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Buck O'Neil's legacy: honored or not so much?
This, folks, is how some Kansas Citians disagree on the Internet:
This morning, the Star's Sam Mellinger wrote a gutsy little column about how the Baseball Hall of Fame screwed up its first choice for the Buck O'Neil Award, which will honor the former Kansas City Monarch and baseball pioneer.
Joe Posnanski -- former Star columnist, current Sports Illustrated scribe and, judging by his columns and his reputation, the nicest person ever to grace the press-box lunch line -- disagreed entirely. So he responded. But he did it in the most Posnanskian way possible, which doubles as the least Whitlockian way possible. Handy!
Here's Mellinger:
The award will be given out again this summer at the induction
ceremonies in Cooperstown, and a committee of Hall of Fame players and
longtime executives and baseball lifers were told to find someone "who
broadened the game's appeal and whose character, integrity and dignity
is comparable" to O'Neil.
They thought about Johnny Bench and George H.W. Bush and Branch Rickey and Kevin Costner and Ted Williams and many others.
They
decided on Roland Hemond, a wonderful and universally loved man with a
60-year career in baseball so full that the White Sox, Baseball
America, and Society of American Baseball Research each named awards
after him.
"I don't know anyone like Roland," says White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf. "Except for Buck O'Neil."
Others say similar things, and that's great.
But the committee missed an opportunity here.
He goes on to write that the committee should have gone bigger -- Ernie Banks or Dave Winfield, perhaps, someone who could draw an audience and help educate the non-baseball junkies among us about what O'Neil overcame and stood for and accomplished.
But that, Posnanski really, really politely argued, wouldn't have properly honored O'Neil.
The other argument is that the award should have gone to someone
more famous, more iconic -- Hank Aaron or Ernie Banks or Joe Morgan or
someone like that? To be blunt about it, the award would have lost
meaning for me if the Hall of Fame had gone in that direction. We all
know of those men's greatness. What is another award thrown on top of
the pile of awards already given to those men? If they had given the
Buck O'Neil award to someone already in the Hall of Fame, it would have
been just another award, another honorary doctorate, a nice honor to
accept, and smile for the cameras, and give a pleasant little speech
about ("I can't tell you how much this award means to me") ... just like
a thousand other nice honors.
Roland Hemond broke down in tears when he won the award. That's what
the award should be about. That, I think, is what Buck O'Neil's life
was about -- it was about not letting wonderful moments and wonderful
people drift away unremembered.
Because nuance and indecision are against the rules of modern journalism, I am required by law to say that I agree with Posnanski on this one. But Mellinger has some good points too. Ah hell, I agree with them both. IS THAT REALLY A CRIME?
Make up your own mind by blowing off work for 12 more minutes and reading both columns in full:
"The Buck O'Neil Award" -- Sports Illustrated
"Committee swings and misses in conferring Buck O'Neil" -- The Kansas City Star
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