The Soul of Baseball (10 page)

T
he black Cutlass crossed the Triborough Bridge just as the sun came up over the skyline. Buck O’Neil sang a tuneless little song.

 

New York, New York,

A town so nice

They named it twice,

Named it twice.

New York, New York.

 

“What kind of show am I doing again?” he asked.

“I don’t know Buck,” Bob Kendrick said. “I just know it’s early.”

“You gotta get up early in New York City, Bob,” Buck said. Buck had come to the big city to talk baseball and spread the word about the Negro Leagues—he loved New York. Buck asked the driver where the Twin Towers had been, and the driver pointed to an empty hole in the sky.

“Where were you when it happened?” Buck asked.

“In the car,” the driver said. He said that he heard about the plane crashing into the second tower and tried to call his family, but the cell phone service was jammed. He raced home, and the city was crazy that day. When he finally made it home, he found his family huddled around a phone, and they were crying. “Nine/eleven broke us inside, didn’t it?” Buck asked, and he put his arm on the driver’s shoulder.

The car pulled up to a door blocked by construction. It was not yet seven in the morning but jackhammers clattered. Buck walked through a tunnel of scaffolding and stepped through a door marked
DO NOT ENTER
. He came upon a desk where two middle-aged security guards sat. One said, “You weren’t supposed to come in that way.”

“Well, I’m not from around here. I’m just a country boy from Kansas City.”

“You’re Buck O’Neil,” the other guard said.

“Buck O’Neil. It’s such an honor to meet you,” said the first. “This is amazing. Buck O’Neil right here. What are you doing here?”

“I’m supposed to do a radio show. Something called
Star
and something or other?”

The security guards’ faces changed. They had looked so happy to see him. Now they glanced at each other. Suddenly they both looked ashen.

“Star and Buc Wild?”

“Yeah,” Bob Kendrick said, “that’s it. That’s the show.
Star and Buc Wild
. That’s in this building, right?”

“Please don’t do that show, Mr. O’Neil. You are a gentleman. Please don’t do that. It’s the wrong show for you.”

“Is that right?” Buck asked.

“They speak ignorance on that show. What do you need to do that kind of show for? You are a great man. There are a hundred radio shows in New York, good shows, where you can talk about good things. Please don’t do that show. They speak ignorance.”

“Ignorance, eh?” Buck winked. “Well, we’ll see if we can talk some common sense with those guys, eh?”

He walked to the elevator. The security guards shook their heads and looked at him sadly, as if they were watching their father go off to war.

T
HE GREENROOM FOR
the
Star & Buc Wild
show was stocked with vodka and tequila and there was one piece of artwork on the wall. It was a photograph of a man who looked as if he had not slept in twenty-three days. He was squeezing a bottle and lotion squirted out the top. The cutline: “Got lotion?” Bob Kendrick started to look nervous. The interview had been set up by a New York public relations firm, and they had not given Bob any advance warning that this interview would be different from the thousand other radio interviews Buck did. Buck had grown so used to the routine: a host would say what an honor it was to meet Buck, to have him on their show, and then they would gently ask him about his life, his memories of the Negro Leagues, and if it was going well they might ask him to tell his famous Nancy Story. It was an easy formula. Something about that photograph and what the security guards had said made Bob think this would be something new.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Bob said.

“Don’t worry about it, Bob,” Buck said. “This is New York. You’ve gotta be tough here.”…

B
UCK WAS TAKEN
into the studio and introduced around. A woman with headphones introduced herself as “White Trash.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck said, “what’s your name again, young lady?”

“White Trash,” she said.

“Oh,” Buck said. “Well, it’s good to meet you.”

He shook hands with the man called “Buc Wild.” Star introduced himself from behind a table. Buck asked if “Star” was his first or last name, and Star said it was neither, it was just “Star” because he was the star of the show. “Well, that makes sense,” Buck said. Bob looked as if he might have a heart attack. White Trash asked if anyone wanted a cup of coffee, and Buck looked for a moment like he might but he did not know how to address White Trash. The small talk ended. The red light went on.

