March 27, 2009 8:35 pm

Negro Leagues' Hall of Famers Want to Help Save Museum

Buck O’Neil’s death in 2006 left site without major voice

This is Willie Mays’ table. His autograph is right there on top of it, for everyone to see. Nobody here in the San Francisco Giants’ clubhouse is sure why or when he signed this table, but nobody’s questioning the greatest living ballplayer, either.

Mays doesn’t talk much to reporters these days, doesn’t like to answer questions. But there are exceptions.

He’s asked about the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and the skepticism on his face fades. He nods. Pull up a chair, he says. The other two men at the table get up and leave.

“You know those statues they have of all the ballplayers there?” Mays says. “Lot of those guys, I played against when I was 16.”

Mays looks away for a moment. There is silence. He’s one of four living Hall of Famers to play in the Negro Leagues. More than a half-century later, he remains close to his teammates from those days. Thisis a matter dear to his heart.

Banks, Griffey want to help

There’s an idea out there about how to save the museum: Hitch its profile to beloved and influential baseball men who hold the memories and lessons of the Negro Leagues personally important. Buck O’Neil’s death left the museum without a major voice. Finding a new one is a stated goal of new executive director Greg Baker.

Ernie Banks is excited about this idea. Ken Griffey Jr. too. Twenty-nine months after

O’Neil’s death, the museum is still trying to find its way. This could be a life raft out there. If executed properly, it could not only could put the museum on solid ground again, but perhaps make it thrive like never before.

The museum could use a voice such as Willie’s. He doesn’t hear much from anybody there. Neither do the other men who could help.

“I hear some things about that place now,” Mays says. “Are they doing OK?”

Hard to say no to Buck O’Neil

O’Neil was the museum’s greatest voice and ambassador, a smiling testament to an important and uncomfortable time in our past that’s too easily forgotten. When he passed away in the fall of 2006, a part of history went with him. Themuseum, in many ways, hasn’t recovered.

Commissioner Bud Selig would drop what he was doing to take Buck’s phone call. Millionaire ballplayers rearranged their schedules to talk. It was hard to tell Buck no. When he died, a lot of doors closed to the museum.

So the idea aims to fix some of that. What if Mays, Banks and Monte Irvin - three of the four living Hall of Famers who played in the Negro Leagues - would agree to act on Buck’s behalf?

They could promote the museum’s spirit, tell of a time when the highest level of baseball was look-but-can’t-play even to men who would become legends in the sport. Who wouldn’t listen to the Say Hey Kid or Mr. Cub?

Hall of Famers have busy lives

Their respect in and out of baseball would guarantee that the stories and spirit of the Negro Leagues don’t die with Buck. Their reputations would be invaluable in raising some muchneeded funds. Maybe the Buck O’Neil Research and Education Center could happen after all.

Details need working out, of course. These men are busy. Mays lives in San Francisco, Banks in Chicago, and Irvin in Florida. Hank Aaron, the fourth Hall of Famer, points out through a spokesperson that he’s on five boards already and can’t commit to much more.

That’s OK. The museum has Aaron’s support, and any help from the other three - Irvin has always been accessible and helpful to the museum - could help solidify the future. Endorsements from some of the most respected men in baseball would mean more credibility, exposure and, ultimately, money.

Effort could excite more Black kids

Try to talk about this idea with Baker. He doesn’t call back after two messages. A third try and he asks a receptionist to pass along his thoughts that this is more marketing director Bob Kendrick’s area.

Kendrick says this is an idea they’ve kicked around the office. That’s as far as it’s gone.

“With everything that we’ve had going on,” Kendrick says, “a lot of things just got tabled, really.”

So dial Banks and, after the beep, explain the idea. A few times a year, Banks could come to Kansas City to promote the museum. He could travel periodically, when convenient, to meet with decision makers, to raise funds and raise awareness.

A half-hour goes by, and the phone vibrates. It’s Banks. He doesn’t even wait for a hello.

“That’s a great idea,” he says. “Are you a physicist? That idea’s too smart for a sports writer. Yes, that’s a great idea.”

Banks goes on. He talks about creating an endowment, promoting it, getting active Black players to tour the museum. Maybe this is the way to get more Black kids interested in baseball.

