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Buck Leonard

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Baseball Player

The Resume

    (September 9, 1907-November 27, 1997)
    Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina
    Birth name was Walter Fenner Leonard
    First baseman for the Brooklyn Elite Giants (1933) and Homestead Grays (1934-50)
    Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame (1972)

Why he might be annoying:

    His parents originally nicknamed him ‘Buddy,’ but his younger brother mispronounced it as ‘Bucky.’
    Because of sloppy record keeping in the Negro Leagues, it is uncertain what his statistics are.
    He was offered a Major League contract (1952), but declined because he believed he was over the hill and worried that a poor performance would harm the cause of integration.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was left-handed.
    When he was 11, he had to work to help support the family after his father died.
    His hometown did not have a high school that admitted black students, so he earned a high school equivalency diploma at age 52.
    He played in 11 East-West All-Star games, more than any other Negro Leagues player.
    He was nicknamed ‘the black Lou Gehrig,’ partly because they both played first base and because Gehrig batted fourth behind Babe Ruth while Leonard batted fourth behind ‘the black Babe Ruth,’ Josh Gibson.
    Monte Irvin said that if baseball had been desegregated in the 1930s, fans ‘might have called Lou Gehrig the white Buck Leonard. He was that good.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 24 Votes: 45.83% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 12 Votes: 58.33% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying