Name: Buck O'Neil Talks About Jackie Robinson Breaking Baseball's Color Barrier | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-04-15T20:12:58.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Buck O'Neil Talks About Jackie Robinson Breaking Baseball's Color Barrier | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-04-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Buck O'Neil Talks About Jackie Robinson Breaking Baseball's Color Barrier | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-04-15. Transcript available.

Our next guest was a star player and manager for the Kansas City Monarchs and
the first
black coach in Major League Baseball.
Please welcome a true baseball pioneer, Buck O'Neill.
Buck!
Good to hear. Thank you for being here. I don't mean to embarrass you. Do you
mind if I ask how old a man you are, sir?
Eighty-four.
Eighty-four years old.
No, no, I'm eighty-six.
Eighty-six years old.
I forgot a few years. I'm eighty-six.
Eighty-six. And you started playing baseball at what age? How old a man were
you? How old a kid were you?
Twelve.
Twelve?
Twelve years old.
Now, how does that happen? Because in twelve years old, now the kids are
playing, you know, Little League baseball.
Well, my daddy was a baseball player and I followed them around, watching them
play, and I always had good hands.
See? And the old men would throw me the ball and I would catch it, and I was a
ham, you know, I enjoyed it.
Yeah.
Where were you when you started playing professional baseball?
Carribelle, Florida. Oh, professional?
Yeah.
Oh, professionally, I'm with the Kansas, I know the Memphis Red Sox.
And how did that, this is when you were twelve?
No, no. Well, you said professionally.
Well, you started playing professional baseball when you were twelve.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, I started playing professional baseball with the Memphis Red Sox.
I see. How old were you then?
I got to be twenty-three.
Oh, so, oh, I see. Well, I got it all screwed up then. I'm sorry.
That's all right.
I thought you started playing professional ball when you were twelve. Well, no
wonder.
No, I wasn't that good.
But I was good.
Yeah.
And were you recruited by the team? Did they scout you? How did they know about
you?
Well, I played all over the country before I got to the Kansas City Monarchs.
So, but I
played with a team in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Shreveport Acumen Giants. And
they were
like a farm team to the Monarchs. So, the Monarchs trained the next spring in
Shreveport and I was
on that team. So, they saw me. They liked me and said, "We're going to give you
a job."
Let's go. Let's play.
Yeah.
Now, this was in the years of the Negro Leagues.
That's right.
And they existed simultaneously with the Major Leagues, which did not allow
white players
in those days. And they had like ten teams, twelve teams played all over the
country?
Well, eight teams in the Negro American League, eight teams in the Negro
National League.
And what was the quality of play? I mean, how did, if a Negro League team would
play like
the New York Yankees, how would that go in those days?
Well, on my day, when we played the New York Yankees today, I think we might
have beaten
them.
Really?
And we played that day. We know we played Major League All-Stars. We won the
majority
of the games from the Negro, the Major League All-Stars. But it wasn't that we
were better
than the Major League All-Stars, but the fact is, the Major League All-Stars
were actually
just making a payday. But we had to prove, we were trying to prove to the world
that they
weren't superior because they were white. And we weren't inferior because we
were black.
Yeah. We had a point to prove. So we would stretch that single into a double,
that double
into a triple, that triple into a homie.
Thank you.
And you, and you, tell us about Jackie Robinson.
Oh, outstanding individual. And Jackie was so different than we were because we
were acclimated
to segregation. But not Jackie. Jackie came to the Monarchs in 1945. We'd been
going to a
filling station in Oklahoma for 20 years, the Monarchs. We'd never gone to the
restroom because
on the door it said, "For white men only." So, Jackie's there and we go to the,
we played
that night in this town and the next day we go to the filling station to get
some gas. The man put
the hose in the tank, said, "Oh, you boys were wonderful as usual. They filled
the park up. Good to see you."
Jackie got off the bus, started walking to the restroom. He said, "Boy, where
you going?" He said, "I'm going to the restroom." He said, "Boy, you know
you can't go to that restroom." Jackie said, "Take the hose out the tank." Now,
the man thought then, 'cause we got a 50-gallon tank on this side.
We got a 50-gallon tank on that other side. He's not gonna sell that much gas,
you know, to one customer until we got back there again." You know what he said?
"You boys can go to the restroom, but don't stay long."
It comes down to economics a lot of times, doesn't it?
Of course, of course. But the gist of that, the gist of that story is this.
From that day on, we never got gas at the station. We couldn't go to the
restroom. We never played in a town that they didn't have a place for us to
stay and to eat.
Jackie said, "Listen, you're playing, you're making money for these people.
This is a capitalistic society. You don't have to take these things." Thank you,
Jackie.
It's hard to imagine, isn't it? It must be very difficult to imagine or to even
pretend to imagine what that was like before Jackie Robinson came to the major
leagues and the struggle that was his and everybody's, really, in the sport
during the time that the transition was being handled.
But it, I mean, I guess we'll never see anything like that again. Thank God.
See, when, when, when, when, when Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, that
contract, that was the beginning of the modern day civil rights movement. That
was before Brown versus Topeka. Martin Luther King was a sophomore at Morehouse
at the time.
Mm-hmm. Miss Rosa Parks hadn't, you know, decided not to get off that bus. That
was the beginning of the modern day civil rights movement.
And, and as a, as a man who was making his living playing ball in the Negro Leagues
at the time, did, did you think that that was being done the right way? Were
you happy? Were you pleased with how that was being facilitated? Did that, did
that satisfy you more or less?
Oh yes. Yes. Oh man. It made all of us feel good because listen, when Ruth
Foster organized the Negro Leagues in 1920, he was thinking, thinking, uh,
doing that period that the American League would take a black guy, a black team
and the National League would take a black team. This is what he was thinking.
He was thinking this in 1920.
Mm-hmm. So now it's finally happening in 1947. Yeah. But, hallelujah, it
finally happened.
It was hope for everybody. Yeah.
And you have the, uh, the, uh, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City,
Missouri. And what is your, you're the founder, you are the curator. What do
you do there?
Well, and right now I'm the chairman of the board. Chairman of the board. Good
for you.
Yeah. You know, 'cause I'm old. You put an old man. I'm the chairman of the
board.
And it's, uh, it's open for, to the public. Yeah. And when they're in Kansas
City for, for a ball game or whatever, they should, uh, drop by.
You gotta come. And it's amazing the people coming, the Major League Baseball
players. Yeah.
When they come to Kansas City, they wanna see the museum. Come on, Buck, take
me to the museum. It's wonderful.
What do you, what do you think you guys playing today? Is there anybody you see
playing today that kind of reminds you of you or the fellows you played with?
Ken Griffey. Yeah. He could play. Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Griffey. Ken played. A lot of guys. One thing about it is, you know, people
are saying, now, since I'm an old man, they say, well, you'd think that they
couldn't play like we played.
What do you mean? They better. You understand what I mean? They're bigger. Yeah.
They're quicker. They're faster. Yes.
The only difference is this. The difference in my era. The best athlete in the
world played baseball. The best white athlete in the world played Major League
Baseball.
The best black athlete in the world played Negro League Baseball. For the
simple reason that, uh, football, basketball was more or less, uh, uh, college
sports.
Baseball then. And to make a living professionally, you played baseball. So we
had to pick it up. That was the showcase.
That's supply. Absolutely. The supply was actually greater than the demand. It's
just the opposite now. The demand is greater than the supply. We can't get
enough good ballplayers.
It's a great pleasure to meet you. And I hope to come see your museum one day.
Please do. Thank you very much, Buck. Buck O'Neil.