Name: Buck O'Neil on Letterman, July 20, 1998
Uploaded: 2020-11-15T02:48:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Buck O'Neil on Letterman, July 20, 1998' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-11-15. Transcript available. By request. Baseball great Buck O'Neil's only appearance on Dave.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Buck O'Neil on Letterman, July 20, 1998' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-11-15. Transcript available. By request. Baseball great Buck O'Neil's only appearance on Dave.

The 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, I'm 86. I forgot a few years. I'm 86.
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 12 years old, now 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 that.
Yeah. Where were you when you started playing professional baseball?
Carribelle, Florida. Oh, professional. Yeah. Oh, professionally, I moved to
Kansas City. I know the Memphis Red Sox.
And how did that, this is when you were 12? No, no. Well, you said
professionally.
Well, you started playing professional baseball when you were 12. 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 23. 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
12. 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
show.
But I played with a team in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Shreveport Acumen Giants.
And they were like a farm team to the Monarchs.
Mm-hmm.
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 10 teams, 12 teams played all over the country.
Well, there were eight teams in the Negro American League, eight teams in the
Negro National League.
Yeah. And what was the quality of play? I mean, 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 would play 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.
Mm-hmm.
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.
Right. 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 homer.
Did you, and you, tell us about Jackie Robinson.
Ooh, 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.
Oh, you boys were wonderful as usual. They filled the park up. Good to see you.
Jackie got off the bus, start 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, because we
got a 50-gallon tank on this side.
We got a 50-gallon tank on that other side. He's not going to sell that much
gas, you know, to one customer until we got back there again.
That's right. 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.
I mean, I guess we'll never see anything like that again, thank God.
See, 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. Ms. 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 as a man who was making
his living playing
ball in the Negro Leagues at the time, 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 satisfy
you more or less?
Yes, yes. Oh, man. It made all of us feel good because, listen, when Rude
Foster organized the Negro
Leagues in 1920, he was thinking, thinking, uh, during 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. So now it's finally happening in 1947. But hallelujah,
it's finally
happening. 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.
And it's, uh, it's open for, to the public. And when they're in Kansas City for,
for a ball game or
whatever, they should drop. They've got to come. And it's amazing the people
coming, the Major League
Baseball players, when they come to Kansas City, they want to see the museum.
Come on, Buck, take me to
the museum. It's wonderful. 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.
Ken Griffey. Yeah. Can play. 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 think that they couldn't play
like we play? What
do you mean? They better. You understand what I mean? They're bigger. 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 football,
basketball was more or less
than college sports. Baseball then really. 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 ball players. 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, ladies and gentlemen. We'll
be right back with Wendy Travis.