Why isn’t Negro Leagues great and KC treasure Buck O’Neil in Baseball Hall of Fame?
Buck O’Neil was the first Black coach in Major League Baseball. As a player, he led the Negro Leagues in hitting as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs, where he won two titles as a manager. He was later a special scout with the Royals.
O’Neil was a masterful storyteller and used his considerable oratory skills to become one of the game’s best ambassadors. He should have been enshrined into the National Baseball Hall of Fame years ago.
O’Neil remains eligible for Hall of Fame consideration as part of the Early Baseball Era Committee, which is scheduled to meet next December for potential inclusion as part of the class of 2022, Hall of Fame officials say. The 10-person Early Baseball ballot will be constructed by the Historical Overview Committee, a group of veteran baseball writers and historians, and will be announced next November.
After being snubbed in 2006 for baseball’s highest honor, O’Neil famously said: “Don’t weep for Buck. No, man, be happy, be thankful.”
We should all be thankful for John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil, the Negro Leagues great.
Major League Baseball’s recent decision to right a longstanding wrong and recognize the Negro Leagues as “major league” was a good play. More than 3,400 minority players from various leagues that operated from 1920 to 1948 are now considered major league ballplayers.
Racism and discrimination kept Black ballplayers out of the majors. Their contributions belong in official MLB records. This change is long overdue.
The news, which came amid the year-long 100th-anniversary celebration of the founding of the Negro Leagues, underscores the integral roles that African Americans and other minorities played in raising the visibility and popularity of America’s favorite pastime.
And that includes O’Neil, the hometown hero.
A lifetime achievement award presented by the National Baseball Hall of Fame is named after O’Neil. In 2006, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. And he has a life-size bronze bust at a Hall of Fame exhibit in Cooperstown, N.Y.
And yet, he hasn’t actually been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
O’Neil’s contributions to the game transcend statistics. He broke racial barriers and spent eight decades playing and promoting the sport before his death at age 94 in 2006 — the same year he was snubbed by the Hall of Fame selection committee. Today, he remains on the outside looking in.
O’Neil’s legacy in the game is cemented by his work over 70-plus years, said Bob Kendrick, director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
“You will be hard-pressed to find another Hall of Famer who did more work for the game than Buck O’Neil,” Kendrick said.
To honor O’Neil, the Hall of Fame in 2008 unveiled the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, which is presented no more than once every three years. Buck was the first recipient. The award was given to Rachel Robinson, the widow of Jackie Robinson, in 2017.
The designation honors “an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.”
That award rightly pays tribute to its namesake, who will always be a Kansas City and baseball treasure. But Buck O’Neil’s absence from the Hall of Fame remains a glaring omission — and it should finally be corrected now.
This story was originally published December 18, 2020 at 10:01 AM.