Up to this point, two of the most notable faces in the March Madness crowd have belonged to a couple of former playing greats: Bill Walton and Bob Pettit. Their respective college teams, UCLA and Louisiana State, square off in the second of Saturday's Final Four semifinal games, and the TV cameras will surely zoom in on them again - if, that is, the two make the trip to Indianapolis.

Both still look in playing shape and seem happy to be soaking up the college atmosphere. Pettit grew up in Baton Rouge, La., played at Baton Rouge High School, and stuck around to play collegiately for LSU, where he was a consensus All-America selection in 1953 and 1954. The closest he came to playing on an NCAA champion team occured in '53, when the Tigers lost to eventual champion Indiana in the semifinals.

Walton, on the other hand, played on UCLA championship contingents in 1972 and 1973, turning in what amounted to an almost perfect game on the latter occasion, when he made 21 of 22 field goal attempts against Memphis State. His 44 points are still a championship game record.

Walton doesn't show up among the greatest Final Four two-game scorers in the NCAA record book. Princeton's Bill Bradley, who scored 87 points for Princeton at the 1965 Final Four, still is unsurpassed in that category. Pettit, interestingly, is on the short list with his 65 points scored in 1953, when LSU lost in the semis and a consolation game against Washington.

These scoring achievements are all the more impressive when we remember they occurred before the advent of the three-point shot and the shot clock.

Since his retirement from the game, Walton has remained squarely in the basketball limelight as a broadcaster, most notably as a game analyst for ESPN on NBA telecasts. Pettit, however, has largely disappeared from the national sports radar. He has long contented himself in basketball retirement by living and working in his beloved Louisiana, in banking and more recently as a partner in a financial consulting firm. "I always wanted to come home," he told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Hunt, fish, little golf, go home at night, put my pajamas on and read a book. Some people might need a little more, but that's an enjoyable life to me."

Columnist campaigns for Maris

In his latest front-of-the-magazine column, Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard skips the financial analyses in favor of a sports argument. "Roger Maris Belongs in the Hall," is the headline. Karlgaard calls Maris's absence from the Baseball Hall of Fame a "scandal," pointing out that no less an authority than Mickey Mantle called Maris the best all-around player he'd ever seen. Mantle, of course, was a Yankee teammate in 1961, the year they both chased Babe Ruth's hallowed single-season home record before Maris finally broke it with his 61st homer.

The achievement was immediately qualified by some in the media because it came during baseball's first 162-game season, rather than in 154 games, which had long been the standard. For them Maris was never the worthiest successor, given his unimpressive .260 career batting average. Karlgaard, however, makes an interesting case for Maris, noting that he:

•Won back-to-back MVP awards, something only 11 players have done. He and Dale Murphy are the only eligible members of this exclusive club not in the Hall.

•Hit his 60th homer in his 684th plate appearance, compared with Ruth's 689th trip to the plate.

• Fielded his position well, utilized his speed on the bases, drew lots of walks, and consistently drove in runs.

•Set the home run mark during the "age of innocence," meaning before players turned to steroids in an attempt to add slugging muscle.  Maris, in fact, was so wrung out by the mental pressures that he lost considerable weight in 1961, dropping from 197 pounds when he began the season to 185 when he finished it.

"Do you think any 185-pounder could hit 61 home runs today?" Karlgaard asks. "Not a chance. Maris belongs in the Hall."

Touching other bases

•Overtimes aren't unusual in sports, but scoreless ties that require three extra sessions to decide are. That's how long it took the University of Wisconsin to score the game's only goal against Cornell in the men's NCAA hockey tournament. Altogether, 111 minutes and 13 seconds elapsed before the Badgers broke through with the game-winner. Now if they can win the Frozen Four, hockey's equivalent of the Final Four, Wisconsin will have achieved an extremely rare dual national championship, with titles in both men's and women's hockey (the women already won their first crown by beating Minnesota, 3-0). Connecticut turned the trick in basketball two years ago, and Louisiana State is bidding to repeat the feat this year.

•Although college basketball's March Madness has produced a surplus of white-knuckle games, one of the season's most dramatic contests was missed by virtually everybody.  It pitted two little-known women's teams - Texas State University-San Marcos and the University of Texas at San Antonio - in a parochial battle for the ages in February. With 2:18 left in the first half, Texas State had scored only eight points and trailed by 32. At the end of regulation, though, the scored was tied 63-all, and Texas State went on to win, 73-71 in overtime. No women's team has ever erased a larger deficit and only one men's team, Duke in 1950, can match the feat. Duke beat Tulane, 74-72, after once trailing 54-22.

