We catch up again with Negro Leagues museum President Bob Kendrick as the museum gets set to welcome Rush frontman Geddy Lee for a book signing for his just released “72Stories”, and pair it with our wonderful sitdown interview with Bob from a few years back. Double the fun!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast, insightful and
witty commentary, probing interviews and detours from the beaten path.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing. And
we're checking back in with Bob Kendrick and we got
a lot to talk about with him, and then we'll
pair it up with the great sit down conversation we
did a few years ago at the Negro Leagues Museum.
And first of all, Bob, I know you're on the road,
as you often are, and this time it's in conjunction
(00:36):
with the Savannah Bananas.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Yeah. No, it was a very exciting time.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm hanging out down in Savannah and we'll be part
of a tremendous announcement later on this evening that involves
the Negro League's Baseball Museum and the Savannah Bananas And
so what a great week this is going to be
for the museum. And then we get together on Saturday
and we will have the Legendaryedy Lee at the museum
(01:02):
signing copies of his brand new book, seventy two Stories,
and MNI prefers that brand new baseball book because it's
taken from his tremendous baseball collection for this new book
of his, and we are the first place that he's
doing a book signing, so needless to say, I am
tremendously proud of that.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, it's this Saturday at eleven o'clock. I'll give the details,
but they don't much matter now because you missed it, folks.
It's sold out. It's from one to three on Saturday.
And Getty Lee obviously has been a lifelong baseball fan.
In fact, he's often said that baseball was in his
bones before music took over. And back in two thousand
and six or eight I believe it was, he donated
(01:47):
a huge collection of signed or have used baseballs from
the Negro leagues.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Correct, Yeah, he did.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
I mean the collection would be tremendous on his own merit,
regardless of who would have donated it. But the fact
that Getty Lee donated it, it makes that collection even
more incredible and is obviously a conversation piece for people
who walk through the museum because when they see these
baseballs and he donated the first donation was a little
(02:17):
over two hundred dase balls, and then he came back
and donated an additional lot of two hundred, giving us
one of the largest collection of single signed Negro League
player autograph baseballs anywhere in the world. And so when
people walk through and they see the name Gedty Lee,
and particularly my Canadian fans, they'll say, is that the
Getty Lee? I said, yes, that is the Getty Lee
(02:40):
lead singer and bass guitars of the legendary Hall of
Fame rock Canadian Hall of Fame rock group Rush and
so and not only did he donate the baseballs, he
came back and dedicated them. And so for him now
as he launches this new book, he's had these New
York Times best selling books and all this stuff previously,
(03:05):
this book that is dedicated to his baseball collection is
pretty cool. And for us to be the first stop
for him to sign copies of the book, well, I
think that speaks volumes to Getty Lee and his affinity
for the Negro League's Baseball Museum and this piece and
chapter of baseball and American.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
History seventy two stories it's called, and they're sort of
based on the baseballs, and I can't even imagine. I mean,
Geedtty Lee obviously is a very rich man, he's a songwriter.
Is in addition, and that's where you really make your money.
But individually signed baseball, single signed baseballs from the Negro Leagues,
(03:43):
with many of which would be incredibly rare, that's got
to be worth an untold amount of money.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, you know, he never disclosed what he paid for them,
but you're right if we you know, if we were
to praise him right now, right, they would be worth
a significant and monetary amount. And so what a tremendous
collection for us, because as I tell people all the time,
(04:10):
we couldn't have gotten those signature us even if we
wanted them, because ninety nine point nine percent of the
names on display in those cases they're dead. Yeah, they're dead, right,
And so that made it even more valuable to us
and its fans to gain it. It goes from guys
who were Hall of famous, you know, who played in
(04:32):
the Negro Leagues, to guys who were a couple of
coffee guys in the negro Leagues.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
But they're all important to us.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
And then people always get a kick out of one
particular baseball because it's kind of a novelty. It is
a baseball signed by the late Great Country Western singer
Charlie Pride. Wow, And a lot of people did not
know that Charlie Pride played in the Negro League. And actually, guys,
Charlie Pride was a good picture in the Negro Leagues
who made ate his way into the New York Yankees
(05:02):
organization before he heard his arm. It was after he
heard his arm that he then fell back on a
pioneering country Western music career some seventy two million albums.
So later we should all have a fallback career like Charlie.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Pride, right, I say that arm injury was a real
boon to Charlie Pride.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
It was a blessing. Let me ask you just to
tell him. I used to tell him.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
I said, you know, you made a whole lot more
money saying and you would have Pitcher.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Sure, there's no question about it.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Let me ask you about your first interactions with Geddy Lee.
