Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick is about as effervescent and optimistic as a person can be — not to mention passionately dedicated to feeling a calling to be more like Buck O’Neil, the poet laureate of the Negro Leagues, ambassador for baseball and a founding force of the NLBM.
But sometimes even Kendrick labors to reconcile what the world serves up. Vandals on Friday cut a water pipe on the second floor of the Buck O’Neil Research and Education Center in the former Paseo YMCA building that let loose flooding through two floors.
Most likely, the $100,000 parquet floor of what is now a ballroom will have to be replaced, and who knows how much more it will cost to fix the drywall and other damage, and to what degree insurance will cover this.
To say nothing of the emotional ramifications of the mean-spirited act, allegedly perperased by YouTube personality Sam Hyde. Hyde, known for his one-time Comedy Central television show titled Million Dollar Extreme, is being held on $50,000 bond in the Kansas City Metropolitan Jail. He is facing preliminary charges of tresspassing, burglary, and criminal destruction to property.
A request for comment from Hyde's attorney was not returned at the time of this article's publication.
“It’s disheartening; it leaves you questioning humanity, and you don’t want to be that way,” Kendrick said Tuesday, managing a laugh and adding, “You want to carry that Buck O’Neil spirit, which is that spirit of forgiveness: As he would always say, ‘I never learned to hate.'"
kansascity.com
