Right On Time

A hundred years ago today, John Jordan O'Neil arrived in the world in the tiny town of Carrabelle, Florida, and that world is the better for it.

"Buck" O'Neil played all or part of a dozen seasons on the Negro Leagues' Kansas City Monarchs baseball team, and the post title is taken from his 1997 autobiography, I Was Right On Time. It came from the response he developed to the many people who lamented to him that, living as he did in baseball's shameful era of segregation, he didn't get to play against the best players in baseball and he was too old to benefit from the integration begun by Jackie Robinson. O'Neil, perhaps reminding those folks that he played with or against Josh Gibson, "Cool Papa" Bell, Satchel Paige, "Double Duty" Radcliffe and such, would say, "Who's to say I didn't play with the best?" And of his best playing years predating Robinson, he would say he wasn't too early at all -- he was "right on time" for the life he lived and what he got to do.

By all accounts a great man with a truly gentle spirit, O'Neil spent several years scouting for the Chicago Cubs and in 1988 moved to the Kansas City Royals. Though he was instrumental in creating the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City and in securing recognition for many of the NL's great but overlooked players, a stupefyingly short-sighted group of mouth-breathers did not vote him into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. O'Neil's stats were by no means Hall-of-Fame worthy, but the man who did more to raise the profile and bring appreciation to some of baseball's greatest players than he did has not been born. O'Neil, of course, was far more gracious than I have just been, saying no cross or sad word about what must have been a keen disappointment until his death later that year.

I'll close with the best line of Kansas City musician Bob Walkenhorst's tribute song from the above video: "Giving out love, instead of hate/I want to play on Buck's baseball team." Indeed I do, to follow in his steps and cross barriers the way he crossed color lines, with his heart instead of his fists. Happy birthday, Buck!

ETA: Walkenhorst helped members of a first-grade class in a Kansas City school write the song after they spent some time studying O'Neil's life and work. More information about that and about the book the children produced can be found here.