“We’re going to take a break from the hating for a while because we have a guest, Mr. Buck O’Neil….”

“It’s a pleasure being here,” Buck said.

“You’ve seen a lot of hatred in this country,” Star said.

“I’ve seen the love too,” Buck replied.

Star grimaced. And the show began.

B
UCK DID NOT
know this at the time, but Star had been thrown off the radio for a short while a few months before the interview. He’d had an on-air exchange with an Indian woman at a call center.

Star said: “You’re a filthy rat-eater. I’m calling about my six-year-old American white girl. How dare you outsource my call. Get off the line, bitch.”

He was reinstated. Star’s show got good ratings.

S
TAR SAID IN
a calm, smooth radio voice: “Jackie Robinson was a sellout, am I right?”

“No, sir,” Buck said, “you are not right. Where are you getting that from?”

“He turned on his own people and went to play for the white leagues.”

“No, sir. Jackie Robinson was a hero. He was an American hero.”

“Look, I’m only forty-one years old. So I wasn’t there like you were, sir. I’m trying to be respectful here. But he was a sellout.”

“You need to stop saying that. Jackie Robinson was an American hero.”

“Well, Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson didn’t feel that way, am I right?”

“No, you are not right.”

The conversation went on like that for a while. Jackie Robinson was a sellout, no, he was not, yes, he was. After a while, the craziest arguments can begin to sound sane, as fact and fiction blur, and the longer this went on, the more frantic Buck O’Neil became. His voice lifted an octave. Star said Jackie Robinson was a sellout, an Uncle Tom, he betrayed his race.

“No, no, no, listen to me,” Buck shouted. “When Jackie Robinson went to the Major Leagues, that was the beginning of the modern-day civil rights movement. That was before Sister Rosa Parks said, ‘I don’t feel like going to the back of the damn bus today.’” You could tell Buck was getting into the spirit of the fight—he used the word “damn.”

“That was before
Brown v. Board of Education
. Martin Luther King was a sophomore at Morehouse at the time. Jackie Robinson went to the Major Leagues, and that’s what started the ball rolling. That was the start, man. Are you listening?”

Star looked up. “Some people see it like that,” he said softly. “I respect your hustle.”

After another moment, Star went to a commercial break. After the red light faded, Star turned to Buck, who was sweating, though the room was not hot. “This is good,” Star said. He turned away from Buck and began reading something—maybe it was the latest news or an advertisement he needed to read. Buck looked at Star for a long time.

I’m sorry,
the woman called White Trash mouthed, but Buck O’Neil did not see her.

W
HEN THE RED
lit up again, the conversation seemed to be more peaceful. Star said again he wanted to respect his elders. He repeated that he was only forty-one. He seemed to be winding down. And then he said the Negro Leagues was made up of clowns, like in the Richard Pryor movie
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings
.

“It was nothing like that movie!” Buck shouted. “Bingo Long is not the real story of the Negro Leagues.” Star had struck a nerve again. Buck had spent much of his life trying to convince people that the Negro Leagues were real—real players, real games, real joy, real pain. And that movie, a comedy which featured black players shuffling and dancing through towns and often acting like fools, infuriated him. Star tasted blood.

“A lot of people say it was like the movie,” he said.

“I was there,” Buck said. “It was nothing like it.”

“Other people would disagree.”

“You’re negative,” Buck said. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Go ahead and say it,” Star said.

“Say what?”

“Go ahead and say it. I’m an uppity nigger.”

“Don’t use that term. We had to hear white men use that ugly term on us and now we use it on ourselves.”

“I’m one of those rambunctious niggers.”

“You and I are very different kinds of black men.”

