The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski Page B

would stand in foul ground between innings. People in the stands would throw pennies and nickels at him. He remembered catching every coin. Later, when he played first base for the Monarchs, he loved being in the field. He remembered a game in Chicago where a player lashed a line drive to his left and he dove and caught it. The next batter lashed one to his right, and he dove and caught it again.
    “Hit it to someone else!” someone yelled from the depths of the crowd.
    While Buck signed baseballs, a woman threw out the first pitch. She had confessed to Buck that she was so nervous she had been practicing for days. He told her not to worry, it would turn out fine. He was wrong. The ball squirted out of her hand sideways and rolled mockingly toward the Minnesota Twins dugout. She buried her face in her hands as people booed. There were not many people in the stands to boo. Twins coach Al Newman walked on the field, stepped behind a microphone stand, and told the crowd about what Buck O’Neil meant to baseball. “He is living history,” Newman said. Buck shouted, “Well, I am living!” Buck walked out to the mound to throw out his first pitch. He looked over at the woman and winked.
    He stepped on the mound and wound up as if he were going to throw the ball as hard as he could. Then he stopped and jogged forward a few steps.
    He wound up again. Stopped. Jogged forward a few steps.
    Wound up once more. Stopped. Jogged forward. He gently placed the baseball in the glove of Twins outfielder Jacque Jones, and they hugged as the crowd cheered. The woman said, “I should have done it that way.”
    “No,” a Twins official said, “only one person could pull that off.”
    Buck walked off with his hands in the air. The Twins manager, Ron Gardenhire, stepped out of the dugout and shouted, “You look good, Buck!”
    “I know it,” Buck O’Neil said.
     
     
     
    B UCK CLIMBED THE stairs and walked around to a table set up for him to sign autographs. The line of people stretched almost all the way around the concourse. He was on his fifteenth hour of Buck O’Neil Day, and he was finally showing signs of wearing down. He signed autographs quietly. He posed for pictures without his usual playfulness. A few people tried to ask him questions. He answered quickly. One woman said, “You can’t know what this means to me just to be near you.” She did not want an autograph. She just wanted to touch his hands. Buck held her hands and looked like he wanted to say something, but no words came out.
    A man from Seattle had tears in his eyes. “You mean everything to me,” he said. Buck nodded and signed the next autograph.
    “You okay, Buck?” a Twins official asked. He did not answer her. He kept signing autographs mechanically, again and again, a fourteen-second chore kicked off with the rounding of the B . The big swooping letters gave him the most trouble. He could run through the next three letters with relative ease, but the last name brought trouble. The O in “O’Neil” was the toughest for him—his hand shook and it simply would not let him complete the circle. Sometimes the O did come out somewhat rounded, though most of the time it looked like a deflated a beach ball. He struggled with the N, labored through the e and i, and he no longer could put away the l with the flourish he had as a younger man.
    The line kept growing until finally the Twins cut it off. Unfortunately, they cut it off right in front of a man who wanted to be heard. He shouted that he had brought his wife and child to meet Buck O’Neil—and sure enough, a woman and child stood behind the screaming man, though they did not seem too eager to be connected to him. The man’s face blushed crimson. The Twins official said she would try to arrange something, but the man just kept stomping and cursing and shouting that he had brought his family to meet Buck O’Neil, and they would by God meet Buck O’Neil. A few steps away, Buck signed more