This story was excerpted from Anne Rogers’ Royals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
KANSAS CITY -- Another successful Hall of Fame weekend is in the books, and this one was extra special for Kansas City.
Legendary Negro Leagues player and manager, Major League scout and ambassador for the game Buck O’Neil was at long-last inducted, a huge moment for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
I caught up with Royals Hall of Famer Frank White about what O’Neil’s induction means to him as a former player -- but most of all, as one of O’Neil’s friends.
“It’s a great thing for Kansas City and for all of his fans,” White said. “The legacy that he’s left here in Kansas City is unbelievable. I wish he could have gone up and accepted for himself, but it doesn’t diminish what a great accomplishment this is for Buck, his family and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.”
White met O’Neil in the 1970s, when White was participating at the Royals Baseball Academy. He knew who O’Neil was as a scout, but they didn’t become close until White’s waning years as a Royal in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“When I was a player, my final year or two, I would talk to him in the stands, go up to him and ask him, ‘Make sure you put the watch on me today so I’m giving 100% when I run the bases,’” White said, laughing. “I played a lot of games, and some days you’d go out there and don’t know if you’ve got 100% in you. So I’d go up and said, ‘Buck, put the watch on me,’ and as long as I knew I had that watch on me, I’d be able to give more than I thought I had. He was a good guy for checks and balances, if you will.”
After White’s playing days, he helped O’Neil bring the NLBM to life, and White learned more about the Negro Leagues every time he heard O’Neil speak. O’Neil’s gift at storytelling might be one of White’s favorite things about him.
“Every time I had to be introduced somewhere, I would always call him to do it, because I just loved the way his voice sounded and the way he delivered things with honesty and integrity,” White said.
The two could be seen riding around a golf cart at Spring Training at the Royals’ facility every year, and it was there that White fully understood the legacy O’Neil had created.
“Nobody had a voice or presence like Buck,” White said. “So when he drove up to the field, and players in the dugout had a chance to meet him, there was a level of excitement that came with that, and you could hear it in their voices and see it on their faces. They were just talking baseball, and I just loved to listen.”
Like many, White described the day that O’Neil didn’t get into the Hall of Fame in 2006 as one of the more devastating days of his life. That’s why Sunday was even more special, knowing that O’Neil’s time had finally come.
When asked what it would be like to see O’Neil’s plaque among the greats of the game in Cooperstown, White mentioned O’Neil’s long journey from Carrabelle, Fla., where he was born in 1911, to now, even 16 years after his death at age 94.
“We all had our issues growing up in the South,” White said. “Buck was from Sarasota, Fla., where the Black kids couldn’t go to Sarasota High School, and working the celery fields and things like that were all difficult to do. Me being from Mississippi and picking cotton and potatoes and peanuts, and I knew players from Florida who had to pick oranges and strawberries, it’s all back breaking work.
“To be able to make it to Major League Baseball and have a successful career, you take pride in that. I think Buck took pride in what he was able to do.”