I Was Right on Time

O'Neil, Buck. I Was Right on Time. New York: Simon & Schuster 1996. Print.

First Sentences:

Call me Buck.


Description:

Since it is nearing the end of summer and therefore the baseball season, I thought fans might enjoy this highly entertaining, first-hand account of the Negro Leagues as written by a player from that era. Buck O'Neil's I Was Right on Time offers an insider's look at and stories about the players, teams, stadiums, and fans, along with the quirks of each one as remembered by O'Neil, an actual Negro League player, featured storyteller on the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee.

 

O'Neil, using his conversationally casual writing style, takes us on his personal journey from his boyhood days playing pick-up baseball games to his eventual signing to play with the mighty Kansas City Monarchs, considered to be one of the best Negro teams ever, with lineups that included Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, Bullet Joe Rogan, and Rube Foster. The Monarchs were the first team to play under the lights, mounted on telephone poles which gave them a home field advantage for any ball hit into the darkness above those low-level lights. Hde later became a scout and coach in the (White) major league.

And the stories are absolutely the best, particularly those featuring O'Neil's teammate, Satchel Paige. O'Neil laughs at the events that caused Paige to always refer to O'Neil as "Nancy." O'Neil also recounts when, in the Negro League World Series with the Homestead Grays and their feared home-run hitter, Josh Gibson, Paige intentionally walked the bases loaded just to face Gibson in a critical situation to see who was the best. Or the time Paige told all his fielders to leave their positions and come to the mound while he went about striking out the side.

O'Neil writes about players with colorful nicknames: Sea Boy, Gunboat, Steel Arm Davis, Ankleball Moss, Copperknee, Mosquito, Popeye, and Suitcase. Of course, there are anecdotes about the more famous Negro League players such as Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Frank Robinson (the first major league Black manager), Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Bob Gibson as well as some tremendously talented, if lesser known stars like Larry Doby,  Luke Easter, Smokey Joe Williams, Josh Gibson,and Cool Papa Bell ("So fast he could get into bed after switching off the light switch before the room got dark." Spoiler: Bell had noticed a slight in his hotel room's on/off switch, causing a slight delay before the lights went black. Bell won some money from a gullible Paige for that neat trick).

 

And O'Neil clears up many misconceptions, such as that the one that Negro League players were inferior to white major leaguers. O'Neil compares all-star lineups from each league and concludes the Negro players would have a strong chance to beat their White counterparts. Also, his league did not play make-shift games in rag-tag environments with poor equipment as so often was portrayed in movies. Negro Leaguers in fact played established schedules in up-to-date ball parks, cheered on by fans that rivaled the major league parks in attendance numbers.

O'Neil has plenty of stories as well from his own later career as a major league coach and scout. I particularly gasped when, while in Mississippi scouting for the Chicago Cubs, O'Neil once got lost looking for the Jackson State-Grambling game and ended up at an unknown field where the Klu Klux Klan was holding a fund-raising rally in white robes and full hooded regalia.

As a member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee, O'Neil was instrumental in petitioning the Hall to consider including Negro League players initially not eligible for the Hall. Later, he and the Veterans Committee were tasked to come up with the historic Negro League players worthy  to be considered for Hall inclusion. Luckily, O'Neil had either played with, coached, or at least heard about most of the best men from the past.

 

But O'Neil also inserts a few examples of the prejudices facing him and these players, from restaurants to hotels to press coverage, that still go on as he wrote this book.

I still hear African-American players referred to as "articulate," as if we should be surprised a black man speaks so well. I still see a black player labeled as an underachiever, while a while player who carries the same stats is called an overachiever. Joe DiMaggio? Why, when people talk of him, they talk of his grace and his intelligence and his consistency. Willie Mays? He was "naturally gifted," as if he didn't have to work as hard as DiMaggio to be come a great ballplayer. Poppycock. From 1949-1962, eleven of the fourteen National League MVP trophies went to black men, and all of them, including Mays, Aaron, and Banks, worked damn hard to get those trophies.

But for the most part, O'Neil revels in the wonderful opportunity he had to be a part of this league and play with these men who were heroes in their communities. It's a warm, funny, honest depiction of that era, one that any fan (or anyone else) interested in fascinating stories about bigger-than-life personalities playing the game they loved.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ritter, Lawrence. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It.  

The definitive book of early baseball in the late 1800s through the early1900s as told through oral interviews with the men who played the game then. (previously reviewed here)