The Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library plans for a group read/discussion of The Soul of Baseball, by Joe Posnanski. The library will make dozens of copies of the book about Posnanski’s experiences with the late Buck O’Neil available, and will host a couple of events surrounding the book.

I don’t know if all the activities have been made public just yet, so I’ll plan to share details later. But I was invited to participate, so I’ve picked up a copy of the book and started reading it.

I’ve read dozens of books about Negro League baseball, including O’Neil’s autobiography I Was Right On Time. But I never got around to reading Posnanski’s book until now. I was told by someone from the library that he tried to relish every page of it, because he believed it would probably be the last book written about O’Neil, who passed away in late 2006, several months before Posnanski’s book was published.

The first thing to strike me from the book was Posnanski’s touching recollection of playing catch with his father as a child. O’Neil savored Posnanski’s story, because he recognized the importance of fathers imparting lessons to their sons.

I never met Buck O’Neil – I started working on Negro League research around 2011 and therefore never had the privilege. But I look forward to getting to know him through Posnanski’s book over the next couple of months, and I will write blogs to correspond with my reading.

If you live in Topeka, join in the group read/discussion! If you don’t live in Topeka, write any comments about O’Neil and the book you would like in this blog.