Buck O'Neil: A Life of Learning and Loving
Near Kansas City, Missouri
John "Buck" O'Neil was born November thirteenth, nineteen eleven, and spent nearly a century making baseball and the people around him better. He starred as first baseman and manager for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues, winning pennants and mentoring a young Ernie Banks. After integration ended the Negro Leagues, O'Neil became the first Black coach in Major League Baseball when the Chicago Cubs hired him in nineteen sixty-two.
He devoted his later decades to founding the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum here in Kansas City, turning a painful history into a celebrated legacy. When the Baseball Hall of Fame passed him over for induction in two thousand six, he responded with characteristic grace: no bitterness, only gratitude. He died that same year.
The Hall inducted him posthumously in two thousand twenty-two.
