Joe Posnanski: Thoughts in a bookstore →
Joe is the best, even (especially?) when writing about books, and about book stores:
I was in this very bookstore once when Buck O’Neil called me. This was in the last few months of Buck’s life, and it was also in the last few months of me writing my book about Buck. I had not written a book before, and I had no idea how to do it. I still don’t, but I knew eve less then. So I would go to bookstore five or six nights a week, and just wander around, try to soak it all in. I would pick up books and read first paragraphs. I would read last paragraphs. I would try to feel what form my book should take. I don’t know know that I figured it out, but I think I learned a lot trying.
In any case, I remember everything very specifically about the night Buck called. I had just walked out of the sports section, and I was wandering over to fiction when my phone buzzed. I don’t think Buck ever called me on my cell before … I can remember being surprised he even knew my cell phone number.
He had called mostly to ask a favor. A couple of days before, there had been an election to add Negro League players and contributors into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The committee essentially was given free reign to add as many people as they wanted, and they took advantage of their freedom by adding an astounding 17 people. It was a free-for-all. All of the 17 were dead, long dead, decades dead. And more or less the one viable person they did not add was probably the one person the Hall of Fame wanted honored when they put together the committee in the first place: My friend Buck O’Neil.
Buck played well in the Negro Leagues, managed brilliantly in the Negro Leagues, scouted the Negro Leagues and spent more than half his life fighting to keep alive the memory of the Negro Leagues. It was a shock when he was not inducted, and, to his friends and fans, an insult. Tears mixed with fury. Buck, of course, handled it with the beautiful grace that marked his life. On the day of the inductions, he introduced the 17 new inductees and led people in song.
The favor was classic Buck. He wanted me to thank people for all the support after Hall of Fame day. He wanted them to know he never felt more loved. This was five years ago, almost to the day, and I told Buck that I would certainly let everybody know how he felt. Then there was a long pause. I was walking by the S authors in the fiction section. I remember seeing Salinger. And then Buck said this:
“You know … a few weeks ago, a guy asked me: ‘Who is that white boy who is following you around all the time?’”
I had followed Buck for a year, from New York to San Francisco, from Chicago to Houston, from Atlanta back home to Kansas City. I had heard him tell story after story — sometimes word for word — and I had heard him sing, and I had watched baseball games with him, and I had shared many meals with him (ALWAYS with desert) and I had hugged him many times. I had listened again and again to his peaceful words. I had no idea how to turn all that into a book, how to make people feel the spirit of Buck, how to make people hear the music of Buck, I had no idea. I only knew that I had to do it, that this was as important as anything I would ever write. This is why I wandered around bookstores at night.
“What did you say?” I asked Buck.
Another pause. There’s a certain light in a bookstore that I have come to love. It’s bright enough to make the words clear, but dark enough to keep your head from throbbing. I was standing still then, right next to Steinbeck’s “Winter of Our Discontent.” I remember thinking that I had not read it.
Buck said: “I told him, ‘Can’t you tell? That’s my son.’”
Five years ago. Buck died that October. You want to know why I went to the bookstore? I went for Steinbeck’s “Winter of Our Discontent.” It wasn’t there. They said they could order it, but the sad thing is that those days are gone. I can order it myself.
