Exhibit 4.8

Buck O'Neil

This week's long overdue correction of a national shame is that the Hall of Fame announced a Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award that will be given out a maximum of once out of every three years to "an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball's positive impact on society, has broadened the game's appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O'Neil." Appropriately, the first winner is O'Neil who they will honor with a large statue outside the entrance to Cooperstown. This almost makes up for the tragic way they denied him a spot in the Hall during the last year of his life.

If you don't know anything about Buck, read his wikipedia entry or Joe Posnanski's book on him. Basically, he was a great Negro League player and manager, the first African-American manager in the MLB, a long-time scout who discovered and mentored some of the all-time greats, and the man who almost single-handily created the Negro League museum in KC and kept the legacy of the Negro League alive.

In my opinion, he's one of the 5 or 10 most important people in baseball history, an embodiment of everything that's great about the game. Yet somehow when the Hall of Fame got around to inducting a group of players, managers, owners, and coaches from the Negro Leagues in 2006--something Buck led the fight for--he didn't get enough votes (this would be the equivalent of creating a Hosts of Saturday Night Live Hall of Fame and not inducting Alec Baldwin). At the time he said, "God's been good to me. They didn't think Buck was good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. That's the way they thought about it and that's the way it is, so we're going to live with that. Now, if I'm a Hall of Famer for you, that's all right with me. Just keep loving old Buck. Don't weep for Buck. No, man, be happy, be thankful."

Always a man of class, Buck O'Neil gave the induction speech for the 17 people they did induct that year. He was dead 6 months later.

MLB was humiliated with what happened to Buck as there was no other way to elect him into the Hall (short of ignoring procedure and doing it by fiat) so I guess this award/statue is their solution. Honestly, it's a pretty good one. Buck deserved better while he was alive, but, as he would be the first to remind everyone, it was never about him.

Maybe it's just because Buck is Kansas City baseball--even more than, say, George Brett--but I feel a little better about things today. Let's end this by watching Buck sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," a Kauffman Stadium tradition.

If that didn't give you chills, you might be dead.

Check out the next edition of correcting a national shame where we discuss the return of habeus corpus some time around 2009.