I've written about the night before, but it was exactly five years ago, so I will write it again. We all knew at the time that Buck O'Neil would die any day. He had been in the hospital for a while, and in recent days he had taken a turn for the worse. I had seen him in the hospital just a couple of weeks earlier, and he had asked me to come back to read aloud the book I had written about him, but when his health turned, well, there was just no possibility of doing that. His closest friends said it would be best if I didn't come, it would be best if I remembered him as he was.
When famous people like Buck O'Neil get old and ill, journalists prepare obituaries. It's one of the more morbid things we do, but practicality demands it. They might die right on deadline. They might die while the journalist is out of the country. My editor told me that I needed to write my obituary column about Buck O'Neil for those dreaded three words: "Just … In … Case." But, and this is a grand failing of mine, I couldn't do it. I can't do it. I have written many obituary columns in my life, and I take them very seriously because I think it is important to remember lives, to celebrate them. I also write them emotionally. I can't exactly describe the process, but I know that I need the passion and strength of the moment to write about a life. I just can't write about someone dying until the die.
In other words, I did not write one word for the obituary before Buck O'Neil died. I just didn't have the heart. And so when I got the call at about 10:20 or so on October 6, 2006 from Bob Kendrick, telling me that Buck was gone, what I first felt was not sadness or grief. It was panic. I called the office, and they said I had one hour to write my column. One hour to sum up almost 95 years of life.
When I write columns on deadline, I often start slow. I write a sentence and erase it. I write another sentence and erase it. I write a third sentence and erase it. I feel like a car trying to start in the dead of winter. I am, I take it from friends, a very fast writer, but that speed happens in the middle of the column. I can run first to home faster than I can get from home to first. And so, I clearly remember starting slow on that Buck O'Neil obituary. My mind was a scrambled mess. I had no idea what I wanted to say. I had no idea how to sum up. Story after story bombarded me, disconnected, irrelevant, funny, sad, I had no idea how to put it it any sort of order. I'm pretty sure I let the first 15 minutes go by without getting anything worthwhile written.
I'm not sure what clarifying thought came along to center me. I only remember thinking something like: "Well, you have to write down SOMETHING." I have a recurring nightmare where I'm working somewhere, and it's one minute past deadline, and my computer screen is completely blank. But I've always said that I don't believe in writer's block because my father worked in a factory most of his life and I don't think he ever had "factory block." I started writing, and I kept writing, and though I had no real feel for the words I was typing, I figured that I knew Buck, and I loved Buck, and maybe that was coming through.
One feeling I remember clearly: With about five minutes to go before deadline, I saw how many words I had written, and I saw how much I had left to do, and I saw the time, and I realized I was going to make it. And when that wave hit me, I could feel something bubble up inside me, some emotion, and my eyes began to well up, and I had to tell myself -- out loud, I had to tell myself -- "Not now. You've got to finish this."
You can see the precise spot when that happened in the actual column.
I finished it and sent it in. And then I started crying. I had just written that Buck didn't want anyone to cry for him because he had lived a full life, and we shouldn't cry for anyone who has lived a full life. But I don't think I was crying for Buck, not exactly. I was crying because it had been such an emotional hour, like a wrestling match with words. I was crying because I knew I would miss him. And I was crying because I thought that column was the worst thing I had ever written -- I really felt that way. I felt sure I had let the man down. I felt sure I had let down all his friends. I felt sure that I had let myself down. Buck was a Negro Leagues Baseball star -- he led the league in batting average in 1946 and almost did again in '47. He was a wonderful manager who led the Kansas City Monarchs to success. He was a brilliant talent evaluator who signed or guided Ernie Banks, Lou Brock, Billy Williams, Joe Carter, Lee Smith and many others. He was the first black coach in Major League Baseball. He, more than anyone, built the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. And, more than any of that, he was an extraordinary man, unencumbered by bitterness, untouched by hatred, unmoved by the passing years. He loved life as much at 94 as he did at 24, or anyway that's how he made it seem. There was so much to say about him. And I felt like a quarterback with too many open receivers. I felt like I took the sack.