• Alfonso Soriano didn't see the light at first, but quickly realized how ill-advised it was to refuse to switch from second base to the outfield with his new team, the Washington Nationals. He not only risked alienating fans and teammates by sitting out, he was in violation of his contract. And his manager, Frank Robinson, is a pretty hard-nosed guy not inclined to kowtow to some player's wishes.

•American sports fans may not realize the XVIII Commonwealth Games have come and gone. They were held in Sydney, with the usual echoes of the old British Empire, from the opening ceremony, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, to the closing March 26 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, watched by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  The Olympic-like event is a reminder of how just how far-flung Britain's influence once was. Participating countries are drawn from the Commonwealth of Nations, an association of 53 independent countries with various ties to Britannia.

Now that the inaugural World Baseball Classic is in the books, it's time step back and reflect on what happened and share some accumulated impressions.

On the whole, this was a solid start in creating a true world series, a tournament that illustrated the advanced state of the sport's international development. American fans may have been disappointed that Team USA didn't make it into the semifinals, but the presence of Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and South Korea actually created an intriguing East-West balance that nicely showcased the differences in playing styles.

Visiting international fans, immigrants, and naturalized Americans helped to energize the atmosphere at many of the US-based games, but American fans didn't really take to this event as was hoped.

The Classic was out of sync with the host country's sports body clock. Americans love their baseball, but every culture develops its spectating habits, and, for native-borns, "important" games shouldn't occur before crabgrass sprouts. We're accustomed to a traditional sports calendar in which meaningful games properly fall at the end of long, hot summers and grinding pennant races.

March clearly has been ceded to basketball's March Madness, which overpowered and overshadowed the World Baseball Classic on the sports pages, in the TV ratings, and in water-cooler conversations.

I knew the WBC was on shaky ground, for example, when my most ardent baseball-following co-worker, a guy who knows major-league depth charts, turned to me one day and asked for a WBC update. He admitted the tournament hadn't pricked his interest.

When to play it is a problem. Put simply, there isn't a good time, at least not for everybody. The baseball season varies around the globe, and Major League Baseball, a prime mover and shaker in creating the tournament, is opposed to having it disrupt the MLB season. As result, the event was slotted during spring training, when major leaguers can more easily break away from their regular teams but also when they're less likely to be in midseason form.

This didn't prove a disadvantage for the Japanese, who won the championship by beating Cuba, where the 90-game pro league season runs from December to April. During an ESPN interview, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig acknowledged the scheduling difficulties, but said that holding the tournament in November, after the World Series, was no better. That, he reasoned, would mean that players not in the playoffs might be just as rusty as they are in the spring. Then, too, the only way to schedule games in North America in November would be in indoor stadiums, which is far from ideal.

The final rounds of the World Baseball Classic presumably will move around to different locales over time, but the US obviously offers the best combination of parks and climate. The next tournament will be held in 2009 at undetermined sites, and every fourth year thereafter, just like the Olympics and soccer's World Cup.

One country that would dearly love to host the final rounds is Cuba, but before that happens Havana would probably need to build at least one modern, state-of-the-art stadium. In 1987, I had the opportunity to attend a Cuban-league game in that city. The ballpark (I forget its name) was decent-sized and looked structurally sound, but like many things in Cuba, it felt out of date, like something from the 1950s stuck in a time warp. The feeling extended to the playing field, where photographers were allowed to snap pictures of batters from close range just outside the foul lines. I've seen old black-and-white images that show the same thing happened in US parks, but that was eons ago.

Japan will probably want to host the semifinals and finals next time, and as the defending champions they've earned the privilege. TV ratings reportedly were staggeringly good for Japan's semifinal showdown with South Korea.

Still, there are questions, including whether the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome is really the ideal spot for the championship rounds and whether good attendance would be too dependent on Japan's performance.

Gene Orza of the Major League Baseball Players Association raised this point on the World Baseball Classic's website, where he said the Japanese must establish that they are able to draw large crowds even when Japan isn't playing. "If we hold a final in Japan that winds up being Cuba playing the US," he said, "I have no good feeling about what kind of attendance that would be."

