* * *
Buck was ninety-three years old. People often marveled about his age. Buck never turned down an invitation to speak, and he never said no to a charity, and he often appeared at three and four events a day. And it was amazing: Buck always seemed fresh and alive and young. Only those close to him understood that it was an illusion, that he worked hard to stay young. He took catnaps on the car rides between appearances. He ate two meals a day as he had for seventy-five years. He often showed up for an event, waved to the crowd, spoke for a few minutes, and then excused himself. “Where did Buck go?” people would ask. By the time they had noticed him missing, Buck had already collapsed in his hotel bed.
Something else invigorated him – something harder to describe. It was the thing I found myself chasing all through our road trip. That day in Houston, Buck had signed autographs and told stories and posed for photographs. By the time the ballgame started, he was already exhausted. By the second inning, the sun had beaten him down too. Buck announced that he was ready to go home. Then something small happened. The Houston right fielder, Jason Lane, tossed a baseball into the stands at the end of an inning. The ball landed a few rows down from where we were sitting. Two people reached for the ball. One was a thirty-something man in a sports coat and loosened tie. The other was a boy, probably ten or eleven. The boy wore a Houston Astros jersey with the number 7 on it. Buck always loved baseball numerology. Number 7 was particularly magical – it was Mickey Mantle’s number. In Houston, 7 belonged to Craig Biggio, a scrappy, hardworking player. Biggio was a Buck O’Neil kind of player.
The boy and the man both stretched for the ball, but the man was taller and he had the better angle. He caught the ball. He threw his arms up in the air, as if he was signaling touchdown. He showed the ball to the people around him. He did some variation of the “I got the ball!” dance you see at ballparks. The man was happy. The boy was glum, and he sat down.
“What a jerk,” I said.
“What’s that?” Buck muttered.
“That guy down there caught the ball and won’t give it to a kid sitting right behind him.”
Buck looked down and – on cue – the man showed his new baseball to his neighbors. He talked at a feverish pace. Even though we were a few rows back and could not pick up on what he was saying, I had no doubt he was recounting his catching, and I had no doubt that the longer he talked, the more dazzling his catch would become. Everyone likes to believe they’re the hero of the story. In this guy’s mind, the story was not: “Hey, look at me, I’m the jerk who took this ball away from a kid.” No, in his revisionist history, he had to jump up to catch the ball. He had to stand on his chair. He had to catch the ball to save a baby. Maybe he had to dodge snakes and avoid rolling boulders. By the end of the game, I suspected, he would make this catch seem on par with the catch made by Al Gionfriddo, “the Little Italian,” who went back to the wall in the 1947 World Series and snagged a Joe DiMaggio smash, spurring the Great Dimaggio to kick the dirt in disgust. The man in the sports coat and loosened tie looked proud as he relived his heroics. One row bad, the kid in the number 7 jersey moped while his father mussed his hair.
“What a jerk,” I said again.
“Don’t be so hard on him,” Buck mumbled. “He might have a kid of his own at home.”
That stopped me cold. A kid of his own. I had not thought of that. I looked hard at the man, who now wrapped his fingers across the seams of the baseball. He appeared to be showing his friends how to throw a curveball. A kid of his own. True, the man did not seem the father type. But it was possible. I tired to imagine this man’s kid sleeping at home – a little boy, perhaps sleeping on Houston Astros bedsheets. I tried to imagine the boy’s thrill the next morning when he woke up, got out of bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and then looked toward his dresser, and … what’s this? A baseball! White! Glowing!
Did you catch this for me, Dad?
You betcha. It was a one-handed grab! I had to dodge a snake! And later, if you finish your homework, we’ll go out and throw that ball around. I’ll teach you how to throw a curveball.
Would you, Dad? That would be so great!
I tried, as I would the whole road trip with Buck O’Neil, to see things through his eyes. For five seasons, I would watch Buck look at the bright side. He had every reason to feel cheated by life and time – he had been denied so many things, in and out of baseball, because of what he called “my beautiful tan.” Yet his optimism never failed him. Hope never left him. He always found good in people.
“Wait a minute,” I said to Buck. “If this jerk has a kid, why didn’t he bring the kid to the ballgame?”
Buck O’Neil smiled. He was not tired now. He looked young again.
“Maybe,” Buck said without hesitation, “his child is sick.”
And I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I would never beat Buck O’Neil at this game.
