I Was Right on Time

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I Was Right On Time

Buck O'Neil was once the first baseman for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League. In Ken Burns' documentary Baseball, octagenerian O'Neil delivered some of the most stirring passages of the program, demonstrating himself to be an oral storyteller-par-excellence.

I Was Right On Time was presumably produced as a direct result of O'Neil's success in that program, but unfortunately I didn't feel it lived up to O'Neil's film performance. Although the book is told in a pleasant, folksy style (enough so that I suspect it was either largely transcribed from interviews, or that a lot of effort was expended to give it that feel), I don't think O'Neil's vocal style translates that well to the page. The exuberance and feeling which he conveyed on screen just don't come through here.

I'm not an expert on Negro Leagues history, but I suspect after reading this book that any treatise on that hallowed institution must of necessity be different from a "standard" book about the Major Leagues. The political and social issues in the two leagues were so different from each other that the underlying tone must be different, and - perhaps more importantly - the meticulous statistics which characterize all of Major League Baseball throughout this century don't seem to exist for the Negro Leagues.

As a result, I Was Right On Time focuses to a much greater extent on the personalities, off-field events, and legends of the Negro Leagues than on more concrete issues. This put me off for some reason, perhaps because it's not possible to really point at Josh Gibson or Satchel Paige and say, "Those men were the best there were at what they did", because we don't have the objective information to back it up. Certainly many people do feel that way about those gentlemen, and those people - including O'Neil - are entitled to their opinion. But we'll never know, and I don't think we'll even be able to make a very good guess as to what the true answer is.

I tend to be of a statistical bent when it comes to baseball (although I certainly enjoy witnessing the game and hearing the stories, too), so this left me feeling that I Was Right On Time was a bit empty.

I also felt that O'Neil spent an awful lot of time talking about his friends and acquaintances in the league than about himself. Such modesty is laudable, but when I pick up an autobiography, I'd rather like to read about the person doing the writing, and it seems like O'Neil spends precious little time talking about his own triumphs and tragedies - the grounds balls he missed, the home runs he hit - than about the legends of the league.

If you haven't heard many of the stories about Paige, Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and the like, then you may find this book worthwhile. But I personally found it rather disappointing.