You know, Rush is a kind of an esoteric type
of band. I think there's a lot of Rush fans
who maybe became baseball fans because they found out that
Getty Lee was a baseball fan. They may have not
have been baseball interested that much, interested in baseball anyway,
but Geedty Lee eventually would just come out on st age,
(06:00):
often wearing baseball jerseys on stage. And so what was
it like to sort of get to know Geedty Lee,
who maybe had you really heard about Rush and Getty
Lee when you get together.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I tell the
story oftentimes when I'm.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Taking people on a tour of the museum.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
When we get to collection, I knew who Rush was, right,
but to be honest, I couldn't say that I was
a Rush fan, right, But needless to say, I'm a
Rush fan now.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So when he came.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Back to dedicate the baseballs, you know, he's standing there
with me and he's got on his Kansas City Monarch cap,
and you just got the understanding of how important baseball
was to him and.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
For me as a baseball fan.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And I considered myself to be a baseball fan prior
to my involvement with the Negro League's Baseball Museum. But
as a baseball fan, you want to know the history
of this game, and the Negro Leagues are an important
part of the history not only of this game, but
the history of this country. And I think that's why
it related to him so well. When they were touring
(07:13):
before the band retired. They were doing a concert here
in Kansas City several years before the band retired, and
he had a friend that lived in Kansas City who says,
I'm going to take you by to see the Negro
League's Baseball Museum. Well, like most who come to the museum,
he fell in love with the museum as well, and
after leaving that collection came up in an auction and
(07:34):
he decided that he would be in on them with
the hope and intent of winning them so that he
could donate them back to the Negro League Baseball Museum.
We had no idea this was going on. He wins
to bid. His office calls and says, Geddy Lee has
a few baseballs he liked to donate.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Would y'all like to have them? But naturally we say yes.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
But I'm thinking three or four that he might have
picked up somewhere, And as I mentioned earlier, it turned
out to be two hundred, and then he said donated
an additional lot of two hundred. It's an extraordinary collection,
made even more so by the person who donated it.
And you know, just getting to know him on the
surface level, I can't say that I just you know,
(08:14):
intimately know him, but I do. What I do know
is that he has a tremendous appreciation, understanding, and affinity
for the history of this game. And as I mentioned,
the Negro Leagues are an important part of the history
of our game.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And of course he'll sign the book and people get
a book with the ticket, And as I mentioned, it
is now a sold out event, so you're gonna have
to go somewhere else, to some other book signing, some
other place to get a chat with Geddy Lee. But
that particular collection, there's so many highlights about the Negro
League's Museum that must certainly be one of them.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Oh, there's no question. There's no question. We're so proud
of that collection, as we are with all the stories
that we share in the museum. But in some ways
this contemporizes our story to draw that connection. You know,
our story had typically been a connection between Negro Leagues
and jazz, but now we have this rock connection as
(09:11):
well through this incredible collection donated by Getty Lee. You know,
obviously one of the greatest bass guitars in the history
of music, no matter what genre, and of course an
iconic band in Rush, which I heard rumors that they
might be getting back.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Together for a tour. So it's a very exciting time.
And I can tell you this.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
We got people coming in from all over the country
to be here for this autograph signing. And somebody called
me the other day driving in from Milwaukee, and other
people coming in from other parts of the country to
be here in Kansas City. So I owe Getty Lee
a great deal of gratitude for selecting the Negro League's
Baseball Museum as his first stop, maybe his only stop
(09:56):
for a book signing, but I got a front of
fielding that this thing is has been so explosively popular,
then maybe he'll add a few most stops in there.
I just had a Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame call
me wanted to know how they could get into a
book signing at their place, So you know, that makes
me feel even more special about what we're doing here.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Well, all kinds of exciting things. You mentioned, the Savannah
Bananas connection and now this Getty Lee event. Always something
fascinating and interesting going on at the Baseball Hall, at
the Negro League's Hall of Fame, and it just keeps
growing and building in prominence from the podcast, which is
such a cool thing that I listened to all the time,
on and on. All kinds of things burgeoning for you.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, now it's exciting. It's exciting time for the museum.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Bob Kendrick, the director of the Negro League's Museum. His
big event this Saturday. Well, he's got all kinds of
big events. But Getty Lee seventy two Stories book signing
of his new book, seventy two Stories from the Baseball Collection.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
Of Getty Lee.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And up next you'll hear the complete story of Bob
Kendrick from the interview. We did a great sit down
we did a few years ago at the museum. And
that's next on Kansas City Profiles presented by Eastern Roofing.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
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contact us at Danny at danny clinkscale dot com. Look
forward to working with you. Bob, You're born in nineteen
sixty two and in Crawfordville, Georgia. To tell everybody, now,
you're younger than me, buddy. I guess the point of
(14:06):
me saying that was the fact that you were born
in Crawfordville, Georgia. Were you raised there?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
I was born and raised. Yeah, I grew up there.
Very humble roots, man. I mean, that's the kind of
north central part of the state, east of Atlanta, west
of Augusta, all of about five hundred people. As a
matter of fact, my dear friend, the late Great Buck
O'Neill says that I'm the only person from Georgia that
(14:32):
he ever met that didn't claim Atlanta as home. Yeah,
because no matter what you meet somebody from Georgia, they'll
say just outside of Atlanta. Now, they could be two
hundred miles outside of Atlanta and they'll still claim Atlanta.
