Baseball Legend Buck O’Neil Denied Induction to the Hall of Fame

Any industry’s Hall of Fame is largely nonsense. Such halls tend to be in places no one would visit otherwise, and the qualifications for induction tend to be skewed in favor of the popular rather than the important. Baseball’s is no different; Cooperstown, New York, is a dreadful little place with few redeeming features save a road leading out. As for admission, the baseball powers that be decided that the first black coach of a Major League team, a first baseman with four pennants, and manager of 5 Negro League teams didn’t deserve induction. Buck O’Neil accepted that unjust verdict with grace, but this journal is angry on his behalf.

Like everything else that has to do with the Negro Leagues, the Baseball Hall of Fame is trying to undo past wrongs. It appointed a committee of 12 experts, many from the Society for American Baseball Research, to consider 39 people involved in the Negro Leagues. Beside each name was a simple “yes” or “no” box. Of the 12, nine votes were needed for induction. Seventeen of the 39 were chosen, all of them dead. Only Mr. O’Neil and Minnie Minoso (who also merits induction) are still living.

Keith Olbermann, a baseball fanatic and broadcaster for MSNBC, noted on his blog that the committee did choose to induct, “Alex Pompez, a former racketeer in the Dutch Schultz crime family, who once owned the New York Cubans and later scouted for the New York Giants. And to honor the Negro Leagues, that committee also elected two white owners, J.L. Wilkinson of the Kansas City Monarchs and Effa Manley of the Newark Eagles, whose co-owner husband reportedly traded away at least one of the team‘s players because she was having an affair with that player.”

Mr. O’Neil appeared on Mr. Olbermann’s program on MSNBC Wednesday night, and said he wasn’t bitter about not being selected. Usually, this is as big a nonsense as the Hall of Fame itself. However, as the interview progressed, Mr. O’Neil said that he felt he had been given a chance at induction, and that he just didn’t make it. That was far different, he said, from never having been given the chance.

That, of course, was the great sin of the Negro Leagues, and Jim Crow America for that matter -- not giving a man a chance to succeed or fail just because of his skin color. Mr. O’Neil’s attitude is one of satisfaction at having been considered. Mr. Olbermann and this journal aren’t as content. Surely the man who founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City (a more interesting place than Cooperstown based on the barbecue alone), as Mr. O’Neil did, merits admission as much as the Monarchs’ owner, even without his career as a player and coach. The fight isn’t over yet.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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