Major league baseball has me depressed lately, and not simply because my beloved Dodgers have been eliminated from the playoffs. For those who don't know, baseball legend Buck O'Neil died recently, but even this is not the main cause of my sadness. He will surely be missed, but he lived an independent, happy and healthy life until he was 94. Most of us can only hope to live such a life.
What saddens me is the fact that he was not inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame before he died. The man certainly deserved it. O'Neil consistently posted great numbers as a player for the Kansas City Monarchs from 1938-1947. He was a four-time All-Star and played in two league championship series. However, if the Kansas City Monarchs don't seem familiar to you, that is understandable: they were a team in the Negro American League.
As an African-American, Buck O'Neil was barred from playing in the Major Leagues. Despite that, he became a well-known baseball player and was a teammate of other legends such as Satchel Paige. In fact, for a few seasons in the mid-1940s, he was the player-coach of the Monarchs. In 1962, he broke down a major racial barrier in baseball by becoming the first African-American coach of a Major League team when he took over the top job with the Chicago Cubs. He had a second-storied baseball career as a coach, signing such legends as Lou Brock to his team, and scouting numerous other future stars.
All of this would seem to make him a perfect candidate for induction into the Hall of Fame. However, he was consistently passed over, year after year, decade after decade. To be fair, each year there are dozens and dozens of eligible players and coaches who are all legends in their own right, and the Hall of Fame can only induct a few. O'Neil always had a good attitude about the Hall of Fame, saying that it was baseball that gave him joy, not fame.
However, in February of this year, the executive committee of the Hall of Fame decided to create a special round of inductions for players from the Negro Leagues, and O'Neil was considered to be a shoo-in for induction. About 200 friends and family members made the journey to Cooperstown with him for the announcement, and a big celebration was planned. And yet, once again, Buck O'Neil was left out in the cold. When the final results were announced, O'Neil was mysteriously one vote short of the three-fourths needed for induction. To date, the executive committee has never explained who voted against him or why.
This was the final slap in the face for O'Neil by an organization that has made a habit of shortchanging him. The executive committee, which has only two non-white members, has been accused of being overtly racist. I find that hard to believe, but I do think they are racist in a more subtle, perhaps even unwitting way. The simple fact is that they do not value players from the Negro Leagues as much as they do those from the Major Leagues. In fact, of the nearly 300 members of the Hall of Fame, only about two dozen have come from the Negro Leagues.
This obviously betrays a racial slant in the selection process of the Hall of Fame, in that they are biased against older African-American players. More significantly, it is a perpetuation of the segregation that used to pervade this country. Many, many players from the Negro Leagues could have had great careers in the Majors if they had been allowed to, just as the MLB today has stars from all different ethnicities and from all over the world. What the Hall of Fame is doing is once again punishing a generation of athletes who have already suffered greatly due to racism.
Buck O'Neil's death offers a critical turning point for the Hall of Fame. They can start being more proactive in recognizing the contributions of the Negro League players to the game of baseball. Or they can simply continue ignoring them, knowing that they are all aging and approaching the ends of their lives, and within a few decades, the legacy of these men will fade away and be forgotten. Let's hope the Hall of Fame does the right thing.
