Former Negro Leagues Museum director and longtime coach Don Motley dies

The man known simply as Mr. Motley has died.

Don Motley, a driving force behind the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and an amateur baseball coach in Kansas City for nearly 60 years, died Sunday morning. He was 89.

“He was either Mr. Motley or Coach Motley,” said Bob Kendrick, president of the museum. “He and I worked together for years, and I never called him by his first name. He was always Mr. Motley to me.

“It was a level of respect everybody had for him. I could never call him Don.”

Motley was a long-time employee of the U.S. Postal Service, where he was an equal employment opportunity investigator, but his passion was baseball.

He coached young men in the inner city and was the first African-American manager in both the American Legion in Missouri in the 1950s and 60s and in the Ban Johnson League, serving as manager for the Milgram Mustangs for 41 years.

In 1990, Motley became one of the founders of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in downtown Kansas City and executive director in 1991 until he retired in 2008.

“He was one of those guys who took turns paying the rent to keep the office open way back when,” Kendrick said. “He was there to usher and guide it from its infancy to what it became, an internationally recognized museum. He was right there along with the late, great Buck O’Neil, and his impact on the museum will be felt, hopefully, for generations to come.”

Motley made as big an impact on hundreds of youngsters looking for a chance to play on the dusty playing fields of Kansas City.

“He molded a lot of young men who others would have turned their backs on,” Kendrick said, “and gave them opportunities to grow as men through the game of baseball. His role as a coach, as a mentor, and for an individual who literally financed opportunities for kids to play baseball did not go unnoticed.”

One of those young men was Frank White, who as a 19-year-old played for Motley in the Ban Johnson League and went on to become an eight-time Gold Glove second-baseman and Royals Hall of Famer.

“In those days, Mr. Motley was known as what they called a bird dog,” White said. “Back in 1968-69 with a lot of the riots going on, a lot of the white scouts wouldn’t come into the community. They would rely on coaches like Don Motley, who was instrumental in recommending me for the Royals Academy.”

Motley’s influence went far beyond White, one of the rare players with the ability to make it to the major leagues.

“When he was mentoring players and getting players into predominately black schools to play baseball, he always stressed more than baseball,” said White, now Jackson County Executive. “He always stressed the academics, and most of all, he stressed how to be a man and how to conduct themselves.”

Neil Harwell, who played middle infield for Motley’s 1980 Milgram’s team that won the Ban Johnson title said: “All the people who played for him, and the people who coached for him … he’s got a tree there of people who learned under him.”

Some of Motley’s teachings remained with his athletes long after they finished playing for him.

“When you get in a hitting slump, I could always hear him say, ‘Get your legs wide, get your feet wide … get a wide base to your stance and hit the ball out in front of the plate,’ ” Harwell said. “He drove that in your mind. When I’m watching a game, or thinking about a player who needs to get their stroke back, I’m thinking about those words.”

Motley liked to stay in contact with his former players, including Harwell, who worked for then-Time Warner Cable for several years and as vice president/general manager for the Royals Television Network during 2003-09.

“We would interact a lot,” Harwell said. “He would call me when he had a problem with his cable. I’m an officer in the company, and he’d call me and say ‘I need a new cable box. …’

“He felt like I was his player for his whole life.”

Services have not been announced.

This story was originally published November 20, 2016 at 7:23 PM with the headline "Former Negro Leagues Museum director and longtime coach Don Motley dies."