Keith Olbermann of MSNBC reported on the passing Buck O'Neil and paid much attention to the fact that a special election had been held at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York on a one-time basis to elect a certain number of outstanding players from the old Negro Baseball Leagues to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The simple answer is they all belonged in the Hall of Fame. Period. I rewrote the obituary to reflect the real insight and humanity of Buck O'Neil.
Buck O'Neil (1911 - 2006) died last Friday night. He was one of the greatest baseball players from the old Negro Leagues who would have been a star in the professional leagues. More than that, a week before he had been walking down the street with several friends. They walked past a woman in a red dress and continued up the block to a restaurant and went in. They noticed that Buck wasn't with them. Going back outside, they found him talking to the young woman in the red dress. When asked, Buck O'Neil responded that he had learned to never pass up the opportunity to talk to a woman in a red dress.
I want to live in the society where I can do that, please.
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6 comments:
I never pass up the opportunity to talk to a man...
Baseball never quite took off in the colonies...neither did the name Buck for some reason!
love that story!
You can do it, you know you can.
That's why I blog, I creat it here, I hope. I also hope you can do it too. I am definitely into this equality thing
I experienced the totally puzzeling, to me, red dress phenomenon first hand. I used to work as an architect in the greater Boston area, and I had one red dress. It gave total body coverage, no cleavage or slit up the side, screaming: Look At Me! Look At Me!
I noticed that when I wore the red dress, some of the men I passed on my way into the building or on my way across the park to get to my car, felt compelled to tell me how great I looked. One even said, "Mmm mmm, sure do look good in that dress." I also got wolf whistles from passing cars. If I was wearing any other color: nothing.
I frequently had lunch at the cafeteria in a bank nearby. One winter day I set my tray down at an empty table, took off my coat, and sat down. I was soon joined by a man who, after greeting me said, "I want you." You guessed it, I had the red dress on. He gave me his card, a stock broker, and with puppy dog eyes asked me to call him.
I told my husband about the strange powers this dress seemed to have. He was not happy to hear about it. But he did agree that I looked really great in that dress.
I still have it and I may pass it down to my daughter so that it can journey through the generations, and maybe someday science will be able to shed light on the origin of its mysterious powers. Now it is too late to ask Buck.
Geez! I'm going to have to hijack this comment for a blog entry, it got so long.
By the way, you gave me my first laugh of the morning. My husband and I have a standing agreement that he will communicate by way of foot under table, when I should stop talking.
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