YouTube Gold: Buck O’Neil With Two Great Satchel Paige Stories

Buck O’Neil is just one of the best people America has ever produced.

Buck O’Neil lived a long, fruitful life but most people never knew much about him until Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary came along in 1994 and he emerged as the eloquent soul of the game.

O’Neil always came across as one of the more decent and generous men you could possibly imagine.

In this 2006 clip, he’s 94 years old and still just as sharp as a tack. There’s no way from this to tell when in 2006 it was made, but sadly, he died later that year.

Here he tells a story about Satchel Paige walking players so that he could go head to head with the great Josh Gibson - and then strikes him out.

He also tells a story about Paige pitching to Babe Ruth - this was not in an MLB game obviously - and that’s also highly entertaining.

O’Neil was a beautiful soul and a very fine and forgiving man. He seemed to take his religion seriously and was able to find good in anyone, which is a quality we could certainly use in our troubled times.