Buck O'Neil

1911-

American baseball player

The gentlemanly and charismatic John "Buck" O'Neil became, in 1962, the first black baseball coach hired by a major league team. In the Negro Leagues during the 1940s and 1950s, he played on nine championship teams and in two Negro League World Series, managed five East-West All-Star Classics, and won a Negro National League batting title. Always an ambassador for the game and its black heritage, he enjoyed a resurgent interest in his story since the airing of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series, for which O'Neil served as narrator. To preserve the legacy of black baseball, O'Neil co-founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and currently serves as its chairman.

Dreaming Big

Growing up in the celery fields of Florida, John Jordan O'Neil, Jr. dreamed big. His father, a saw mill worker, played for local baseball teams and soon, young

John took a liking to the game. He first played semi-professional baseball in 1923 with the Sarasota Tigers.

Although he was not allowed to attend Sarasota High School because he was black, he eventually obtained a high school diploma. Later, he earned a baseball and football scholarship to Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1934, he toured professionally with the Miami Giants, who named him Buck after one of the team's owners, Buck O'Neal.

O'Neil flitted between several teams in his early career, playing for the New York Tigers, Shreveport Acme Giants, Memphis Red Sox, and the barnstorming team Zulu Cannibal Giants between 1934 and 1937. The Negro American League's Memphis Red Sox signed him after seeing him play in Shreveport and paid him $100 a month.

In 1938, O'Neil finally rested with the Kansas City Monarchs, an elite team of the Negro Leagues, with whom he would stay as player and manager until 1955. O'Neil began with the Monarchs as a first baseman and became a consistent hitter with good extra-base power. The Monarchs won four consecutive Negro American League (NAL) pennants from 1939-42, and won against the Homestead Grays in the first World Series played between the NAL and the Negro National League. O'Neil made three appearances for the West squad in the East-West All-Star Classic in 1942, 1943, and 1949.

O'Neil took a two-year absence from baseball in 1943 to fight in World War II. Trained for the US Navy, he was shipped out to Subic Bay in the Philippines to work loading ships.

Returning to the Monarchs and to his superb performance as a first baseman and hitter, O'Neil led the 1946 NAL with a batting average of .353, leading his team to another pennant. He scored two home runs and a .333 average in the Black World Series against the Newark Eagles. That same year he married Memphis school teacher Ora Lee Owen.

In addition to the Monarchs, O'Neil played in winter leagues and on barnstorming teams throughout his career. He teamed with the legendary Satchel Paige to tour with Bob Feller's All-Stars, playing numerous exhibition games in the late 1940s. He played winter ball with Almendares in the Cuban League and with Obregon in the Mexican winter league. Overall in his career, O'Neil had a career batting average of .288 including four .300-plus seasons.

O'Neil as Manager, Scout, and First Black Coach

In 1948, O'Neil was named manager of the Monarchs, experiencing mixed success at first. With divisional play in 1949, he led the Monarchs to the first-half title in the Western Division. Finally in 1950, the Monarchs won both halves of the Western Division. Between 1948 and 1955, O'Neil managed to propel the Monarchs to five pennants, two Black World Series, and four straight All-Star wins.

The Chicago Cubs noticed O'Neil and signed him as a scout in 1956. During his stint with the Monarchs, O'Neil brought more than three dozen baseball players to the Major Leagues. As a scout, he recognized talent and recommended the signing of greats Ernie Banks, a Monarchs slugger, and Lou Brock to their first professional contracts. Also on his roster were Joe Carter, Oscar Gamble, Elston Howard, Lee Smith, and Hank Thompson.

O'Neil made history in 1962 when the first major league team, the Cubs, hired an Africa-American as its coach. Eventually O'Neil realized the Cubs did not want to make him a big-league manager, so he returned to scouting. He stayed with the Cubs for thirty-three years, leaving in 1988 to return to Missouri to scout for the Kansas City Royals.

Remembering the Negro Leagues

Buck O'Neil became a member of the 18-person Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee of Cooperstown, New York, in 1981. With the intense desire to preserve the memory of the Negro Leagues, he raised money and co-founded the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City in 1990. For more than a decade, he has lectured about the history and accomplishments of the Negro Leagues around the country, at schools, at conferences, on radio programs, and on television.

O'Neil experienced a resurgence of popularity in 1994 with the release of Ken Burn's PBS documentary Baseball. O'Neil narrated the program's segment highlighting the Negro Leagues. After the show's airing, he appeared on national interviews and late night talk shows such as Late Night with David Letterman.

Bringing his memories and words to a new generation, the new celebrity published his autobiography in 1996, I Was Right on Time: My Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors, co-written with Sports Illustrated editors Steve Wulf and David Conrads. O'Neil continues to recommend Negro League players to the Baseball Hall of Fame and advocates pensions for surviving Negro League players.

The long-time Kansas City resident holds no resentment or bitterness about the past segregation and racism he encountered. O'Neil's ability to forgive is reflected in his warm smile and sense of humor. His intention is that the Negro League museum he co-founded be more about hope and progress than about inequality. An audio program, The Best of Buck, compiles twenty-three stories of baseball history in the Negro Leagues told by Buck O'Neil; proceeds go to museum.

At the age of eighty-nine, O'Neil said in an interview in Home and Away magazine, "I want the young people to know the wonderful changes that's happened in this country. I'm old enough to see these wonderful changes… This is what we're trying to do—teach every kid about the Negro Leagues and that era."

SELECTED WRITINGS BY O'NEIL:

(With Steve Wulf, and David Conrads) I Was Right on Time: My Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors, Touchstone, 1996.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Dewey, Donald. The Biographical History of Baseball. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishing, 1995.

Riley, James A. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Negro Baseball Leagues. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishing, 1994.

Shatzkin, Mike. The Ballplayers. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1990.

Other

African American Publications. Gale Group. http://www.africanpubs.com/Apps/bio/0076ONeilBuck.asp (January 24, 2003).

Baseball Library. http://www.pubdim.net/baseballlibrary/excerpts/buck_oneil.stm (January 24, 2003).

Home and Away Magazine. "Local Legend Buck O'Neil." http://www.homeandawaymagazine.com/webstories_buck_oneil.html (January 24, 2003).

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. http://www.nlbm.com/oneil.bio.html (January 24, 2003).

Pitch Black Negro League. http://www.pitchblackbaseball.com/nlotmbuckoneil.html (January 24, 2003).

Sketch by Lorraine Savage