Ex-Negro Leaguer O’Neil dies at 94

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Buck O’Neil, the goodwill ambassador for the Negro Leagues who fell one vote shy of the Hall of Fame, died last Friday night. He was 94.

Bob Kendrick, marketing director for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, said O’Neil died at a Kansas City hospital. A cause of death was not given.

A star in the Negro Leagues who barnstormed with Satchel Paige, O’Neil later became the first black coach in the majors. Baseball was his life — in July, he batted in a minor league All-Star game.

O’Neil rocketed into national stardom in 1994 when filmmaker Ken Burns featured him in his groundbreaking Public Broadcasting Service documentary “Baseball.”

A good-hitting, slick-fielding first baseman, O’Neil twice won a Negro Leagues batting title, then became a pennant-winning manager of the Kansas City Monarchs.

As a scout for the Chicago Cubs, he discovered and signed Hall of Famers Lou Brock and Ernie Banks. In 1962, the Cubs made him the first black coach in the major leagues.

Jackie Robinson was the first black with an opportunity to make plays in the big leagues. But as bench coach, O’Neil was the first to make decisions.

Born in 1911 in Florida, John “Buck” O’Neil began a lifetime in baseball hanging around the spring training complex of the great New York Yankee teams of the ’20s. Some of the players befriended the youngster and allowed him inside.

In February 2006, it was widely thought that a special 12-person committee commissioned to render final judgments on Negro Leagues and pre-Negro league figures would make him a shoo-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But when word came from Florida that day that 16 men and one woman had been voted in, he was not among them. For reasons never fully explained, he fell one vote short of the required three-fourths.

(Associated Press)