Book review: The Soul of Baseball

When Buck O’Neil spoke, his voice seemed contradictory – it slipped out of his throat like a lazy sigh, but it was full of crackling intensity. His voice was full of quick and full of slow. And the listener couldn’t help but think of a Louis Armstrong solo – something that was going places but was enjoying its trip there.

In the Soul of Baseball, Joe Posnanski does something nobody on this earth has been able to do – capture Buck O’Neil’s heart, his intentions, his voice on the pages of a book.

The premise of the book is simple – tell the story of the Negro Leagues through the eyes of its greatest ambassador. But there are key points throughout the book, when Buck pauses to explain things to an autograph-seeker or child or baseball player or Posnanski himself. In these half-spoken, half-sung proverbs, Posnanski understands what is happening and puts aside his narrative for awhile, allowing instead Buck’s lesson to be printed in lyrical format, so that we too might hear his song and try to understand what he’s saying.

There is no substitute for the real thing. If you never met Buck (I never did), some audio from Buck or perhaps the famous “Baseball” documentary by Ken Burns would be the next best thing. But Posnanski has a familiar eye, and he is able to spot things unseen to most others, things that you wouldn’t get from watching Buck talk or listening to him laugh. It is these small observations that lead the reader to understand Posnanski’s crucial role in this book.

We were all (especially here in Kansas City) amazed by Buck’s kindness, we all laughed at his old, self-depreciating jokes. But Posnanski can explain what happens past that.

Call it Buck O’Neil, annotated.

I read the first half of the book in about an hour and a half on the day it was released. To be honest, I was unimpressed. This was one of the finer sportswriters in the world writing about one of the greatest humans who has ever walked the earth, and all he can do is rehash the same stories we’ve all heard in his columns, introduce us to the same Buck we’ve already met?

But as I was telling my father about some of the things Buck did, some of the jokes he told, some of the lessons he imparted, I realized that so many parts of the book had stuck with me. I began to understand that Posnanski wasn’t telling us the same stories. It was deeper than that.

And it was in this mindset that I read the second half of the book and realized the things I had been missing: this book indeed holds a lot of entertaining and little-known stories about Negro League legends and it narrates the last year in Buck’s life, two things well worth the price of the book alone – but through Buck, this book offers a peak at the world through the eyes of a hero. It offers a window on the world we all should be so lucky to look through.

Buck spoke of love and life. He used baseball as his way out of the celery fields of Sarasota, Florida. So later in life, he chose baseball as his way into the hearts of listeners.

When Buck testified before the U.S. Congress as a formality to designate his Kansas City museum as the official Negro Leagues Baseball Museum of America, he said everything about baseball he wanted to, save one thing. He didn’t know how to say it though. It was after, in the halls as he was getting up to leave the Congress building, that he thought of what he came to say. He noticed a television nearby. He imagined that TV blaring with the famous Willie Mays catch in the World Series, and pondered its effect on viewers, even in an important, bustling building filled with important, bustling people.

In Buck’s lyrical style:

If Willie was up there
People would stop making laws.
They would stop running.
They would stop arguing about
Little things
Or big things.
No Democrat or Republican,
No black and white,
No North or South.
Everyone would just stop,
Watch the TV,
Watch Willie Mays make that catch.
That’s baseball, man.

I’m glad I took the journey with Posnanski. I’d recommend you do, too.