(This story originally appeared in the May 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine)
I’m so happy I got to write this story about the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. It’s really a testament to my bosses at Yankees Magazine that they let me do this stuff. This is barely a Yankees story — I tried to get some Yankees and Yankee Stadium connections in there, but this is clearly a story about a museum in another city.
I was so lucky to be shown around the museum by Bob Kendrick and Ray Doswell. Kendrick, the president of the museum, is the voice of the late Buck O’Neil. His work is to keep Buck’s memory alive and vibrant, and throughout the museum, it’s so clear that he succeeds.
In my effort to expand the scope somewhat, I tried to focus on ways that the Negro Leagues endure in culture, and what that can help us understand about the way the game was played in that time and under those conditions. I focused on two things: Fences, the August Wilson play-turned-Denzel Washington/Viola Davis movie; and The Summer King, a new opera about Josh Gibson that debuted this past April in Pittsburgh. It was fascinating to dive deep into these two works, and I tried my best to do them justice.
This piece was an absolute joy for me in all facets. I hope you’ll read it.