I don't say any of that with false modesty -- I thought that column was terrible. But when I woke up the next morning and read the column I had written, I felt differently. I never, ever, like what I have written. That's not in my nature. But I did feel like it was the very best column I could have written. I felt like if I'd had 100 years to write a column about Buck, I would have been lucky to write that one. What felt like a failure in the dark felt like my very best effort in the morning light. It's like that sometimes. I think of the day that I was sitting with Buck O'Neil and he found out that he was not elected to the Hall of Fame. It hurt him. Don't let anyone tell you different. He handled it with the grace that he handled everything, but it stung him. It was a rebuke. They inducted 17 Negro Leaguers (all long dead) into the Hall of Fame, but not him. That was a dark moment.
Months later, Buck O'Neil gave the speech for those 17 Negro Leaguers. He led the crowd in Cooperstown in his song: "The greatest thing in all my life is loving you." It was beautiful. Buck was beautiful. Darkness to light.
* * *
A few months before that sad night in October, I was sitting with Buck O'Neil in a hotel in Gary, Indiana. We had time to kill, and that was always the best time with Buck. Because that meant I could get Buck to REALLY remember. Much of time, traveling the country with Buck meant listening to him tell the same stories again and again. This was natural -- heck, I tell the same stories again and again, my stories aren't nearly as good as Buck's. But my point is, he wasn't really remembering. He would tell the Nancy Story by rote. He would tell the story of the three batting sounds by rote. He would tell the Jackie Robinson gas story by rote. People wanted to hear them, and they deserved to hear them, and he had perfected his way of telling them through the years. But that wasn't remembering.
No, it was in those quiet moments -- in elevators, in car rides, on planes, in hotel lobbies -- that Buck would remember. And it was marvelous. He had seen everything in baseball. He had seen so many changes in America. He loved to push himself, love to try and remember something new.
"So Buck," I said, "Who would be on your all-time team."
I suppose when I asked him that, I intended to include it in The Soul of Baseball. For some reason I didn't. I only found it in my notes by accident; I was looking for something else. And when I saw the notes, I remembered just how happy Buck was to go through the exercise. Before I give you the team, I should say that this was just Buck in one moment of time. He had not prepared the team, had not thought through every player before making his selections. If I had asked him the next day, I'm sure he would have said others.
But, based on that moment and time, this is the Buck O'Neill all-time team.
First base: Lou Gehrig and Buck Leonard
-- This was the one position he could not separate. Buck said that Gehrig and Leonard were equals -- so much so that for a long time people called Leonard "The Black Gehrig," and one columnist wrote that it should in fact be the other way and that they should call Gehrig "The White Leonard." Both were great hitters. Buck O'Neil thought Leonard was better defensively (and O'Neil, being a fine defensive first baseman himself, put quite a lot of stock in first-base defense). But Buck also thought Gehrig hit with more power. In the end, he considered it a dead heat.
Second base: Jackie Robinson
-- Buck often said that Robinson was not the best player in the Negro Leagues, but when it came to breaking the color barrier he was the right player at the right time. So I was a little bit surprised when he said that he would take Robinson as his all-time second baseman. He said that Robinson was such a force of nature -- such a determined player -- that he belonged on the team.
Robinson has become such an iconic figure through the years, that his baseball has probably become underrated. By WAR, Robinson was the best player in baseball from 1949-52, and that was a league with Musial in his prime, and with a bunch of other Hall of Famers like Ted Williams (who did leave to fight in Korea) and Pee Wee Reese and Larry Doby and Ralph Kiner and the like. Robinson got on base, hit with power, stole bases, and by the numbers played superior defense wherever he was played. I might have picked Joe Morgan or Rogers Hornsby, but Robinson is certainly a great choice.
Shortstop: Ozzie Smith
-- Buck: "Shortstop is a defensive position, and Ozzie Smith played defense better than any shortstop I ever saw, and that includes Willie Wells and Luis Aparicio." Buck was only picking players he had seen in one form or another, and so I think that was why he did not include Honus Wagner.
Buck said on other occasions that Pop Lloyd who played with the Negro Leagues New York Lincoln Giants at the time of Wagner, might have been the best baseball player who ever lived.