But I'm not from Atlanta. I am from Crawfordville, and
I'm very proud of those humble roots.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
When I saw that, you know what, when you were
born and where you were born, it made me think
that as you were coming of age and your first
memories would be in the late sixties in the South
in a very turbulent time. But was that reflected in
a small town or.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, well it really was. My middle brother, Fred was
a connected to King and the civil rights movement. He
was actually one of King's coordinators from my little hometown.
And so yeah, so you know, you still had even
in the late sixties. As a kid, I'm still seeing
(15:29):
these remnants of what segregated South was like, and of
course the racial tensions that were there, even though Crowtoville
was predominantly African American. And so I tell the story oftentimes.
I remember as a kid when I had a brother
that lived in Atlanta. As a matter of fact, two
brothers that lived in Atlanta. And this was before the interstate,
(15:50):
before I twenty ran from Atlanta all the way to Augusta.
As it does now. And I remember when we would
go to see my brother that my mother would always
pack a lunch always, And as a kid, you don't
really understand why this was. All you know is that
it was in this shoebox. She put the wax paper
(16:12):
in this shoebox. She was gonna fry some chicken. It
was gonna be a great meal. She's gonna baker cake,
and we're all inside this shoebox. And as kid, you
don't really understand. You just know that the food is good.
We're gonna eat good on this trip. It's only after
you get older is that you realize they didn't want
to stop anywhere until they got to Atlanta. Yeah, And
(16:33):
so as you get a little bit older, you start
to understand that. And so you know, I reflect on
that from time to time, and as fate would have it,
I work in an environment where the backdrop of this
story is segregation.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, absolutely, So what were your first memories as a boy?
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I had, Crawford, I had an amazing childhood. I really did,
you know. I tell of all the time we were poor,
and I didn't know we were poor because everybody around
you had the same thing. We had nothing. So but
when everybody got the same thing you have, you don't
really know that you're poor. I didn't realize I was
poor until I got to college. I get to Park
(17:16):
College and I see all these kids driving cars and
they got their own apartments and this stuff. And I
called my mother and say, hey, wait a minute, y'all
hear this from me, But no, I would not change
my humble upbringing for nothing in the world. You know,
and my kids get tired of hearing me tell the
story of how I grew up in a house until
I was probably ten eleven years old that did not
(17:39):
have indoor plumbing. And so when they hear these war stories,
you know, they're like, okay, man, we've heard this enough.
But they're absolutely true. And what it does, though, it
gives you an appreciation for things that maybe others take
for granted. Yeah no, no, I was excited to get
into a plumbing. Yeah yeah, no, I still appreciate into
(18:01):
a plumbing. And the guys that I played golf with today,
they'll tell you if I have. If you see me,
go to what they call them now we call there
was an outhouse, but now they're modern day. They porter potties. Now,
you won't see me go to a porter potty. If
I go to a porter potter, it is that's breaking news.
And they laugh at me now because you know, we
(18:22):
had outhouses as a kid when I grew up, and
so I want no part of it. They can call it,
these fans a name. It's still just a modern day outhouse,
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So I read that your dad introduced you to the
game of baseball. Was what was the home life? Like
you mentioned your brothers. Where were you in the line
of siblings? How many how many siblings did you have?
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yes, six, I'm the baby of six and the youngest.
That's the one, the brother that's next to me. It's
ten years older than I am. So I'm the baby.
But it was almost like I was the only child
because they were all of age and starting to get
out the house. And so, yeah, my parents, I'm gonna
(19:05):
suspect that I surprised them when I came along.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I would think so ten years after five others exactly so.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
But I'm the baby of six and my father introduced
me to the game. But even in my little town
of Crawfordville, every Sunday, the grown folks would go play
they call it hardball. They'd have a hardball game at
the park, and people would absolutely gather around, sit on
the cars and watch these guys play. And so baseball
(19:38):
has always played kind of a role in my life.
My town was too small to field a high school
baseball team, so we had basketball and track. And I
just don't believe in running for the sake of running,
So if they have a ball involved with it, I
didn't want any part of it. So I played basketball,
which is what ultimately got me to Kansas City, to
the then Park College now Park University. Started off playing
(20:01):
a couple of years of small college basketball before I
got hurt and then I stopped and just focused on
my studies. But that's what got me to Kansas City.
But I've been a baseball fan since I can remember.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
What was it like as a teenager in that small town.
What was what was the life like, and what was
the life at home like? Your relationship with their parents
and such? Yeah, because like you said, your siblings were
all guns.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Yeah yeah, yeah, my parents by the time I came along,
I think they were a little tired, so I didn't know.
I didn't have the same stringent rules that my other
brothers had to it did too.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
The rules were, whatever I cook, that's what you eat. Well,
I had a little say so in those kinds of
things that she kind of catered to me a little
bit more. Now, growing up in a small town has
its pros and his cons. The pros is that you
know everybody and everybody knows you. The con is you
know everybody and everybody knows you, and so you couldn't
(20:52):
get in any trouble because literally everybody had jurisdiction over you.
