The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski
Joe Posnanski is a listener.
Together, they created a book that is many things -- a pleasant read, a learning experience, an emotional tour through the United States from the eyes of a Black man who experienced the best of the country and the worst of its racism.
In the end, it's an uplifting story, one of hope and happiness migled with meloncholy. It shows the heights Black men reached while leaving the tantalizing potential of what could have been.
One scene, which occurred in 2005, has O'Neil and Willie Mays taking a tour through the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. They are talking about Oscar Charleston, who from 1915 through the 1940s was a center fielder and manager in the Negro Leagues, and who many consider the greatest player ever.
"How good was Oscar Charleston, Buck?" Mays asked the old man standing next to him.
"He was you before you," Buck O'Neil said.
Mays nodded as if he had heard that before, and he looked again through the chicken wire at the bronze statues of mostly forgotten men who had played baseball in the Negro Leagues. They had played at a time when Black men were banned from the Major Leagues. Segregation was an unwritten rule and mostly unspoken.
Throughout the 1990s and until his death in 2006, O'Neil was the living, breathing embodiment of Negro Leagues baseball.
He wasn't the greatest to ever have played the game, but he was pretty damn good. He was a first baseman and manager, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. He was known as a fast runner and a decent hitter, who twice led the Negro American League in batting. In his later years, he became the representative of a group of men who were finally getting their recognition as players equal to those in the Major Leagues. O'Neil played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues museum.
But mostly, O'Neil was chosen because, as he told Posnanski at the time, "I'm alive."
In 2005, O'Neil, at the age of 94, planned to tour the country as the Major Leagues began to promote the history of the Negro Leagues in an effort to right some wrongs. Posnanski, then a columnist at the Kansas City Star, asked to tag along. O'Neil's response was, "Don't be late."
This book is the result. It's a road trip story, the tale of a youger white man and an older Black man traveling the country, talking baseball and life and jazz, another of O'Neil's passions. Mostly, O'Neil talked. Posnanski listened. and took notes.
One of the stories told has O'Neil talking with Monte Irvin, perhaps the only man to be a star in both the Negro Leagues and later in the Major Leagues. They sound just like what they were at the time -- two old men talking, kinda lamenting how things had been.
"I'm not complaining," Irvin said. "I mean, I lived a good life. Better than most guys in the Negro Leagues. I got to play in the Major Leagues. I got to play in the World Series. I'm not complaining. It's just that people used to tell me how good I was, and I would tell them, 'You should have seen me when I could really play.'"
"I saw you, Monte," Buck said.
"And?"
"You could really play."
"That's all I was saying," Monte said, and he smiled too.
The book is not a biography, but there is a lot in there that tells you about the man Buck was -- and also makes you want to search out more about him and his life. While on the tour, and right up to his death in 2006, O'Neil still felt he had a lot of work to do, and he wanted to do it.
So O'Neil told the stories of the Black men who played the game, and the lives they lived. He was proud of his playing days. He knew he and his teammates could have played alongside the white guys on any Major League team. He rejected the notion that the players were a ragged-ass bunch of clowns playing pickup ball. He knew they were professionals who worked hard and played hard, and who were as good as -- often better than -- any of their white contemporaries.
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