Dialogue

Read Wright's piece on Buck O'Neil:

Heading toward the stadium, the SUV ate up highway. Inside, O'Neil was talking about his family's tribe in Africa, and he was asked how he had found all that out. Did you do genealogical research? Did you find old bills of sale? He laughed. He's old enough to have talked to former slaves.

"My grandfather told me," he said. "I knew my grandfather."

It's times like this that Tonya Tota, the museum's operations director and, often, O'Neil's driver, picks his brain. In the vehicle, she played a game with O'Neil. Word association. The first one was easy.

"Baseball?" she asked.

"Satchel Paige," he said.

"Love?"

"Ora," he said, referring to his late wife of 51 years.

"Life?"

O'Neil chuckled. He told the story of his father explaining the birds and the bees to him in a Sarasota pool hall. It started as another bawdy O'Neil tale. Seems Pop overheard some other kids telling him that a young lady named Elizabeth was a sure thing. The elder O'Neil pulled his young boy aside, planting the seeds that would grow into the man we know today.