Buck O'Neil Biography - Dreaming Big, O'neil As Manager, Scout, And First Black Coach, Remembering The Negro Leagues - SELECTED WRITINGS BY O'NEIL:
baseball series
1911-
American baseball player
The gentlemanly and charismatic John "Buck" O'Neil became, in 1962, the first black baseball coach hired by a major league team. In the Negro Leagues during the 1940s and 1950s, he played on nine championship teams and in two Negro League World Series, managed five East-West All-Star Classics, and won a Negro National League batting title. Always an ambassador for the game and its black heritage, he enjoyed a resurgent interest in his story since the airing of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series, for which O'Neil served as narrator. To preserve the legacy of black baseball, O'Neil co-founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and currently serves as its chairman.
SELECTED WRITINGS BY O'NEIL:
(With Steve Wulf, and David Conrads) I Was Right on Time: My Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors, Touchstone, 1996.
Sketch by Lorraine Savage
Additional Topics
Growing up in the celery fields of Florida, John Jordan O'Neil, Jr. dreamed big. His father, a saw mill worker, played for local baseball teams and soon, young
Buck O'Neil
John took a liking to the game. He first played semi-professional baseball in 1923 with the Sarasota Tigers. Although he was not allowed to attend Sarasota High School because he was black, he eventually obt…
In 1948, O'Neil was named manager of the Monarchs, experiencing mixed success at first. With divisional play in 1949, he led the Monarchs to the first-half title in the Western Division. Finally in 1950, the Monarchs won both halves of the Western Division. Between 1948 and 1955, O'Neil managed to propel the Monarchs to five pennants, two Black World Series, and four straight All-Sta…
Buck O'Neil became a member of the 18-person Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee of Cooperstown, New York, in 1981. With the intense desire to preserve the memory of the Negro Leagues, he raised money and co-founded the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City in 1990. For more than a decade, he has lectured about the history and accomplishments of the Negro Leagues around the count…
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