Something tells me, though, that given the opportunity to be squarely in the baseball limelight, Japan would rise to the occasion, disappointing neither on the field nor in the stands.

Touching other bases

• For all the hype about the World Baseball Classic pulling together major-league players, only two big-leaguers played in the championship game, both for Japan - outfielder Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners and Akinori Otsuka of the Texas Rangers.

• One of the cooler ideas used to decorate the WBC ballparks was rainbow-striped bunting in the tournament's colors. It was a clever variation on the red-white-and-blue bunting so often seen of Opening Day and draped on grandstand railings at World Series time.

• South Korea was the only team in the 16-team field that didn't commit an error. That impressed a lot of observers, including an awestruck Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, who noted, "You don't see one guy bobble the ball. I don't know how they do that."

• The Dominican Republic had a power-packed lineup, but they still could have used prominent no-show Manny Ramirez in a semifinal loss to Cuba. Ramirez is one of the 3 best natural hitters in the game, and tellingly, he hit his first spring training home run for Boston the day after the DR's elimination.

• Granted, the World Cup-style format will take some getting used to by fans, especially Americans not familiar with all the ins and outs that allow a team like Japan, which lost to the US and was a lackluster 3-3 in the first two rounds, to go on and win all the marbles.

• Hats off to Ken Griffey Jr., the only American besides Derek Jeter to make the all-tournament team. And he did so with probably the best batting stats of anyone: .524 average, three home runs, and 10 runs batted in.

• The large number of players who watched games from the top step of the dugout was one indication of their intense engagement in the games.

• People expect the Dominican Republic and Cuba to be major rivals for the US, but who would have imagined that the Americans would lose to both Canada and Mexico?

• I sensed a bit of a dig at the Yankees and owner George Steinbrenner in the full-page ad WBC organizers ran in The New York Times this week. Steinbrenner never got behind the tournament and didn't encourage his players to participate. Beneath a full-color photo of the victorious Japanese team hoisting manager Sadaharu Oh are these words: "Congratulations, Team Japan! ...With passion. With intensity. With pride. You were there for your country." Steinbrenner, it might be noted, is generally known for his patriotism and once was a major cheerleader for the US Olympic movement.

• If there's a flaw in the WBC format it is the single-game semifinals and final. Baseball, unlike other sports, is based on playing games in series, in both the regular season and the playoffs, and there is a reason for this. The sport is heavily focused on pitching, and to determine who has the best team, not just the best individual pitcher, requires playing more than one game.

To follow up on a point from a recent “We’re Just Fans” blog: Shouldn’t the Baseball Hall of Fame be looking to induct its first female player or players now that Effa Manley, a co-owner of the Newark Eagles of the old Negro Leagues, has become the first woman voted into the  shrine? I’d say, yes, but then the question is, who?

The best place to start may be with Joanne (Joltin’ Jo) Weaver, who won more batting titles (three) than any other player in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, which lasted from 1943 to 1954. She was the last player, including in the majors, to bat .400 (she hit .429 in the league’s last season). In fact, Weaver was the only .400 hitter in the league’s history and batted 52 points better than anyone else that season. She also belted 29 home runs for the Fort Wayne Daisies.

Granted, Weaver, who was the younger sister of two other league stars, didn’t have the long career Hall of Fame voters favor, but the women’s circuit has to be viewed in context. It was launched with many major leaguers off serving their country during World War II, but  eventually lost its novelty appeal. This doesn’t mean, however, that the "League of Their Own" stars don’t deserved to be enshrined.

Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell, while not a serious Hall candidate because of a lack of opportunity, might have been if she’d come along when the All American Girls Professional League did. Hats off to her, though for the single greatest feat ever recorded by a woman baseball player. In 1931, during a “cup of coffee” stint with the minor league Chattanooga Lookouts, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees. Mitchell was only 17 at the time, but had learned to throw an elusive sinker from Dodger pitcher Dazzy Vance, her next-door neighbor in Memphis. Her crowd-pleasing relief appearance was cut short when she began to lose control and walked the next batter, Tony Lazzeri, whereupon she was taken out of the game.

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis didn’t take kindly to the publicity stunt and cancelled her contract. After that she played for the barnstorming House of David men’s team for five years, during which time she completed an inning against the National League champion St. Louis Cardinals.

