The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Baseball-Through-ONeils-America/dp/0060854030/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-1514635-5264950?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188349632&sr=8-1

I was lucky enough to meet and shake hands with Buck O'Neil just two days after he gave the induction speech for 17 Negro League players. It should have been 18 players with Buck being one of them.

Me: Mr. O'Neil, I'd like to say that I think it's a real travesty that you weren't elected to the Hall of Fame.
Buck: If it is to be, it will be.

That was all I got to say to him. He excused himself because he was late for an appointment. He had every right to be bitter and I was sort of stunned to hear what he said. He didn't say it nonchalantly either. It sounded as if he knew someday, someone would come to their senses. He may have fallen just short of the numbers the Hall likes to see, but he was clearly the Home Run King of Ambassadors of the game.

I'm not going to lie. This book made me cry. When I saw it at the bookstore and I read a couple of pages I knew it was going to be an tough read for me. But it wasn't all down. In fact, most all of it was uplifting. Extremely uplifting. It made me laugh a good deal. It made me step back in amazement at the positive nature of this one human being and it made me re-examine myself. I really didn't want the book to end, and it's not because I knew it ended with Buck dying a short 7 weeks after I shook hands with him. (No, I didn't use my super secret death handshake powers on him. I only use my powers for good, not evil).

Joe Posnanski is a very good sports journalist, and yes I know that those last two words put together sound like an oxymoron. Sports journalism is an art form itself and some, like Joe, are much better than others. I did read the hardcover edition and there were some editing mistakes. There weren't a ton of them, but there were enough to make me wonder if Joe barely made the deadline, and didn't give his editor enough time. It's no matter though. The stories about Buck, or the stories Buck tells, are so rich in character that you could care less how it was written.

You don't have to be a baseball fan, or a sports historian, or even a fan of books to appreciate this book. This is a book on life, without being preachy or overly inspirational. If you were to model your own life based on some of the things Buck demonstrated throughout his own, I guarantee you will not feel like you left this life cheated.