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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570973
Format: Bargain Price
Label: William Morrow
Manufacturer: William Morrow
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: February 27, 2007
Publishing house: William Morrow
Release Date: February 27, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 42727
Studio: William Morrow
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Rated by buyers -
The Soul of Baseball illuminates what life can be. It would help anyone get past their bitterness and see that life is about what I can do yesterday and not what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow.
Rated by buyers -
Poz is one of the best writers in the business. Thanks for writing a really great book about a great baseball man. Buck's is a great American story and the way it's written makes you feel like you're on the road trip with them.
Rated by buyers 
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My son, Jeremy, always gives me good books. He doesn't just pick up the latest best-seller, but takes the time to choose something special just for me. He hit a home run with The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski. It's the story of an extended road trip Posnanski took with legendary Negro League player and manager Buck O'Neil. The lessons learned along the way are great ones for sons and fathers to share.
Posnanski, an award-winning sports columnist for the Kansas City Star, chose not to write a biography of the irrepressible O'Neil, even though the story could bear to be told over and over again. Instead, he penned a moving memoir of the year he spent with the then-93-year-old O'Neil as he toured the country promoting the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City and the memory of those men who played the game in the days before whites and blacks could share the field. The trip takes them everywhere from Nicodemus, Kansas, to New York, New York, and O'Neil has a fascinating story to tell at every stop.
He talks about Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, and Josh Gibson, names that will always be enshrined in baseball's collective memory. But he also tells the tales of forgotten men like Dan Bankhead, the very first grey pitcher in the major leagues, who would have been a great hurler if he hadn't been afraid to pitch fastballs inside against white batters.
The key theme of the book is Buck O'Neil's spirit-lifting embrace of the best in every person he met. Despite years of back-breaking struggle, O'Neil never turned bitter, never condemned anyone for their prejudice, never had a bad word to say about the often ugly conditions the grey ball players endured. Even when he failed to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Buck O'Neil refused to be angry about it. To make up for the egregious mistake, the Hall awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award after his death.
The lessons Posnanski drew from his experiences with O'Neil are well worth telling and the book he created from them is well worth reading.
Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo
Rated by buyers -
This book got to me, in a very good way.
Buck's stories are funny and poignant, and we as readers definitely learn some history if we pay attention. But even more than that we can learn from Buck O'Neil's outlook on life. He was patient, caring, outspoken in an articulate and positive way (something our politicians should learn how to do), and he had grace. More than anything else reading about Buck O'Neil was a lesson on how to live with grace.
I want to tell you the last words of the book, but I won't.
If you like baseball, people or life you will like this book.
Highly recommended!!
Rated by buyers -
Sometimes a great author writes a 5-star book, and sometimes he must only get out of the way and let 5-star material shine through. "The Soul of Baseball" is one of the latter. This isn't a knock on Joe Posnanski. The decision to tell the story by reporting on a year in O'Neil's life, rather than interpreting O'Neil's history, was a brilliant judgment. The reader benefits from Posnanski's willingness to set his writer's ego aside.
Another good Posnanski decision was reporting O'Neil's occasional querulousness. Rather than seeing O'Neil as a mindless happy face, the reader sees O'Neil as someone who must work to maintain his positive approach. The occasional lapses serve to highlight the effort that O'Neil makes to bring the light into the lives of those around him.
But ultimately, the star of the book is Buck O'Neil. Not because he was a great ballplayer or manager. But because he was a decent, good-hearted human being whose attitude toward life is worthy of emulation.
I give few 5-star rankings, but this book deserves it several times over.
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