US sports figures linked to Dubai

I wonder what Tigers Woods thought of the recent political tempest involving Dubai Ports World, the Dubai-based company that tried to buy an operating stake at six US ports. Woods clearly felt comfortable playing at the Dubai Desert Classic, which he won Feb. 5 in the chief city of the United Arab Emirates. This occurred before many security-conscious Americans, including congressional lawmakers, registered their opposition to letting a UAE company gain a business foothold in a key US industry.

In tennis as well, American players Lindsay Davenport and Andre Agassi didn’t hesitate to play in the Dubai Tennis Championships, which consist of back-to-back $1 million women’s and men’s tournaments held in late February and early March. Agassi calls the UAE venue an “incredible place” where he likes to take his family.

What the event organizers have built there “is really a reflection of a lot of vision, a lot of passion, not to mention the cultures that live peacefully together,” Agassi is quoted on the tournament’s website. “It’s the way the world is meant to be.”

Touching other bases

• Yogi Berra-isms never go out of style, but at this time of year they always seem a little more in season. Here’s one I found in "The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said" that bears repeating: "Little League baseball is a good thing ‘cause it keeps the parents off the streets and the kids out of the house."

•It just dawned on me that bullpen carts have disappeared from major-league baseball. I don’t know when it happened, but I’m pleased it has. Fit athletes hardly need limo service to the mound and nowadays many trot in from the bullpen as part of their warm-up.

•For March Madness basketball fans, here’s a fact that may surprise you. In the history of the men’s tournament, Seton Hall has one of the best winning percentages among teams that have won 20 or more games. The “Hall” is the only team among the top 10 (it’s 10th with a .652 mark) that has never won a national championship. Seton Hall barely made the 65-team field this year and plays Witchita State on Thursday.

•The Jamaican bobsled team, in case you were wondering, didn’t compete in the Turin winter Olympics. Brazil, however, represented the world’s sunnier climes with a sled aptly named "The Frozen Banana,” which finished its final run upside down.  Speaking of bobsleds, they look lumberingly slow to me compared to luges and skeletons, but are are actually faster. I chalk up this optical illusion to the bulkier sleds. And, by the way, do you ever wonder if the three people tucked behind the driver in four-man sleds have anything to do once on the sled, besides holding on for dear life?

•If Martina Hingis manages to win one of tennis’s Grand Slam tournaments this year – her first back after a three-year, injury-induced “retirement” – she gets my vote for Athlete of the Year. Neil Harman, writing in The Times of London, says her comeback, which began in earnest in January, has already “assumed jaw-dropping magnificence.”

WIRED magazine recently ran an interesting piece about how corporate names for stadiums and arenas have struck out with fans, who’ve taken to coming up with their own alternative nicknames for these facilities. In Pittsburgh for example, fans call Mellon Arena, the home of hockey’s Penguins, "The Igloo." In Houston, baseball’s Minute Maid Park has been dubbed “The Juice Box.” Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center is “The Wack,” and Chicago’s US Cellular Field just “The Cell.”

A lot of Fortune 500 companies haven’t yet taken the naming-rights plunge, but if and when they do, here are some optional names to give stadiums a less blatantly commercial identity.

•Wal-Mart: “Change Back Arena”
•Exxon Mobil: “The Oil Drum”
•IBM: “Big Blue Bowl”
•Verizon: “Hold-the-Line Field”
•Home Depot: “The Hammer”
•Kroger: “Cornucopia Center”
•Fannie Mae: “Fan Club Field”
•Boeing: “The Runway”
•Target Corp.: “The Bull’s-Eye”
•Procter & Gamble: “The Soap Dish”
•Johnson & Johnson: “Wax ‘em Arena”
•Safeway: “The Express Lane”
•United Parcel Service: “UPS and Down Field”
•Microsoft Corp.: “The Mousepad”

Maybe you’d like to try your hand at a few. If so, select stadium/arena names for any or all of the following Fortune 500 companies and send them to me. I’ll share the “winners” in a future blog.

•McDonald’s
•Xerox
•Sara Lee Corp.
•ConAgra Foods
•Walt Disney Co.
•American Express
•Best Buy Co.

Touching other bases

•Given all the talk about drug-tainted home run statistics in baseball these days, consider this: This past season, when the major leagues got serious about rooting out drug users, fewer than 1 percent of the players tested positive for steroids, while overall home run production fell by 8 percent.

