L.M., P-City and TONY are the only losers readers visiting this crappy website that still care about beisbol so this post is for them. No brokeback, of course.
What is all of this noise about concerning JOHN JORDAN ‘BUCK’ O’NEIL and his omission from the Major League Basebal Hall of Fame. BUCK must have one of the best rabbis on his home team, because I have never seen the New York Times fellate a Black man this much since they pulled their silver spoons out for MALCOLM GLADWELL’s ballsachs. Although, since MALCOLM is a tragic mulatto I guess that doesn’t really count as Black then does it?
All this liberal boohooing and handwringing is coming from the very same sportswriters that have elected NOT to vote BUCK into baseball’s prestigious Hall of Fame. Well if all of you sage and just writers really wanted this old codger to be able to smell the roses while he was still breathing you would have voted for him. No sense in giving a Black any credit while they are alive anyhoo I guess. Just look at how 3-6-MAFIA acted.
GEORGE VECSEY waxed poetically about how the sky would have opened up and baseball might have finally exorcised all of the ghosts of greatness overlooked and most times outright denied.
GEORGE needs to stop smoking that WHITNEY HOUSTON, or to keep things in a baseball perspective, stop sniffing my man DWIGHT GOODEN’s white pudding. BUCK O’NEIL is a pioneer that’s for sure, and there are many other Negro Leaguers that played the greatest pasttime with verve and skill. The Hall of Fame should recognize all of the Negro League players. For a select few of them skin color was the least of their disabilities.
RONNY ‘TURKEY LEG’ JENKINS
RONALD JENKINS was from a small Tennessee coal mining town. At the age of 16 he lost part of his left leg in a mule cart accident, but that didn’t deter him from pursuing his dream of playing baseball. He fashioned a prosthetic limb for himself made with scrap wood from the dining room table in his parents’ house. He promised his parents that one day he would return to them with a new table so that they wouldn’t have to eat dinner sitting on the floor any longer.
RONNY was well known for his grace in the outfield, but it was his world class speed that would make him a Hall of Fame caliber Negro Leaguer. RONNY set records in the league for stolen bases during 4 consecutive seasons. He averaged more than 3 steals per game in three of those years. It wasn’t unreasonable for RONNY to score from first on an infield ground ball to the pitcher. RONNY would swipe third so often it was renamed ‘Turkey base’
Much fuss was made of the incident where RONNY’s prosthetic leg failed during a game and he had the wherewithall to hop all the way to home plate. RONNY played for the Detroit Stars for twelve years and he came to be regarded as one of the clutch players in the league. RONNY’s smooth style on the field was complemented by his grace off the field. After his retirement he became a local celebrity in the Detroit swingdancing scene.
|
EVERETT ‘BAT MAN’ BAILEY
Of all the unsung Negro League heroes the ‘BAT MAN’ is my personal favorite. He played for the Kansas City Monarchs during the same years as BUCK and SATCHEL PAIGE did. EVERETT was no ordinary ball player because he was completely blind. A childhood disease had robbed him of his eyesight, but not of his spirit or his will to play the game. EVERETT was Kansas City’s second best pitcher next to SATCHEL PAIGE
You ask how Everett was able to pitch despite the fact that he was 100% blind and I tell you that he was a genius. LARRY BROWN, the great Negro League catcher would yell to EVERETT, telling him if the batter was left or right-handed, tall or short. All EVERETT had to do was rear back and release his fastball. What gave EVERETT an extra level of unorthodoxy was the fact that he would release the pitch as he jumped into the air.
Surprisingly enough, EVERETT had an extremely low rate of hit batsmen and a high number of strikeouts. Between EVERETT BAILEY and SATCHEL PAIGE you were lucky to get on base when you played the Monarchs. But the real reason that I liked the ‘BAT MAN’ so much was because he was a prolific hitter. The ‘BAT MAN’ hit over .400 for his career. Can you imagine how good he might have been if he could have seen the ball?!?
The ‘BAT MAN’ used the son of the team’s equipment manager as his assistant. He trained his ears to respond to only that voice in a crowded ballpark of thousands, maybe millions. The young man would scream out two words descriptions of the pitches that were being hurled and with that information the ‘BAT MAN’ was able to make contact with the ball. Getting around the bases was another issue and the ‘BAT MAN’ was usually replaced with a pinch runner after he had stumbled to first base and the play had been stopped. That is why the rule exists today that when a player is replaced by a pinch runner he has to leave the game.
It’s not as though I am hating on BUCK O’NEIL its just that there are many players from the Negro Leagues that have left an indelible mark on this game The fact that there aren’t too many Blacks who are into baseball now is another reason that I am loathe to bequeath an honor upon another jig sportsman. If BUCK O’NEIL could bring some of that crap music jig bling money into the stadiums then maybe it would be fine to put him in the Hall.
As it stands I do think that BUCK does deserve some kind of recognition for living to be 94 years old in racist azz Jim Crow Missouri.