And so it was funny. I tell this very often
times when I came to park and I started to
meet some of the guys and we would be walking
the campus and a car would drive by and I'd
wave and they would look at me like, did you
know that person? No, I didn't know them. Well, why
(21:13):
are you waving at him? Because that's what you do.
I couldn't walk by miss Jones' house. She's sitting on
the porch and I don't acknowledge her. By the time
I got home, my mother was like, well, miss Jones
just called and said you walked by the house and
didn't open your mouth, you know, And so that's that
kind of small town upbringing, tough on your social life. Yeah,
(21:33):
because every girl that I tried to date, my mother said,
oh boy, that's your cousin. But no, man, I look
back so fondly on those years of growing up in
Crawfordville and just being in a care free environment. Yeah,
being in a care free environment, two loving parents who
(21:57):
gave me everything I needed. Now may not have had
everything I wanted, but I had everything that I needed.
And they were two who growing up in the Deep
South themselves at the time in which they did, they
could only get a tenth grade education. That's all they
could get. That was as far as they could go.
But they always understood the value of an education, and
(22:19):
they instilled that in all of us about the importance
of an education. And they wanted, as I think any
family does, they wanted us to be better than them.
They wanted us to achieve at a greater level. They
wanted us to have more than them. And I think
we all want that for our children today. Sometimes though
we may be guilty of giving them too much. Yeah,
(22:42):
because sometimes I don't know if we gained the kind
of appreciation for stuff that we would like for our
children because they kind of take it for granted that
this is the way that things are always going to be.
People just gonna give me, you know, and so yeah,
but they they gave me everything that I absolutely needed.
And the person that I've become and hopefully will continue
(23:03):
to become is all due to them.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Was basketball The sole reason you ended up coming to
this area want to go to Park College?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
It was.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
It absolutely was. I chased the basketball from Crawfordville, Georgia
to Parkville, Missouri because from the time that I was twelve, Danny,
I was going to Howard University. Yeah, eleven to twelve
years old, I was going to Washington, DC every year
to spend the summer with my brother Fred, and so
I'm going to Howard University. And in my senior year,
(23:31):
I goten accepted to go to Howard University. And at
the thirteenth hour, I get a scholarship offer from Park
College because Howard wanted me to walk on. They ain't
have any money from me, and so they wanted me
to come to school and walk on, and I was
prepared to try and do that. And then at the
thirteenth hour, I get a scholarship offer from Park college,
(23:51):
switch gears and left to come to Parkville, Missouri. Haven't
looked back since I've been in this area ever since nineteen.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Eighty Do you have do you do you know the
story of how I mean you must how did they
find you? I mean, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
I have no idea how to found me in Croffodville, George,
I really don't, and I didn't. I never visited. I
saw the brochures, I saw the offer, I signed and
kept on coming.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
And like I said, I remember Kendrin's spirits in that regard.
I said, went sight unseated in the University of Kansas
from suburban Boston. So just went from brochures and such.
So we did the exact same thing.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
They sent me to bro shoes. Admittedly, they made it
sound like Parkville was a little bit closer to Kansas
City than it actually was. It wasn't exactly walking distance.
But you know, I'll never forget when I got here.
My brother drove me. My brother drove me from Croffordville
up to Parkville, and I remember when we went across
the at that time the old ASB Bridge.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Man.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
That was one of the scariest trips I think I've
ever seen that old raggedy bridge. That bridge was just
absolutely horrifying. And I remember getting on campus and the
dormitory that I was gonna stay in. Still remember this
to this day. During during dorm and it was kind
of old and it had, if you think Wrigley Field,
(25:17):
the vines that go on the wall, and it had
that on it. And my brother looked at me and said,
you're gonna stay. I said, yeah, man, I'm gonna stay.
And I've been here ever since.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
What was the course of your basketball career maybe not
going as well as you would have liked.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Well, yeah, I think it was. You know, you get
here and I love the game, and I still love
the game. I don't play anymore. And so we had
a lot of guys from a lot of different places playing,
and I think what you learn about competition is that
everybody was good from where they came from. I don't
(25:55):
care what level it is. And so I got there,
you know, and it's really interesting. I think I became
a better basketball player after I stopped playing, and for me,
I kind of fell out of love with the game
during that time, you know. And I think, and that's
what I told my own children as they were being
recruited for collegiate sports. You really gotta love it. You
(26:16):
gotta love it because they essentially do own you. They
own all of your time. They determine what you do,
when you do it, how you do it. And so
for me, I'm not sure I was really as prepared
to take on that level of competition as I thought
I might have been.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Now, you were from a small town, you probably dominated
the proceedings in your well.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
In my mind, I did. I thought I was pretty good, right,
and you know, and I played pretty well when I
got here. I didn't get a lot of playing time, right,
And I think you kind of fall out of love
with it when you think that you deserve what you
didn't get. And but that's the that's the beauty of competition.
