Half-fullism Personified – Buck O’Neil’s Refusal to Hate

I flew Midwest Airlines from Milwaukee to Denver yesterday, and for some reason I picked up the in-flight magazine to flip through. I fly a couple of times a month, and I hadn’t done this in probably six months. It took me about 14 pages to find out why I did it this time. It was a story about a former baseball player in the old Negro leagues by the name of Buck O’Neil.

Buck is 94 years old, and according to the story’s writer, Joe Posnanski, “has lived an extraordinary baseball life”, starting from his early days as a first baseman for the Kansas City Monarchs, to being a scout in the Major Leagues, and his most recent role as a spokesman for the game and for the Negro Leagues (he spearheaded a drive to build a Negro League museum).

What struck me were Posnanski’s two questions about him: “why everyone – baseball fan or not – wants to hug him and why he makes people feel so alive”. Ernie Banks, the famous ex-Chicago Cub, put it this way – “the man doesn’t have a bitter bone anywhere in his body…how often do you meet someone in your life that doesn’t even know how to be bitter?”

So how does a person end up this way? This is where the story becomes even more extraordinary. Notes Posnanski, “Buck has spent a lifetime of being denied – first denied a high school education in his Florida hometown….then denied the chance to play or manage in the Major Leagues because of what he calls “my beautiful tan”. But the truth is, Buck refuses to feel cheated….“I never learned to hate”, he says. “Hate eats you up”

Earlier this year Buck was not one of 17 other people associated with the Negro Leagues elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame (he was thought to be a shoo-in), but yet he took it in stride and even went to Cooperstown to speak on behalf of those folks who were elected. “This is my life’s work”, he said. “I don’t have time to be bitter”.

Here’s a man who could have easily turned bitter because of his “lifetime of denial”, but yet actually turned it around the other way and became a beacon of joy. What a world this could be if we “never learn to hate”. Buck O’Neil certainly sees the glass half full (probably more than half full!), and I tip my hat to him and the inspiration he offered me in the way he conducts his life. I hope he now can inspire you too.

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