The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: Negro Leagues, Buck O'Neil, Hall of Fame (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Posnanski, sports columnist for the Kansas City Star, spent a year on the road with the iconic Negro Leagues player and manager Buck O'Neil (1911–2006), recording the magnanimous 94-year-old's encounters with scores of fans and his vast repertoire of entertaining stories. O'Neil, the first African-American to coach in the Major Leagues, was a tireless spokesman for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Posnanski is at his best when recounting O'Neil's baseball memories of the likes of legends Satchel Paige, Willie Mays and Josh Gibson. The author captures O'Neil's rhythmic voice and often relays it in italicized verse, while painting an uplifting portrait of a man who was without bitterness despite long experience with racial discrimination. Too often, however, Posnanski bogs down in mundane details that read like a travelogue of airports and tardy drivers. Many of the chapters have the feel of lengthy newspaper articles stitched together, lacking segues and narrative. Nevertheless, the final scenes are moving tales of the funeral of 103-year-old Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe and O'Neil's dignity when he was infamously passed over by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* After spending a few years trying to write a baseball book, sportswriter Posnanski lucked into a story that positively cried out to be told. Buck O'Neil, a Hall of Fame member and Negro League veteran who died last October, was a man who loved the game with a burning passion that never lessened in intensity. During the last year of his life, O'Neil joined Posnanski on a road trip to Kansas City (where Buck played for the Kansas City Monarchs), to New York, and to Minneapolis (for Buck O'Neil Day at the Metronome). Along the way, as O'Neil remembers names and faces from his life on and off the field, we are transported back to a time when baseball was, if not more innocent, at least more like a game and less like a business. There's also an important question lurking behind the anecdotes O'Neil tells and the joie de vivre he embodies: Does baseball today, with its drug abusers and profiteers and self-absorbed celebrities, still have the soul that it did when O'Neil fell in love with the game? For baseball fans, the book is a treasure trove of history, full of names that remind us of an older time--Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks--and stories that make us laugh, even as we wonder if baseball has changed too much ever to feel like it once did. Stirring, moving, and more than a little sad. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060854030
• ISBN-13: 978-0060854034
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #179,801 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational!, March 10, 2007

By	William Carroll "cubfan33" (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As someone who makes their living writing about baseball, Joe Posnanski is an inspiration. This is his first full-length book and he doesn't disappoint. He's made the story and humanity of Buck O'Neill something precious and poignant. He captured the side of Buck that we didn't often get to see. He was more than a symbol or a legend, he was a man. By capturing that spirit, we all get to hold onto the gift that O'Neill left for us - a joy for life, for a game, and for friendship. If Posnanski inspires me to write, O'Neill's story inspires me to live. If there's a better combination out there, I haven't found it.

- Will Carroll, Baseball Prospectus

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Soul Of Living, March 7, 2007

By	Mr. Richard D. Coreno "Mr. C" (Berea, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Is The Soul of Baseball a book about baseball? No.
Is The Soul of Baseball a biography of Buck O'Neil? No.

The Soul of Baseball is about life, the joys of living. Those little things we may do during the day that puts a smile on someone's face, that makes someone stop and - however briefly - put living back into its proper perspective.

Yes, Buck O'Neil brought joy through talking about baseball - Negro Leagues Baseball - and through his recollections from a blessed life. But, more importantly, he held a mirror up to us and made the simple request to look for our heart & soul, and then share that warmth with as many people as possible.

Author Joe Posnanski spent more than a year on the road with Buck O'Neil, chronicling the more than 200 events he attended nationwide at the ages of 93 and 94; from the largest to smallest ballparks, schools & media junkets and even to Washington, D.C. to give testimony before a Senate committee on why the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum deserved national designation.

There was poetry to many statements from Buck O'Neil, which Posnanski makes special for the reader. His recollections on a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, baseball camp run by a friend, Willie Spooner, says it best:

Nothing better
Than baseball. For kids.
Teach them all the lessons.
How to be a teammate.
How to be a man.
Nobody does it for you.
Gotta stand up.
I remember Willie
Used to tell those kids in Baton Rouge
It's better to steal second
Than to steal an apple.

You will laugh and cry and won't want the book to end. But books, like life, must have a final page.

Buck O'Neil passed away on October 6, 2006, at the age of 94. Share a smile with someone today and Buck O'Neil really isn't that far away. He still has that mirror in his hand, but this time he doesn't need any words; loving life needs no explanation.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Gift From Son To Father, July 2, 2008

By	David Donelson "Author of Heart of Diamonds" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America (Paperback)

My son, Jeremy, always gives me good books. He doesn't just pick up the latest best-seller, but takes the time to choose something special just for me. He hit a home run with The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski. It's the story of an extended road trip Posnanski took with legendary Negro League player and manager Buck O'Neil. The lessons learned along the way are great ones for sons and fathers to share.

Posnanski, an award-winning sports columnist for the Kansas City Star, chose not to write a biography of the irrepressible O'Neil, even though the story could bear to be told over and over again. Instead, he penned a moving memoir of the year he spent with the then-93-year-old O'Neil as he toured the country promoting the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City and the memory of those men who played the game in the days before whites and blacks could share the field. The trip takes them everywhere from Nicodemus, Kansas, to New York, New York, and O'Neil has a fascinating story to tell at every stop.

He talks about Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, and Josh Gibson, names that will always be enshrined in baseball's collective memory. But he also tells the tales of forgotten men like Dan Bankhead, the first black pitcher in the major leagues, who would have been a great hurler if he hadn't been afraid to pitch fastballs inside against white batters.

The key theme of the book is Buck O'Neil's spirit-lifting embrace of the best in every person he met. Despite years of back-breaking struggle, O'Neil never turned bitter, never condemned anyone for their prejudice, never had a bad word to say about the often ugly conditions the black ball players endured. Even when he failed to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Buck O'Neil refused to be angry about it. To make up for the egregious mistake, the Hall awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award after his death.

The lessons Posnanski drew from his experiences with O'Neil are well worth telling and the book he created from them is well worth reading.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo