Ken Burns | "There's Nobody Better than Buck"

Black Diamonds

SiriusXM

History, Baseball, Black History, Sports, Negro Leagues, Documentary, Equality, Society & Culture, Civil Rights

4.8 • 617 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2024

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ken Burns joins Bob Kendrick to discuss the making of his 1994 landmark documentary “Baseball” and the episode “Shadow Ball” which highlighted the stars of the Negro Leagues and revealed Buck O’Neil to a worldwide audience for the first time. Bob and Ken discuss the influence of the Negro Leagues on Civil Rights, the pivotal roles Jackie Robinson, Buck O’Neil and Henry Aaron played in that progress, how the public’s understanding and appreciation of the Negro Leagues continues to grow and how Ken’s friendship with Buck O’Neil enriched his life. Bob also discusses Ken Burns’s latest project, “Leonardo da Vinci.” And, for the first time publicly released, hear Ken’s moving eulogy at Buck O’Neil’s memorial service in 2006.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take me out to the ball game.
0:10.0	Take me out to the crowd.
0:13.0	Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks.
0:17.0	I don't care if I ever get back.
0:20.0	We'll root, root, root for the home team if they don't care if I ever get back We'll root root root for the home team
0:23.3	If they don't win it's a shame
0:26.1	One, two, three strikes you out at the old ball game
0:32.2	I've been telling these stories for 40 years and no one ever listened.
0:43.6	Buckle Neil once told me.
0:46.0	And then Ken Burns came along and gave him a platform and people began to listen.
0:54.6	And then they wouldn't stop listening to this very charming, gentle man who in the epic
1:05.1	documentary series baseball was telling these wonderful baseball stories to baseball fans y'all that they had never heard before
1:15.7	and he was doing it with a twinkle in his eye and a smile that lit up the screen and America fell in love
1:25.6	with buck o'neill he was 82 years young at that time.
1:31.6	And as I've oftentimes said, the good Lord blessed him to live another 12 years
1:38.1	where he was literally gallivanting across this country,
1:43.2	preaching the gospel of the Negro Leagues and the virtues of his Negro Leagues baseball museum to any and everyone who would listen.
1:54.5	And he would have been the first to tell you that it likely would not have happened had Ken Burns not tapped him to be in the
2:05.3	baseball documentary series. It catapulted Buck into national stardom. And it afforded him opportunities
2:15.7	that I think even surprised Buck as his popularity began to soar.
2:23.6	And it came at such a critical time for Buck's Negro League's baseball museum because the museum was also starting to grow.
2:31.6	And that incredible wave of momentum that was built by his appearances
	...

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