Buck O’Neil, one of the best ambassadors the game of baseball has ever had, passed away on Friday at the age of 94.
A star in the Negro Leagues who barnstormed with Satchel Paige, O’Neil later signed Hall-of-Famers Lou Brock and Ernie Banks as a scout. In July, just before he was briefly hospitalized for fatigue, he batted in a minor league All-Star contest and became the oldest man ever to appear in a professional game.
“What a fabulous human being,” Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson said. “He was a blessing for all of us. I believe that people like Buck and Rachel Robinson and Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa are angels that walk on earth to give us all a greater understanding of what it means to be human. I’m not sad for him. He had a long, full life and I hope I’m as lucky, but I’m sad for us.”
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Always projecting warmth, wit and a sunny optimism that sometimes seemed surprising for a man who lived so much of his life in a climate of racial injustice, O’Neil remained remarkably vigorous into his 90s. He became as big a star as the Negro League greats whose stories he traveled the country to tell.
He would be in New York taping the “Late Show With David Letterman” one day, then back home on the golf course the next day shooting his age, a feat he first accomplished at 75.
“But it’s not a good score any more,” he quipped on his 90th birthday.
Long popular in Kansas City, O’Neil he rocketed into national stardom in 1994 when filmmaker Ken Burns featured him in his groundbreaking documentary “Baseball.”
The rest of the country then came to appreciate the charming Negro Leagues historian as only baseball insiders had done before. He may have been, as he joked, “an overnight sensation at 82,” but his popularity continued to grow for the rest of his life.
“He brought the attention of a lot of people in this country to the Negro Leagues,” former Washington Nationals manager Frank Robinson said. “He told us all how good they were and that they deserved to be recognized for what they did and their contributions and the injustice that a lot of them had to endure because of the color of their skin.”
Excerpting doesn’t do him justice. Read the whole thing, then put Burns’ “Baseball” documentary on your Netflix list. And hope that someday the Hall of Fame corrects its past oversight and puts O’Neil in Cooperstown where he belongs. Rest in peace, Buck O’Neil.