•Remember Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek, who gave $40,000 in US performance bonuses to Right to Play, an international charity that aids children in impoverished countries? Shouldn’t a Super Bowl MVP pick up on his generous example some year and send a bunch of underprivileged youngsters to Disney World instead of accepting a free trip to the Magic Kingdom himself?

•One of the reasons NASCAR reportedly selected Charlotte, N.C., for the site of its future Hall of Fame is because there is so much racing commerce in the area. The Orlando Business Journal says that 90 percent of NASCAR racing teams are based within 60 miles of Charlotte, which makes me wonder if Charlotte is the nation’s speeding ticket capital, or whether the cops just wink and smile when the wannabe race car drivers exceed the posted speed limit. Atlanta, the other finalist for the Hall of Fame along with Daytona Beach, Fla., was reportedly pretty disappointed about losing out, especially since a group in the city had originally approached NASCAR about building a hall. One Atlanta columnist, who questioned NASCAR’s choice, acerbically joked that the Wachovia Bank elevator in Charlotte is the city’s only other tourist attraction.

•Hey Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan, missing out on a figure skating gold medal at the Olympics is not so bad. Take it from Rosalynn Sumners, who was edged out for the gold by Katarina Witt in 1984. “I don’t think my life would have been much different with the gold,” she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “In some some ways, the silver medal has made me a better, stronger person.” Sumners, who began skating in Lynwood, Wash., at age 5, retired from the show circuit this season, but still might consider an occasional TV special. Now she’s into interior decorating, including for the four homes she and sports agent-husband Bob Kain own in Kirkland, Wash.; Palm Desert, Calif.; Cleveland; and New York.

•The US is not enjoying much success sending professional all-star teams to represent it in international competition. This week at the World Baseball Classic in Phoenix, Team USA was upset by Canada, 8-6, in first-round of round-robin play. At the recent winter Olympics in Italy, an American hockey squad stocked with NHL players finished eighth. And at the 2004 summer Games in Athens, the latest edition of America’s basketball Dream Team had to settle for the bronze medal.

•Will Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney follow George W. Bush in using sports in his ascent to the Oval Office?  Bush was managing general partner and minority owner of baseball’s Texas Rangers before turning to politics. Romney, a venture capitalist, ran the Salt Lake City Olympics before his successful gubernatorial run back in the Bay State. As the 2008 presidential race heats up, don’t be surprised if sales pick up for Romney’s book, “Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games.”

•Using a baseball quote in a football context qualifies as a mixed metaphor. Still, Gene Upshaw, the president of the National Football League’s players’ union, deserves credit for doing so to make his point about the league’s many inexperienced owners. “All they know is prosperity. They were born on third base and think they hit a triple.”

Baseball sage Satchel Paige once famously advised, “Don’t look back; they may be gaining on you.”

As any historian would tell you, however, looking back is not inherently a bad thing. Last week, for example, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum clearly demonstrated the value of examining the past.

As spring training was heating up and the inaugural World Baseball Classic beginning, a special group of electors assigned to study the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro leagues elected 17 new members.

Most notable among them was Effa Manley, the first woman so honored. Like Satchel, she too could utter a memorable line. One of her best may have come in response to those who counsel, “Don’t live in the past.” Her reply: “I guess it depends on how interesting your past is.”

Needless to say, hers is very interesting, but she wasn’t a player. Her achievements were as an executive who co-owned the Newark Eagles, a team that won the Negro World Series in 1946, the year before Jackie Robinson broke the major-league color line.

Ms. Manley was the obvious headliner in this special Hall of Fame class, but the attention her selection brought also served to raise two major questions related to the election:

1) Why was Buck O’Neil, the former Negro League star whose name is synonymous with pre-integration black baseball, shut out of the Hall of Fame?

And…

2) Shouldn’t the first woman elected have been a player, not an owner? Or at least, shouldn’t Manley have shared the honor with a player from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the circuit that existed between 1943 an 1954 and was made famous in the movie, "A League of Their Own"?

The first of these questions is the one that has created the biggest furor over what many observers, at least in the media, perceive as an incredible injustice.

Baseball people sometimes are blinded by statistics, and that may have kept O’Neil from his rightful place in Cooperstown, N.Y. Surely other Negro League players compiled better numbers, but he's in his own league when it comes to lifetime achievement and pure, unadulterated class.

