Bad Hire Threatens To Destroy Buck's Baseball Museum

The hiring was a mistake from the start. OK, maybe it wasn't a mistake, because who could have known in December 2008 how Greg Baker would do at the helm of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

An outsider, Baker was being tasked to guide the museum, a repository of all artifacts, photographs, memorabilia and information about "black baseball," into the future and move the institution forward in the absence of its late chairman and ambassador Buck O'Neil.

It was a job I wouldn't have wanted.

For how does any human replace a personality like Buck O'Neil? Who would you replace him with -- Satchel Paige, perhaps? Of course, Satchel wasn't around to hire, and if he were, not even Satchel would have been up to the job that Buck did so well. 

Only the most optimistic of museum supporters could have thought Baker, whose selection split the executive board that made it, would be up to job either. They weren't asking him to replace the iconic Buck as the museum's face but, rather, as its guiding light. After all, Baker wasn't a baseball man -- Negro Leagues or otherwise.

And, even if he were, he would have found using his profile instead of Buck's a misguided choice. Baker had a better chance of being the face of the Yankees or the Red Sox than stepping in and taking over Buck's role at the museum.

No one expected Baker to be Buck's clone. What they did expect was the sort of leadership that would keep alive the history and carry on the initiatives that made the museum a must-visit destination for travelers who found themselves in Kansas City for a few days.

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