That that's the beauty of competition. And so and then
I got hurt. I broke my foot. And when I
(26:59):
broke my foot, I think at that point it was like, Okay,
is this something that you really want to do? And
for me, I kind of said no. I think I
just want to focus on school and think about what
my next steps are going to be as I try
to get out of this well college at that time.
Now university, which was a great experience for me all
(27:22):
the way around, even the failures, you know, of not
maybe getting the playing time that you thought that you
wanted to get or could have gotten in that whole
nine yards, but yeah, but it was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
What when you did decide to walk away from basketball,
did you know at that point in time what you
wanted to focus on as far as your studies were concerned,
or where your goal as far as the.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Well, the Collllege was very good to me, and the
coaches there were also very good to me because what
they did was allowed me to kind of start doing
a little bit of the broadcast radio broadcast of the games.
And then I was always kind of I was studying
broad cast communications and journalism or communication arts, and so
I was writing about these games, and so that's they
(28:06):
let me hold onto my scholarship and I was doing
these kinds of things to support the athletic department. So
I was very fortunate from that standpoint. So yeah, I
was started to get a feel for what it was
that I thought I wanted to do, and that's what
ultimately led me to the kans City Star right out
of college. Even though I wasn't sure which route I
(28:26):
wanted to go. I didn't know if I wanted to
go to the editorial side or if I wanted to
go to the advertising marketing promotion side. Whereas fate has it,
I ultimately moved to the advertising marketing promotional side.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And what was it that drew you there? And what
were your duties like?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Then?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
The newspaper businesses a very different thing, and.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
It was, believe it or not for people who know
me and they see me wearing suits every day. When
I was working at the Kansaity Star, my first job
in the Kansay Star, I was wearing an apron. I
had an old denim apron because I started working in
the composing room. Yeah, I worked in the composing room,
which at that time, we actually put the paper together.
I'm cutting and pasting and putting the pages together as
(29:09):
it was laid out by the editors, and then we
would literally shove those in so that they could be
made out of printing presses to go to the presses
to create the paper. And now everything of course is
done via computer, but it wasn't always that way. So
we're literally were printing out the text cutting it and
trying to mimic what the editors had laid out and
(29:30):
so and then you learn how to work on the
pressure because you had the deadlines of trying to get
these pages in before it was time for them to
go to press, and so it was really interesting. But yeah,
I was walking around in a not so stylish apron
for the first two years that I was at a
ks Star. And then I moved over to what is
called the Promotions Group, which was the Star's in house
(29:51):
advertising agency, and that's how I actually got involved with
the museum. I drew the assignment of promoting the museum
first ever traveling exhibition. And so with the Promotion Group,
we had done a lot of really cool projects supporting
nonprofit organizations that the Star was involved with and trying
(30:11):
to promote their events and those kinds of things, and
has some success, won some awards, and I just happened
to be in the right place at the right time.
And my boss, guy by the name of Darryl Durham,
a great newspaper guy, he asked me about this role
with the museum in terms of would you be interested
in leading the campaign for the museum. We're gonna look
(30:31):
like we're gonna donate some print space for the museum
to promote a traveling exhibition. And I was like, yeah,
on this sounds like great. I'm a baseball fan. I
am a baseball fan. Did not realize how little I
knew about the history of the Negro leagues until that
took place.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, that is neat. So you come to Kansas City,
now you have a job, you're a working man. How
did you How did the course come that you would
meet your wife and raise a family?
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Well, after I leave the Star. I worked from a
Star from eighty five to ninety five, and I left
in ninety five to go work at Kaiser Permanente. And
my wife, my future wife, worked at Kaiser. She worked
at Kaiser in the public affairs department, the same apartment
that I worked in. She ultimately left and went to Sprint.
Speaker 7 (31:22):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
And then we had as I tell people, she courted me.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You were a single man for a single man for
quite a while.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
She courted me, and she caught me and as a
song kidsas city goes right up, crazy little women, I
ended up getting one, but no, no, we met at Kaiser.
She ultimately went to Spread and then we got married
in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Do you remember your first meetings and what kind of
a spark or connection it was or was it just
something that grew I don't.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Know if it was an instant spark, I don't you know.
And then I think we both just kind of grew
on each other, right at some point in time.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, So now you're at Kaiser Permanent day, you're in
the you know, you're in the corporate world, and I
think it was at that point in time that you
got interested in being member of the board of the museum.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Well, actually I became a member of the board while
I was working at the newspaper. All right after we
did that promotion. In nineteen ninety three, we had the
museum had its first ever traveling exhibition open up in
the storefront space where Bayou on the Vine currently operates
and that used to be Negro League Baseball Museum, where
we had our first ever traveling exhibition in an exhibit
(32:33):
called Discover Greatness. It is still touring. It is right
now on display at the Yogi Barro Museum in Montclair,
New Jersey. Yeah, twenty seven years later, that exhibit is
still touring and it stood literally has stood the test
of time. And so that's what was my first involvement
in nineteen ninety three, where we drew about ten thousand
(32:54):
people here to see that exhibit in the month of August.
