Guest Writer: Bebop, Baseball and Barbecue

Mrs. Orel is back with another travelogue!

Kansas City, Missouri, is startlingly green in September. It may also be verdant in other months, but I happened to be a September visitor and grateful for a weekend away from our SoCal beige.

I had an entire Sunday to roam around a charming city dedicated to preserving architecture and culture while, one hopes, advancing beyond a bitter history of racial exclusion.

I drove through quiet streets in a downtown both fully modern and historically authentic, with brick buildings and signage that had my head spinning with images from the 1930s and 40s.

The city's main library branch sports a stunning facade of giant book spines.

The refurbished Folly Theater, built in 1900, is close to the modern Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

I found my way to 18th & Vine, the birthplace of Charlie "Bird" Parker and the signature Kansas City sound of jazz. In the early 19th century, this African-American neighborhood bebopped and bustled in 24-hour clubs virtually ignored by the laws of prohibition.

A black-owned hotel both employed and served members of a community otherwise banned from dining at linen-covered tables in downtown Kansas City.

As the civil rights movement took hold in the 50s and 60s, much of the population left 18th & Vine, the music scene diminished and the fine side of a robust locale became derelict.

A determined restoration of the area began in the 1990s and continues now, anchored by the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

I wandered through both of these museums, engulfed in poignant stories of struggle and bigotry side by side with artistic and athletic triumphs.

In the 1920s, tens of thousands showed up to watch the Kansas City Monarchs play on Sundays after church. In 1930, the Monarchs were the first team to rig a portable lighting system, enabling night games. This was five years before any major-league team adopted a nighttime lighting system.

Some of the baseball stars of the era:

• Buck O'Neil
  
• Rube Foster
  
• Satchel Paige
  
• Jackie Robinson
  
• Josh Gibson
  
• Oscar Charleston
  
• Cool Papa Bell
  
• Martin Dihigo
  

The baseball museum, a font of historical information, includes short films, replicas of player housing on the road, a typical barbershop, and the stunning Field of Legends, where bronze sculptures of the stars appear to be caught in mid-game.

Statue of Satchel Paige.

After a few hours of swimming in Kansas City jazz and baseball, I scored a table at Jack Stack Barbecue's famous Freight House joint for a cold brew, burnt ends, pork ribs and cheesy corn.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Then it's time for you to take a trip to Kansas City, MO.

Book Review: The Soul of Baseball

The lovely Mrs. Orel was kind enough to gift me with a Kindle this Xmas. My first e-book purchase? The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski (not pictured at the left. That's Jeff Bezos).

SoSG readers know we are big fans of Posnanski, who marries a sharp and rational baseball mind with a skill for lucid, convincing writing. He's now one of my favorite sportswriters (along with Gary Smith, Steve Rushin and pre-repeating-himself Rick Reilly). Combine Posnanski's considerable talents with a subject as worthy as Buck O'Neil and the Negro Leagues, and you get one must-read book. Naturally, I got to it three years after it came out.

No matter, as The Soul of Baseball is timeless, despite viewing the Negro Leagues, which had its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, through the eyes of O'Neil, who was 93 when Posnanski decided to write a book about him. While the pairing came naturally — Posnanski wrote for the Kansas City Star, and O'Neil played for and managed the Kansas City Monarchs (and later scouted for the Royals) — the exact focus of the book was not quite as straightforward.

As Posnanski describes it, his project started as a recollection of one particular Negro League game and morphed into a Buck O'Neil travelogue. History buffs will still find plenty of Negro League-era details; the book does an effective job of detailing the gameplay and personalities of the time. But its shining strength is simply being a first-person account of spending time with Buck O'Neil.

How to describe Buck O'Neil? Words like survivor and irrepressible and optimist come to mind, but they diminish the complexity of a man who played so many roles on and off the field, who endured more than is imaginable — and who nonetheless came through it all with a self-awareness, a sense of humor and a giving nature. Reading about Buck O'Neil will make you want to be a better person.

And reading Joe Posnanski's work will make you weep — either from emotion or despair, because how can we hope to write half this well? Conversational but not casual, Posnanski's writing eschews sentiment — the word plainspoken, but only in the most positive sense, comes to mind — yet his writing somehow makes you feel sentimental.

As an example, please see his non-sports, Harry Potter-related blog post:

• Katie the Prefect (Joe Blogs)

If that didn't move you a least a little bit, then you, sir or madam, are a total hardass. But if you liked it, then you'll love The Soul of Baseball. Get your mitts on a copy and get jazzed for a good book, for baseball, and for life in general.

♦

Other book reviews at SoSG:

• Dodgers Past & Present by Steven Travers (reviewed by Sax)
  
• 100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Jon Weisman (reviewed by Orel)
  
• The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (reviewed by AC)

And now... a serious post from the Delino

Sorry to disappoint those who were hoping for my take on Conveyor Belt of Love. But I came across this article and felt it was worth passing on. From ESPN: Recession hits Negro Leagues Museum.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, a unique window into a vital chapter of American history that the late Buck O'Neil helped open 20 years ago, could be in trouble. Attendance and revenues are down, and a decision by new management to distance itself from O'Neil has splintered many of its most loyal supporters.

What's more, the recession has cut deeply into donations. After posting its first loss two years ago of about $30,000, the museum is looking at what one staffer termed "a monster loss" that could approach a quarter of a million dollars when the final accounting for 2009 is complete. For a relatively small museum that has always depended on the kindness of others, $200,000 is seismic.

Much of the revenue loss is traceable to a drop in licensing revenue. No one is predicting the museum's imminent demise, but everyone agrees the trend must be reversed. "For museums all over the country, dollars are becoming hard to find," said Greg Baker, who took over as executive director a little more than a year ago. "We are challenged by that. We've got to raise money to keep going and if we don't, we'll end up closing our doors."

In case you are interested, the Museum's site has a link for membership/donations.

And that is all for the serious news. Tune in soon for "Saying Goodbye to Beast Mode: One Fan's Tearful Farewell"

Dodgers Select Andrew Porter in Ceremonial Negro League Draft

Andruw "Pullman" Porter

Dave Winfield came up with the inspired idea of conducting a ceremonial draft of living Negro League players to accompany this year's First-Year Player Draft. Each major league team has been assigned a former Negro League player, who will receive a small stipend...and a small piece of long-overdue attention.

Fittingly, the Dodgers' selection is a flamethrower: Andrew Porter:

Los Angeles Dodgers: Andrew Porter, P, Baltimore, Louisville, Cleveland, Newark, and Indianapolis
His nickname was "Pullman," and the powerful Porter worked as hard as a Pullman porter. Noted for throwing smoke, he became one of the linchpins in the 1930s of an Elite Giants rotation that featured Bill Byrd and Jonas Gaines, legendary pitchers from black baseball. Porter, who played in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, played in the Negro League East-West All-Star Game in 1932 and 1950. He is second oldest Negro Leaguer and one of the few who barnstormed against Major Leaguers. In his later baseball days, he played for the first all-black team in organized baseball (Porterville Comets in 1952).

Finally, an Andrew we can all get behind!

photo courtesy of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum