.’ Now, I’ll be honest, I was furious because, in my mind, you couldn’t put seventeen in and leave Buck out. He hits the table. In other jubilation, he is excited that seventeen of his colleagues had gotten their rightful place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Now, as a steward of this story, I should have had that same kind of feeling, but I was upset because my guy didn’t get in. And he asked me who they were, and at that point in time, I didn’t have that information. And the next words that came out of his mouth: ‘I wonder if the Hall of Fame will invite me to speak?’ Now, my friend Joe Posnanski, my brother, he’s turned beat red, and he looks at Buck and he says, ‘Buck, you wouldn’t do that, would you?’ And Buck says, ‘Joe, of course I would. What has my life been about?’ And I said, ‘Well, Buck, I need to go downstairs because downstairs we had well over three hundred-plus people who had gathered for what we all thought was going to be a Hall of Fame celebration announcement.’

Well, as I oftentimes tell the story, from this conference room to the Field of Legends, where we had the podium set up at second base, was the longest walk of my life. I was literally coaching myself: ‘Bob, you can’t cry. Whatever you do, you can’t cry. You got to suck it up.’ Now, the more I’m telling myself not to cry, tears a steady building in my eyes. I get to the podium, and this is the honest-to-God’s truth. I have no idea what I said. I’ve never gone back to watch the video. I don’t know if I ever will. Whatever it was that I said, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. People were openly emotional and disappointment. This was outrage, this was angry. ‘How dare they?’ And Buck walks in through our gift shop, and the room erupts into a thunderous ovation, and Buck O’Neill walks up to the podium and delivers one of the most amazing concession speeches that I’d ever heard. What he did that day was he literally implored all of us not to be angry, not to be bitter, not to express any ill will toward anyone who had anything to do with this decision. He said, ‘I had an opportunity, and in this great country of ours, that’s all you could ever ask. They didn’t think old Buck was good enough. We got to live with that. But if I’m a Hall of Famer in your eyes, that’s all that matters to me. Just keep on loving old Buck.’

Now, I’m over in the corner at this point in time, I’m a wreck, you know, tears and jail streaming down my face, and uncontrollably. But what Buck O’Neil did that day was he literally reached out his arms and wrapped them around all of us and said, ‘It’s okay.’ Instead of us consoling him, he’s consoling us. And what I still say to this day to be one of the most amazing displays of strength of character that I had ever witnessed. He would push aside his disappointment, go to Cooperstown deliver this incredible speech on behalf of seventeen dead folks when the world was saying, ‘this should be your induction speech.’ And what I still say today was the most selfless act in American sports history. What Buck O’Neill did that day was he literally gave us a lesson on how to handle disappointment, because he handled it so graciously that people thought he wasn’t disappointed, but of course he was. The Hall of Fame represents the pinnacle for any athlete, and Buck knew he was sick at that time. Just over two months later, my friend Buck O’Neil passed away himself at age 94, a month shy of his 95th birthday. This was going to be his swan song, even though he never complained, even though he understood what his health situation was like and what the doctors had already prepared him for. And so, yeah, he handled the disappointment well, he handled it like a man. And so he was never going to be so sullen about his rejection that he couldn’t be genuinely joyous for those who had gotten their place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. And so I’m trying to be more Buck-like.

And a terrific job on the storytelling by my Monte Montgomery, and a special thanks to Bob Kendrick. What a terrific voice, and he was telling the story of Buck O’Neill, who, if you watched Ken Burns’s documentary on Baseball, Buck O’Neill stole the show. He chewed up all the scenery. And by the way, if you want to hear the remarkable speech he gave in Cooperstown, New York, you’ll see a man that you’d want to emulate, and be. By the end of his speech, he had athletes, famous ballplayers, announcers, and family members of Jackie Robinson, and ordinary fans holding hands and singing and praising the idea of love and of God. The story of Buck O’Neill, here on Our American Stories.