"The Hall of Fame Class of 2022": Bob Kendrick on the Hall's history with the Negro Leagues, and the icons up for election this weekend

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

4.8 • 617 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Bob Kendrick previews the Negro Leagues candidates up for election to the Hall of Fame on December 5, as part of the Early Baseball Era Committee ballots - with a discussion of the history of the Negro Leagues' inclusion in the Hall (00:41), a special conversation with Geraldine Day, the wife of the last living Negro Leagues electee, the late Leon Day (13:08), and a breakdown of why each individual candidate on the ballot deserves enshrinement (21:05).

Transcript

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0:00.0	This coming weekend, the early baseball era committee is scheduled to vote on the Hall of Fame induction of seven Negro League icons, including the great John Donaldson and my good friend the late great Buckle Neil.
0:19.1	They're deserving. They're overdue. And they make up just a
0:22.9	small sampling of the under-representation of Negro League Baseball players in Cooperstown. This is the story
0:29.7	of the complicated history and the hopeful future of the Negro Leagues and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
0:51.5	The year was 1990 and the late great Buck O'Neill and Horace Peterson, who ran the Black Archives of Mid-America.
1:00.8	They were eating in a small soul food diner in Kansas City called Maxine's.
1:06.0	Maxine's restaurant couldn't have been very much bigger than my office, but the food was amazing, and it was one of those spots where virtually everybody in Black
1:13.1	Castle City went and hung out and ate because Miss Maxine could cook.
1:18.9	And it was in Maxine's restaurant that Horace Peterson meant into Buck about an epiphany that he
1:27.3	had and a desire to create some kind of edifice
1:32.0	that would pay tribute to the Negro Leagues. Horace's original idea was to do a Negro Leagues
1:39.5	baseball Hall of Fame. And Buck O'Neill's response to him was, no, Horace, we don't need a Negro League's Hall of Fame. And Buck O'Neill's response to him was, no, Horace, we don't need a Negro
1:47.1	League's Hall of Fame. Any and everyone who played this game at his highest level should be
1:55.3	recognized at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. And so Horace's suggestion or Horace's response to Buck was,
2:04.1	well, Buck, what do you think we should do?
2:07.0	Let's build a Negro Leagues baseball museum.
2:11.3	After all, it was going to be much better for us
2:14.0	to educate and substantiate what this history meant as opposed to building a pseudo
2:23.7	Hall of Fame when you realize that you have a finite number of players that you would be
2:30.1	able to induct into your Hall of Fame. But it had always been important for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to advocate on behalf of
2:42.5	those very deserving players from the Negro Leagues to be considered for induction into the
2:50.4	National Baseball Hall of Fame.
	...

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