And you got to remember that was at a time
when there was nothing else at Historic eighteenth the Vine,
just the Lincoln Building. That was the only functioning building
here at Historic eighteenth the Vine. Although eighteenth and Vine
once upon a time had been a prominent African American Yeah,
but it had died. It had died, and so but
(33:17):
ten thousand people in the month of August, and so
the promotion was very, very successful, and I think at
that point in time, the officials here knew that we
had something special, and that is what ultimately prompted them
to ask me to join their board of directors. So
I did a lot of the PR, marketing, advertising, community
relation kinds of work for the museum as a volunteer
(33:38):
for about five years before becoming the museum's first ever
Director of Marketing in nineteen ninety eight, a role in
which I had all the way through twenty ten. I
subsequently left the museum in twenty ten as Vice president
of Marketing was going for about thirteen months and then
came back in April of twenty eleven to become president
of the New Worldings Baseball Museum.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
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Speaker 2 (35:41):
Our guest is Bob Kendrick. He is the president of
the negro Leagues Museum and has been in return since
the time he just mentioned just before you returned, and
actually subsequently in the first few years, the museum certainly
went through some tough times and really needed a boost
to get to the point where it is today.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
You know, and that was part of the reason that
I came back. The museum, and this is publicly known,
wasn't doing well and it had gone through a very
difficult transition going back to two thousand and six when
we lost my dear friend, the late Great Buck O'Neil,
and then ultimately an economic downturn that hurt a lot
of entities in this country, particularly cultural institutions, and really
(36:22):
a very murky transition.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Was part of that.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
When an economy goes bad, a lot of times, the
people and companies and whatever who support things like museums
see that as you know, sort of well that was
nice while we were going well, but you know, to
be a benefactor for a museum, But when the crash
hits in two thousand and eight, that probably dried up
(36:47):
quite a bit, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
You're absolutely right, and you can understand, you know, culture inheritage,
these kinds of things. These cultural institutions suffered quite a
bit because when you're going through a downturn like we
went through in two thousand and eight, you got to
help people, yeah, because people were suffering, and so the
art seemed to fall a little bit by the wayside
(37:08):
because the health and human services agencies need that support
because you've got to help people, and so it put
the museum and other cultural institutions in a very precarious position. Fortunately,
we had built up a fairly significant nest egg which
allowed us to kind of navigate through that very difficult time.
(37:30):
But we went through that transition, and I think, as
people will remember, I lost the job I was up
for to be at that time, it was the executive
director of the museum, and I ended up losing by
one vote, and people kind of remember that, and I
think they made a decision to bring someone else in
from the outside. And I think, ultimately, as I looked
(37:53):
at that situation, and I'm not sure that individual was
ever going to be comfortable with me being there, particularly
because there were so much public consternation about me not
getting the job the first time, and so ultimately I
made a decision that it was going to be in
his best interest and my best interest for me to
move on. And then I left to go take on
(38:14):
another role. And then thirteen months later here I come
right back to this role because the place wasn't doing well.
And I'll be honestand it was one of the most
difficult decisions I've ever had to make in my life.
I think a lot of people thought that it was
an easy decision for me to come back. No, it
really wasn't. It was a probably perhaps the most difficult
(38:34):
decision I ever had to make. And it wasn't just
because I didn't get the job the first time, but
because I think whatever little legacy that I may have
had was already in place. It was already in place.
People remember the great things that we were able to do,
particularly when Buck was still alive, and all the great
things that we had done for this institution. And so
(38:56):
you risk that coming back. But more accordingly, what happens
if you can't fix it?
Speaker 5 (39:04):
Right?
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Yeah, what happens if you can't fix it? Because I
know how we are as a society. We don't remember
the person or people who messed it up. We remember
the people who were there when it failed. And everybody
would have been looking at old Bob said, well Bob,
you let the place close. And so I'm really trying
(39:25):
to weigh this thing out. And I'll be lying. You know,
you're not supposed to make these decisions with your heart.
You're just not. These are supposed to be rational decisions.
You're supposed to think these things through. I'd be lying
to you if I told you I made the decision
with anything other than my heart. Yeah, Because every time
I tried to make a rational reason for why I
(39:47):
shouldn't come back, Old Buck was standing on my shoulder saying,
come on home, Come on home. Yeah. And so I
decided that given what we had put into this institution
for all those year, and even at the risk of
possibly failing, that I owed it to Buck. And I
felt like I owed it to myself to come back
(40:09):
to try and make sure we could keep his museum
healthy and whole. And I've been back, and we've had
a tremendous run from that time on. And I tell
people all the time, and I say this with all sincerity,
I really feel like Buck is still looking over my
shoulder and in many ways guiding my steps. I talk
to him every day in some capacity. There's not a
(40:31):
single day that goes by that I don't think about
Buck and everything that he shared with me. The wisdom,
you know. So when you got to make some tough
decisions and these kinds of things, I just fall back
and I think about, Okay, what would Buck do? What
would Buck say? And I think, if nothing else, it
(40:51):
just got it gives me greater resolve. You dig in
a little deeper and you just want to do whatever
you possibly can to make sure that his house is good,
it's strong.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Well, part of the reason that you had the opening
to come back is because there wasn't success. And part
of that, in many people's minds, was the fact that
your predecessor thought that it was a good idea to
separate the museum a bit from the legacy of Buck O'Neill.