Banks: It could work

Yes, Banks thinks this could work. His words are coming faster and faster now. This is important to him. Banks played for a game on a barnstorming tour before Cool Papa Bell signed him to play for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues. Buck O’Neil was the manager of that team, and he played Banks at shortstop.

Banks played two seasons in Kansas City, sandwiched around two years in the Army. O’Neil eventually took a job with the Cubs, and signed Banks as that team’s first Black player.

Banks thinks about his friend Buck often. There were times he watched Buck go from city to city promoting the museum for little or no money and thought it was too much.

“A lot of us were always thinking,” Banks says now, “‘When Buck goes, the museum dies.’ That’s it. And that’s what’s happening.”

This pains Banks to say. So he’s willing to help, but on a couple of conditions. He wants to know that some of his peers, men such as Mays or Aaron or Irvin or Lou Brock, would be on board. He can’t do it alone.

Buck a grandfather ‘to everybody’

And he needs to be confident in the museum’s leadership. He says he’s heard lots of things. Some he won’t repeat, others he will only in confidence, only for the ears of Cool Papa or Oscar Charleston or Buck. He has questions. He wants to hear the right answers.

“It’s got to be more than, ‘Hey, we’ve got a Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, it was started by Buck O’Neil,’” Banks says. “What is it they want to do? It can’t be about me now. Not Lou Brock, not Hank Aaron, not Willie Mays. It’s them. What do they want to do?

“It’s possible we could join hands with them and work together with them, as a team.”

Ken Griffey Jr. smiles. He loves Buck. One of the pictures on his office desk shows Griffey, 19 years old and in his rookie year, a grin on his face and an arm around Buck.

In the Seattle Mariners locker room, Griffey talks about Buck’s hands. So big and strong. Griffey laughs.

“Buck was like the grandfather to everybody,” he says. “You have Willie and Hank as like the uncles. But Buck was the grandfather.”

Griffey has been to the museum, got a personal tour from the grandfather himself. He has written checks to the museum. It’s surprising how few active players have done that.

Griffey: MLB should step in

Buck’s presence, Griffey figures, “was probably 95 percent” of the museum’s profile. He’s worried about the place’s future. He hears people want to move it to Cooperstown, next to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, or to New York City, where someone wants to start another baseball museum.

Griffey sees it as a failure on baseball’s part if the museum doesn’t make it. He looks around the Mariners’ locker room. He sees Ichiro, the pioneering star from Japan, and other teammates from Australia and Venezuela and the Netherlands. The Mariners have players from 10 countries in camp.

“For the museum to maybe not be there, it’s going to be upsetting,” Griffeysays. “Major League Baseball should step in and help out. It’s a part of why there are so many people in this locker room from different countries.”

Griffey listens to the idea, about Banks and Mays and the rest speaking on the museum’s behalf. He nods, says this is great, that he’d love to help get his generation involved, too.

Thisis the son of another major league ballplayer talking, so there is an appreciation of history here. Negro Leagues players came in and out of the house telling stories about washing clothes and then drying them outside the window of the bus on the way to the next game - were they had to stay at the Black hotel, eat at the Black restaurant.

Mays: Nobody called

It’s important to remember this period, Griffey says, to learn about the men who played during segregation and their role in the country’s civil-rights movement.

Mays is really going now. Attendance is down at the museum, and so is the profile.Much of that is the recession. It’s impacting everyone, and museums are often among the first things cut out of sponsorship budgets.

Mays can’t help everybody, he says. He lives his life and helps others with what’s left over. He wishes he could do more, but the Willie Mays name goes a long way.

“I know a lot of people,” he says, “with a lot of money.”

He can’t replace Buck. Mays wouldn’t want to. He doesn’t like a lot of attention, and isn’t comfortable speaking in front of big crowds, telling jokes, making people smile.

“It’s not my makeup,” he says, adding that if the subject wasn’t the museum and Buck, he wouldn’t be talking right now.

But he does want to help, just wonders how, and this makes Mays think of something.

His foundation in San Francisco recently raised 0,000 for youth baseball in Alabama. He wishes someone from the museum would’ve called. He’d have given 0,000 of that money to help maintain the museum’s spirit through this tough time.

Nobody called him. “I’d have done that,” he says. “I didn’t know.”