Major League Baseball elected 17 people from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues to the Hall of Fame yesterday including Effa Manly, co-owner of the Newark Eagles and the first woman to ever be elected to the Hall.

But the biggest thing about this election may be who was not chosen and his response:

Seventeen people from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues eras were voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but not Buck O’Neil.

“God’s been good to me,” the 94-year-old said after results of Monday’s special election were announced. “You can see that, can’t you? It didn’t happen. They didn’t think Buck was good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. That’s the way they thought about it and that’s the way it is, so we’re going to live with that. Now, if I’m a hall-of-famer for you, that’s all right with me. Just keep loving old Buck.

“Don’t shed any tears ’cause I’m not going to the Hall of Fame.”

…

“You think about this,” he said. “Here I am, the grandson of a slave. And here the whole world was excited about whether I was going into the Hall of Fame or not. We’ve come a long ways. Before, we never even thought about anything like that. America, you’ve really grown and you’re still growing.”

He’s sure as hell a Hall Of Famer for me.

February 28th, 2006 at 2:36 pm | Tags: Uncategorized