If you’re here, you’ve probably already read Joe Posnanski’s The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America
JoePo followed Buck O’Neil around the country for a year as O’Neil stumped for the Negro Leagues Museum and more generally worked to preserve the memory of the Negro Leagues as real baseball, rather than the minstrel show of the Hollywood depictions of those Leagues. Along the way, the two men ran into a handful of other former Negro Leaguers and gave us a window into their memories, some told by the players themselves with others retold through Joe’s voice. Some are hilarious, some touching, some downright sad.
O’Neil’s personality – his soul, really – dominates the book, which at times seems to border on magical realism with the incredible effect that O’Neil has on other people, most of whom are complete strangers, and his perceptions of others even based on a look or a few sentences. At the book’s close, my overwhelming thought was, “Wow, I wish I had met him.”
It’s hard to compare it to Lords of the Realm, which I’ve always called my top baseball book, but I’d say I enjoyed The Soul of Baseball more – it’s a serious book but has substantial entertainment value, particularly from the stories about other characters like Satchel Paige, but also from the glimpses into the (then) current lives of Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, and the questionable Johnny Washington.
Next up: Lonesome Dove
