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Seattle PI - Buck or Bust for Sealth Cyclists |
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Wednesday, 12 July 2006 |
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Buck or bust for Sealth cyclists
By ART THIEL
P-I COLUMNIST
Coming from almost as many emotional directions as nationalities, five Chief Sealth High School baseball players today begin a 3,100-mile bicycle odyssey to help honor a 94-year-old former Negro Leagues star they've never met.
Jasdeep Saran wants to see part of America he may never otherwise know.
Yuto Fukushige will be thrilled not to get lost.
Chunda Zeng thinks it's exciting to be part of a national event.
Spencer Gray wants to buff his school's image after a sports scandal.
Sam Smith loves baseball.
Most important, there's the chance to hail Buck O'Neil, American icon, black beacon, and flat-out coolest old dude on the first several planets of the solar system.
If health holds and weather holds off, the parties will hook up in early August in Kansas City, home to O'Neil and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
The boys and the man will celebrate each other, lament O'Neil's perplexing exclusion this month from the Baseball Hall of Fame, and raise money for a history research center that will bear his name.
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Until they began an archive dive in the classroom of Sealth teacher Gary Thomsen this past winter, the riders knew almost nothing of O'Neil, the Negro Leagues and the history of racial discrimination in America. They found the subjects sufficiently compelling to create a "Thanks a Million Buck" marketing campaign and sacrifice a chunk of a summer that they could have devoted to mall, beach and video arcade.
What they discovered was something Bob Kendrick hears from most of the young people who tour the museum, where he is director of marketing.
"After seeing the history of discrimination portrayed through baseball," he said, "they say, 'What a dumb thing to have done.' "
That same thought might occur in a couple of days, referring this time to sustained intimacy with a bicycle saddle. None of the riders have done long-distance cycling. Although Thomsen, several other adults and a support truck will accompany them, the kids will be responsible for every downstroke through eight states, including the deserts of California and Arizona, the mountains of Colorado and the thunderstorms of the Midwest.
Stiffness and soreness will eventually fade, leaving a sharp point.
"Teenagers," Smith said, "often don't spend summers helping somebody else."
Despite the fact that O'Neil won two batting titles in his nine seasons as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs, became in 1962 the first black coach in Major League Baseball, and in 1994 became a national cult figure after his star turn in Ken Burns' acclaimed TV documentary "Baseball," he was not among the 12 players and five executives selected in February for induction by a 12-person committee.
The only living players among the 39 considered were O'Neil and Minnie Minoso, who also starred for the Chicago White Sox in the majors. Many of the accomplishments of the honorees were recognized in part due to O'Neil's combination of passion and ebullience that helped elevate the profile of the Negro Leagues as one of the great stories in American history.
Since the Hall asked the committee members not to talk about their votes for the July 30 induction, the unjust remains unexplained.
In typical fashion, O'Neil's response was the definition of grace.
"They didn't think Buck was good enough to be in the Hall of Fame," he told reporters in February at a news conference at the museum, where he is board chairman. "That's the way they thought about it and that's the way it is, so we're going to live with that. Now, if I'm a hall-of-famer for you, that's all right with me.
"Just keep loving old Buck. Don't shed any tears."
The weepy gathering broke into applause.
"Of course he was disappointed," said Kendrick, a long-time friend. "But he taught us how to handle disappointment. He turned a somber day into a demonstration of class and dignity. He did it so we can all heal.
"If possible, he endeared us to him all the more."
He also zinged the imaginations of some schoolkids in Seattle, where Thomsen in 2000 organized a similar adventure for Sealth students who were so intrigued by the Negro Leagues that they pedaled to Kansas City.
This time, the project's goal is to raise $100,000 to be part of what Kendrick said was $15 million needed to build a research center dedicated not only to baseball history but the progress of race relations.
The idea apparently resonates at Sealth, perhaps Seattle's most ethnically diverse high school student body, and one recovering from a scandal involving recruiting of girls basketball players.
Among the riders, Saran's family came here five years ago from India's Punjab region. Zeng arrived from Chengdu, China, two years ago. Fukushige is the most recent import, coming from Kobe, Japan, five months ago. Smith and Gray, well, they're the token white guys. Their English is almost as good as their cycle mates'.
The group, including Kendrick, gathered last week at Safeco Field for a Mariners pregame salute regarding the pending task. O'Neil was scheduled to be there and to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. The night before the flight to Seattle, he developed a severe bloody nose that sent him to the hospital. The doctor advised against flying.
He's OK now, resting at home. So these new outsiders from Seattle will meet the old outsider in Kansas City. They will talk about what it's like to be different, and how it someday it might make no difference.
Time is of the essence, and so is money (www.thanksbuck.com, in case you're moved to support a worthy idea). The biggest concern isn't the summer away from friends and family, the arduousness of the trip, or the hazards of the open road.
"What I worry about," Saran said, "is what if we don't get the fundraising done?"
Money and recognition, as O'Neil would tell them from recent experience, are never the issues, only the byproducts. The reward is doing a hard thing well.
P-I columnist Art Thiel can be reached at 206-448-8135 or
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