Star kept hammering. He brought up a rumor that some white kids were making money on Negro Leagues merchandise. “Don’t make this a black-white thing,” Buck pleaded. “It’s out there for anybody.”

Then Star called Jackie Robinson a true sellout again.

“If it hadn’t been for Jackie Robinson,” Buck said, “so many other things would not have happened.”

“He didn’t do us any favors,” Star said.

Like that, like a hailstorm easing into a summer rain, Star thanked Buck for being on the show. And then the interview was over. The red light went out. Star went back to his reading while others in the room walked over to Buck O’Neil. Apologies danced in their eyes, but nobody wanted to face what had happened. Buck could not see or hear them. He looked right at Star, his tormentor.

“You know something?” he said roughly to Star as everyone in the room hushed. Star looked up and met Buck O’Neil’s eyes.

Buck smiled. “You are my kind of brother,” he said.

Everyone cracked up, even Star. In the laughter, Buck O’Neil made his escape.

T
HE SECURITY GUARDS
had heard it all on their radio, of course. They would not say, “I told you so.” They just nodded when Buck walked out of the elevator. Buck said, “Well, we are awake now.”

“The guy’s hero is Howard Stern,” one of the guards said. “What more do you need to say? I mean, beware of false gods, right?”

“He was a little wild,” Buck barely whispered. He tried to shrug it off, but Buck’s equilibrium had been shaken, no question about it. He was still sweating profusely, and he did not talk while he signed autographs for the guards. Bob paced angrily. Buck had been ambushed. “Buck,” Bob began, and he started to say he would get to the bottom of it, that he was sorry, but Buck shook him off.

“It’s good for you, Bob,” Buck said. “It’s New York, you gotta be tough.” He was still shaking, though. While Bob was angry with Star and the public relations people who had set up the interview and a city where a gentle ninety-three-year-old man could be attacked on a radio show, Buck was angry with himself. “I got too comfortable,” Buck said. Comfortable was too close to dying.

Two women walked into the building. Buck watched them go toward the elevator for a minute and then he called after them.

“Excuse me,” Buck said, “my name is Buck O’Neil. I was hoping I might get a hug.”

“A hug?” the first woman asked. “But I don’t even know you.”

Still, she saw something in those eyes. They always saw something in those eyes. The woman turned to her friend and said, “Oh, what the hell.” She threw her arms around Buck O’Neil and he hugged her tight, and after that Buck seemed to have his balance back.

T
HE NEXT STOP
was a television show called
Cold Pizza.
Buck was scheduled to go on after Mr. T, a onetime bodyguard and actor who had become famous mostly for saying “I pity the fool.” It was like that in the 1980s. Mr. T still had a Mohawk haircut, and he wore heavy gold chains, and to clinch his interview, he said, “I pity the fool who doesn’t watch
Cold Pizza
.” Then Buck went on. This interview was a bit softer than the
Star & Buc Wild
show. “You’ve accomplished so much in your life,” the interviewer began. Buck talked about the Negro Leagues. On his way out he hugged every woman in the main lobby. A young man who worked for the station caught his eye while three women were draped over him. “You keep living, young man,” Buck said. “You’ll get there.”

After that, he headed to a radio interview at Rockefeller Center. He told the host there baseball was still the best game in the world. He then remembered playing a game at Yankee Stadium against the New York Black Yankees. He said he will never forget that day because after the game, he rode back to the hotel in a Rolls-Royce belonging to the actor and dancer Bojangles Robinson. Bojangles owned the Black Yankees, and sometimes before games he would race his players to first base. Bojangles would run backward.

“That was the only time I ever sat in a Rolls-Royce,” Buck said.

The next interview was in the
Sports Illustrated for Kids
office. He told the editors about his first trip to New York for a baseball game. He did not remember the game itself, but he remembered that afterward he traded in two new suits he had bought in Florida for one zoot suit. He got a chain he would swing around when walking down the streets in Harlem. “I was the hottest thing in New York City,” he said.