This can't be just about Buck O'Neill. This has to
be and many people felt like they sort of deserted
(41:26):
the legacy of Buck O'Neill.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
It was unfortunate. I'm not sure why that mindset was
so prevalent. If you understand what museums are all about.
Museums keep people alive. That's why they're here. They keep
people alive. And for those who understood the importance to
this organization that Buck O'Neill held, well, he was the
(41:52):
man that built a house. Yeah, he's a man that
built a house. So you always want buck to be remembered.
I don't want people to ever forget Buck O'Neill. And
I think the other thing for me is that I
was never afraid to walk in Buck O'Neill's shadow. Yeah, no, no, No,
that's an honor to have bucks shadow looming over me,
(42:12):
because honestly, I think it's protecting me. You know, I'm
not sure everybody else would have felt the same way,
and so and it's I would be it would be
crazy for me to think that I could feel Buck
O'Neil's enormous You you can't, you cannot. No. But like
I said, I draw from that spirit, and I was not,
(42:34):
I said, never afraid to walk in his shadow. Where
some would kind of feel the weight of that shadow
and not want it, I wanted it because I felt
like it was a shield, you know, that is what's
guiding and protecting me. And so I think it was
just because I had that relationship with him for so
many years and so and I think you're smart enough
(42:57):
to understand too, that they're still great equity in Buck
O'Dell's name. Sure people love Buck and rightfully so and
so Yeah, you this is his house. Yeah, how do
you not want the guy who built your house to
still have a road, even if it's in spirit.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Part of the reason that Buck became Buck was the
Baseball movie produced by Ken Burns. He became maybe the
keynote voice of that particular of the particular segment about
the Negro leagues and what's talk about that a little bit.
And also Ken Burns is a very important person in
(43:38):
that history. But in he's at he really creates some real,
you know, attention and keynote to very important things that
he's passionate about. His most recent project was about country music. Yeah,
and he really highlighted the impact and prominence of African
Americans in the country music world as well. So he's
a very important person in this whole scenario.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
First and foremost, he's perhaps the greatest storyteller from a
filmmaking standpoint in the world. I mean, nobody does it
better than Ken. And it was the epic documentary Baseball
that catapulted buck international startup. As he would oftentimes tell me,
he says, Bob, I've been telling these stories for forty
(44:22):
years and nobody ever listened. And then Ken gave him
a platform in which people listened, and America literally fell
in love with Buck. At that time, Danny, he was
eighty two years old, and here you had this very
charming gentle man telling these wonderful stories to baseball fans
(44:43):
that they had not heard before. And he was doing
it with a twinkle in his eye and a smile
that lit up the screen. And as I said, America
fell in love with Buck at age eighty two. I'll
never forget the headline of the Kansas City Star says,
a star is born at eighty two. You know, when
most of us are shutting it down. It jettison an
(45:04):
entire new career and a new level of fame that
I'm not sure he ever reached. And he was a
star in the negro Leagues. I'm not sure he ever
reached that level of fame though, as he did through
the Ken Burns documentary. It jettison a whole new career
for him. God blessed them to live for another twelve
years where he literally gallivanted all over this country preaching
(45:27):
the gospel of the Negro Leagues and the virtues of
his museum to any and everyone who would listen. And
it drove him, it really did. It kept him young.
And it was only until that old ninety four year
old body finally ran out of gas that we finally
lost a man who we never thought we were going
to lose. And you know, we know that no one's
(45:49):
going to live forever. But if anybody was, it was
going to be Buck because he had defied age for
so long. He was so youthful, he was so charismatic,
Garrias and people just absolutely were drawn to him. He
was drawn to people, and so he's one of the
most inspirational people that I've ever known.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Major League Baseball has gotten more and more involved with
the museum, maybe you know, to a fault that they
should have been involved in it more before, but monetarily
as far as exposure is concerned, encouraging teams to come
by the museum and things of that nature. Talk about
your relationship with Major League Baseball now and how it
(46:31):
has evolved.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Well, and on both sides, both Major League Baseball and
Major League Baseball's Players Association, And we've seen this relationship
really grow and evolve. And I'm obviously very esthetic about
it because to have that not only the financial support
but the visible participation means a great deal to this museum.
