Buck Passed (Not dead, just overlooked. Just like your Grandma.)

Today, you might hear many KC sports personalities decry the fact that KC legend Buck O'Neil was denied acceptance to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Throughout their blather you have to remember that professional sports is an industry that is inherently racist and exploitive and truly unimportant. Additionally, all sports reporters are either failed athletes or closeted homosexuals and often both. And as The Star whines that the snub was an "injustice" you may realize that the faux outrage is more about appeasing white guilt rather than offering any tribute to O'Neil . . . Especially since he seemed to take the rejection in stride.

As much as I like him as a person, I won't cry crocodile tears for Buck O'Neil. At 94, I'm sure the guy has endured greater disappointments. While sports enthusiasts point out that O'Neil's numbers weren't that great during his career other Black nationalists types will note that he was playing in a league where the athletes were much better than the crop of pasty white guys who played for Caucasian audiences. It both cases, they are wrong, stupid and hackneyed.

And while I'd like to view O'Neil as a kindly old gentleman right out of a Stephen King novel or the guy that Skynard was singing about in "The Ballad of Curtis Loew" the truth is that Buck O'Neil is largely responsible for the costly failure known as Negro leagues Baseball Museum and the other abandoned attractions on 18th and Vine that have this city drowning in red ink.

With a smile and a wink and that sense of guilt that white people feel toward every elderly Black person O'Neil suckered the people of KC into paying for an attraction that has played host to just as many dead hookers as paying customers.

So, I don't feel that bad that the guy didn't get his award because the millions that Kansas City has thrown away in his honor should suffice. Additionally, I think it's nice that the people of KC have taken him into their heart and made him a kind of mascot in order to quell mentions of this town's bigoted past and present. I guess we ought to honor at least one local old person since so few of us spend any time with our own elderly relatives.