Filmmaker Ken Burns recognized this when he made O’Neil the voice of the old Negro Leagues in the PBS documentary on the history of baseball. With his eloquence, love of the game, and firsthand experience, O’Neil was perfect for the role. He joined the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the premier teams in the Negro Leagues, in 1935, became the club’s player/manager in 1948, and remained with the organization through the end of the 1955 season.

He once barnstormed with Satchel Paige, who, in 1971, became the first black player elected to the Hall of Fame, and has been a tireless advocate for greater recognition of Negro League players. In fact, today he is the chairman of the board for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, which is planning a $15 million expansion.

O’Neil’s portfolio also includes becoming the first black coach in the major leagues, with the Chicago Cubs in 1962, and success as a scout who signed Hall of Famers Ernie Banks and Lou Brock. Plus he is a man of sterling character.

One might think all these credentials would have made O’Neil a shoo-in for a special election of hall-worthy Negro Leaguers. But he came up a vote shy of being selected, appearing on only 8-of-12 ballots, when 9 were needed for election.

The irony is that the voters were drawn from a distinguished group of scholars and historians of Negro Leagues baseball, people who surely know and appreciate O’Neil’s place in the game.

The voting was by secret ballot and the electors made a pact not to discuss their individual votes. So we may never know why four individuals didn’t see fit to elect O’Neil. But in the effort to create an unparalleled statistical record of the Negro Leagues (culled from decades of box scores in 128 newspapers and compiled in a new book, “Shades of Glory”), Major League Baseball may have created a stats-heavy orientation by funding an exhaustive data search.

O’Neil’s lifetime batting average was .288, which is short of the magical .300 mark many members of the Baseball Writers Association of America use informally as a cutoff in casting their ballots in regular voting for the hall.

Even so, O’Neil, a first baseman whose autobiography is titled “I Was Right on Time,” turned in four .300-plus seasons, including a career best of .358 in 1947 and a league best of .353 in 1946. He also played in three Negro American League All-Star games and in two of the league’s World Series.

Fay Vincent, the former MLB commissioner and the nonvoting chair of the special selection committee, said that only 1 percent of people who play in the majors make it into the Hall of Fame. O’Neil, he added, “was honored by being a very strong candidate” in a process that began with a pool of 94 that was winnowed to 39 before the final vote.

There was no quota on how many could be elected. Eighteen, beginning with Satchel Paige in 1971, were already in via regular elections of the Committee of Negro League Veterans. This project was meant as a one-time catch-up vote so that all the overlooked players wouldn’t have to wait another day to be recognized.

Vincent expressed sadness that this hadn’t happened 30 or 40 years ago when so many more candidates were alive. All 12 players and five executives voted in this time will receive their honors posthumously, and one of the voters, Robert Peterson, author of the seminal work “Only the Ball Was White,” cast his ballot just two days before his passing.

When the annual Hall of Fame inductions are held on July 30, only one new enshrinee, relief pitcher Bruce Sutter of the modern era, will be present.

Meanwhile, two living greats, 94-year-old O’Neil and 83-year-old Cuban Minnie Minoso, an outfielder who became the majors’ first black Latin player when he joined the Cleveland Indians in 1949, will be on the outside looking in. Minoso was an All-Star four times, won three Gold Gloves, and had a .298 lifetime batting average.

Bob Kendrick, director of marketing for the Negro Leagues museum, says the organization has intentionally avoided creating its own hall of fame, preferring instead that deserving Negro Leaguers be enshrined at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

When the hall announced its new honor roll, Kendrick had to tell O’Neil, the chairman of the Negro Leagues museum, that he’d come up short of election before a perearranged Kansas City press conference.

O’Neil took the disheartening news with incredible grace and equanimity, although Kendrick found himself straining to hold back the tears. It was a bittersweet occasion to be sure, because there was cause for rejoicing over the wholesale selection of 17 new Negro League Hall of Famers, but a crushing sadness that the person so instrumental to their recogntion was left behind. When O’Neil entered the press conference in Kansas City, those in attendance rose to give him a standing ovation.

“As more information comes to light down the road, the door is always open to the possibility of perhaps further consideration,” said Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey.

One can only hope that more information won’t be necessary for an immediate reconsideration. No individual who has left such a lasting legacy to baseball should be relegated to the bench.