Third base: George Brett
-- Buck loved George. He mentioned Ray Dandridge, a great Negro Leaguer, and he mentioned Mike Schmidt, who I think many would list as the greatest third baseman ever. But Buck was, as much as anything, a Kansas Citian. And as a Kansas Citian, you stand behind Kansas City barbecue, and you stand behind George Brett as the greatest third baseman ever.
Left field: Ted Williams
-- "Greatest pure hitter I ever saw," Buck said. "And a wonderful man. Wonderful. I think Ted Williams is as big a reason as any that the Hall of Fame started putting Negro Leaguers in (he asked for that during his Hall of Fame speech). All you need to know about Ted Williams is this: His teammates loved him. They absolutely loved him. Joe DiMaggio, his teammates didn't all love him. But they loved Ted Williams. Great player, man. Great player."
Center field: Oscar Charleston
-- Buck: "I always tell people that the greatest Major Leaguer I ever saw was Willie Mays. But the greatest player I ever saw was Oscar Charleston. He'd hit you 50 home runs. He'd still you 50 bases. He'd play great defense. Old timers say Willie Mays was the closest thing to Oscar Charleston."
Right field: Babe Ruth
-- Buck saw Babe Ruth play spring training games in Florida. He always said that was the first place he heard the sound, that resounding crack off the bat that sounded different from any other crack of bat he ever heard. Buck scouted by sound, in part. I remember in Houston once, he closed his eyes and was able -- with pretty stunning accuracy -- to tell from the sound whether the ball hit was a popup or a line drive. So Ruth was the first he heard hit a ball and make that distinctive sound, that booming sound that echoed in his imagination. The third he heard make that sound was Bo Jackson taking batting practice at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. And the guy in the middle is coming right up.
Catcher: Josh Gibson
-- Yes, he was the man in the middle. There have been six or seven players Buck has suggested might have been the best of all time -- Oscar Charleston, Pop Lloyd, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Josh Gibson, Willie Mays and maybe one or two others. But I think deep down he thought Gibson was the best because he was a catcher, and a good one, who "hit like Babe Ruth only, maybe, a little better because Ruth would strike out 100 times a year and Josh, he would strike out maybe 30 times a year."
Right-handed pitcher: Satchel Paige
-- Buck O'Neil and Satchel Paige … it's always worth telling the Nancy Story (pulled from a previous post):
There’s Satchel Paige, and that sparks the Nancy story, of course. I cannot tell you how many times I heard the Nancy story. Fifty? A hundred? Buck could go 20 minutes on the Nancy story. I’ve come up with a shortened version: Buck and Satchel Paige were sitting in a hotel in Chicago when a taxi pulled up and out stepped Nancy (“Pretty as a picture”), who Satchel had invited to Chicago.
After they went up to the room, another taxi pulled up, and this time it was Lahoma — Satchel’s fiancee. Buck, thinking quickly, went out to meet Lahoma, told her Satchel was off with some reporters, and then had the bellman straighten things out upstairs. Satchel slipped out the fire escape and then walked through the front door to meet Lahoma … like nothing had happened.
That night, Buck sat awake and waited to see how Satchel would handle the situation. Around midnight, he heard Satchel’s door open, and Buck (being the snooping kind) tiptoed to the door to listen. He heard Satchel knock on the door and whisper “Nancy.” No answer.
Satchel knocked a little louder. “Nancy!” No answer. Satchel knocked loud. “NANCY!” And then a door opened — but it was from Satchel’s room. That had to be Lahoma.
And with that, Buck opened his door and said, “Did you want something Satchel?”
And Satchel Paige saw Lahoma and said, “Yes Nancy, what time is the game tomorrow.”
And for the rest of his life, Satchel Paige called Buck “Nancy.”
Left-handed pitcher: Sandy Koufax
-- "Big fastball, big curveball, when Sandy Koufax was right nobody could hit him." Buck also mentioned Leon Day of the Negro Leagues, Warren Spahn and Randy Johnson.
And there's Buck's all-time team. Now, I would ask you: Join Buck O'Neil's All-Century Team. You'll be helping a great museum. And, perhaps more to the point, you'll be honoring a great man.
Thursday, October 6, 2011