BOSTON — John “Buck” O’Neil finally made the Hall of Fame. But he won’t receive a plaque. Instead, others will get their name on a plaque honoring O’Neil.
Commissioner Bud Selig and the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday announced the establishment of the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of the longtime Negro League player and even longer ambassador to the game.
The award will honor players, according to Jane Forbes Clark, chairman of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, “of outstanding character, integrity, citizenship, whose efforts to enhance and to dignify baseball’s legacy as it relates to American culture are extraordinary.”
A life-size statue of O’Neil will be built and placed at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., next to a plaque bearing each recipient’s name.
However, the award will be awarded every three years and given “at the discretion of the board of directors,” Clark said.
“In some ways it’s going to even be bigger than getting a plaque in the Hall of Fame, because your name is going to come up more frequently as we present the award,” said Joe Morgan, Hall of Famer and vice chairman of the Hall of Fame. “As we African-Americans who have played owe a debt to Jackie Robinson for what he did, I think the Negro League players owe a debt to Buck O’Neil for keeping their legacy alive and keeping them in the public’s eye and getting a lot of them voted into the Hall of Fame.”
Clark called O’Neil “among the greatest ambassadors that this game ever had.”
In his nearly 80 years of service to baseball, he was credited for promoting the Negro League legends and for helping place Negro League players into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The statue will be revealed and the award’s first recipient will be announced at the next Hall of Fame weekend in summer 2008.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
