<table> </table> When Pellom McDaniels and Greg Baker met privately with a <em>Kansas City Star </em>reporter Friday, they explained their bizarre, irresponsible and borderline unethical decision by playing up Baker&#8217;s &#8220;strategic&#8221; expertise.</p><p>I can&#8217;t wait to watch Baker strategically fix the mess created by his appointment as Negro Leagues Baseball Museum executive director.</p><p>And when Baker executes the marching order (halt the campaign to build the Buck O&#8217;Neil education and research facility) given to him by museum board member Kevin Gray, I can&#8217;t wait to watch Baker strategically refund the money (including mine) already raised in support of the campaign.</p><p>Oh, yeah, the museum is going to have to tap into the strategic expertise that got Baker booted from a plush downtown job assisting city manager Wayne Cauthen to a job at the airport, the Siberia for city employees.</p><p>I told you all two months ago that Gray and members of the museum board were up to no good when it came to appointing a new executive director. Well, they executed their plan several weeks ago and mustered the courage to announce it Friday.</p><p>Rather than choosing marketing director Bob Kendrick, Buck O&#8217;Neil&#8217;s right-hand man and the brains and passion behind the museum for more than a decade, an 8-7 vote delivered the position to Baker, someone with virtually no clout in KC&#8217;s black community.</p><p>The reluctant-to-criticize-anything-black <em>Kansas City Call</em> newspaper recently blasted Baker, who is black, for his lack of credibility in the black community.</p><p>Mamie Hughes, a stalwart in KC&#8217;s black community for decades, resigned from the museum board primarily in protest of Baker&#8217;s appointment.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m stunned that Bob Kendrick didn&#8217;t get the job,&#8221; city councilman Terry Riley told me Friday night.</p><p>I don&#8217;t know what the end-game strategy is for the museum. Maybe there&#8217;s a plan in place to move it to Johnson County. But right now, it&#8217;s the anchor tenant at 18th and Vine. An up-to-date Hood Pass is a requirement for leading the museum. It&#8217;s not a job for Clarence Thomas.</p><p>Baker&#8217;s top qualification &#8212; besides his &#8220;strategic planning&#8221; expertise &#8212; is he&#8217;ll do what Gray tells him. In an interview with <em>The Star&#8217;s </em>Sam Mellinger, Baker acknowledged Friday that he&#8217;s willing to consider abandoning O&#8217;Neil&#8217;s vision of an education and research facility.</p><p>I&#8217;ll credit Baker for backbone. He&#8217;s not opposed to bucking the desires of highly-thought-of pillars in the black community, including Ollie Gates, Buck O&#8217;Neil, Mamie Hughes and the <em>KC Call</em>. And Baker is even willing to openly circumvent common practices of ethics.</p><p>He went from being a member of the executive-director search committee to helping the 18th and Vine committee hire a high-priced Overland Park search firm (EFL Associates) to being a candidate for executive director.</p><p>Did I mention that one of Baker&#8217;s friends just happened to be Peter Lemke, the founder of EFL?</p><p>Yep, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is blushing reading this.</p><p>&#8220;Peter Lemke is no more a friend of mine than you are,&#8221; Baker told me. &#8220;Pete is a distant professional friend I&#8217;ve known for about 20 years. We worked together at the Chamber of Commerce.&#8221;</p><p>Baker was on the board when it told Kendrick he wasn&#8217;t qualified to be interim executive director. Baker was an original cast member on the &#8220;nationwide&#8221; search committee that ended up choosing three locals &#8212; including the allegedly unqualified Kendrick &#8212; as finalists for the job.