(46:52):
It's almost like an endorsement. It validates how important this
museum really is. And so when we all got together
on February thirteenth to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of
the birth of the Negro Leagues here in Kansas City,
and we went back into the old pasel YMCA one
hundred years from the date that Rupe Foster signed these
(47:13):
leagues into existence, and the Commission of Major League Baseball
is there, and Xavier James, who was the chief operating
officer for the Major League Baseball Players Association, and Mayor
Lucas the great Mayor of the great City of Kansas
City was there in Frank White, former Royals lesend and
Jackson County executive, and Mike Keeho who is the Lieutenant
(47:37):
Governor of the state of Missouri. Of course John Sherman,
our new owner of the Kansas City Royals, are all
there gathered in that space. And of course it was
at that time that Major League Baseball and the Players
Association announced a one million dollar gift in support of
the Negro League's Baseball Museum, where you have to remember
that's their second one million dollar gift to this museum,
(48:01):
having done the same thing in twenty seventeen. So yeah,
now that feels me with great pride that number one
the financial support, because we obviously need that support to
continue to do the great work that we're doing. But
again to have their presence here means as much as
the million dollars, because in many ways it validates and
I hope that it gives us additional leverage to go
(48:23):
out and turn that million dollars into several million dollars
to help support and sustain the long term future of
this great museum.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Well, in preparation for doing this podcast, we had to
play some phone tag in such an you you mentioned
Buck O'Neill gallivanting. You do a lot of gallivanting in
your own in support of the museum.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Correct, And I've been barnstorming the US here, particularly in
the month of February with Black History Month, and of
course tying that into this centennial celebration. I've literally been
on a US barnstorming tour from east coast to west,
and I guess in my own way now preaching the
gospel of the Negro leagues and remembering and celebrating what
(49:06):
this rich history is all about, and of course the
importance of this museum as the caretake of that history.
And so you have to do these kinds of things,
you really do. I enjoy it as well, though, I
really do, And the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. People
are excited about this story and they're excited about the
heritage of our sport. And it's exactly what Buck and
(49:29):
the others who formed this museum way back in nineteen ninety,
because lost inside this one hundred year anniversary is the
thirtieth anniversary of this museum as the voice of this history.
And when they created the museum way back in nineteen ninety,
it was because they wanted these players to be remembered. Yeah,
they wanted them to be remembered for what they had accomplished,
(49:52):
both on and off the field. And that's what drove Buck. Yeah,
he wanted to build a place where they wouldn't be Forgott,
But I think in the final equazy, that's what we
all want. We want people to remember us, right.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
And so for me now to do this work and
to be out there trying to galvanize as much support
as I possibly can for this institution, you know, it's
it can get a little tiring at times because you
Chris crossing around the country, but man, it invigorates me
in ways in which I can't even imagine it is.
This work is as gratifying as anything I think I
(50:27):
could have ever possibly done.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Baseball probably still unsuccessfully, but seems to be more and
more trying to make an effort to get African Americans
back to the game. Somebody of my age, you're a
little bit younger than me, remembers, you know, the tremendous
litany of stars. And one of the reasons a National
league won All Star Game after All Star Game is
(50:50):
because they were way earlier to the party and bringing
African American players into the game. And that has waned significantly.
I mean, and it basically you can almost say it's
been replaced by Latin American players in much greater regard.
There were some Latin American players, but far more African
American players. Now it's sort of the opposite. Do you
(51:11):
think it's a fight that can be one? Do you
think the percentages can go up? And where do you
think baseball is at in getting African Americans and attention
from African Americans back into the year.
Speaker 4 (51:21):
You know, I absolutely believe that we will see these
numbers reversed. And I command both Major League Baseball and
the Players Association for recognizing that there is a problem
here that needed to be addressed. The thing that we
have to remember and it's probably one of the most
difficult things for us in this modern society of ours. Patients. Yeah,
(51:44):
we're not very patient anymore. We live in a microwave society.
We want to see things happen almost instantaneously, and you
have to understand that this decline did not happen instantly.
This was a slow, meticulous process as we started to
see the lack of African American players in the major
leagues until we got to this number that we are now.
(52:06):
And the fix won't occur overnight as well, but I
think baseball understands that this is something that needed to
be addressed. They've started to put in measures now to
help introduce this game to urban kids and what we'll
see and as we start to see the minor leagues
more populated with African American players, you can then start
(52:29):
to kind of gauge when the needle is going to
move the other way and they're putting in these places
for kids, you know. Number one, I think one of
the big things was to take away the economic gap
that our sport had almost created in his own way,
because unfortunately, sandalled baseball is a thing of the past,
(52:50):
so you're not playing on the Sandallies now, and so
when you play it, when it's organized, it is extremely
extremely expensive. And so that's one of the reasons why
we're so excited about having the Urban un Baseball Academy
right behind us, and to see kids being introduced to
the sport and then having a chance to see other
kids play the sport at a high level so that
(53:10):
it hopefully piques your interests and wets your appetite to
want to compete, and then to have essentially a Negro
league's museum basically attached to it, so now you can
come into this space and see people who look just
like you who played this game as well as anyone
ever played this game. But you know, the other thing, Danny,
is that not only did they play the game, they
(53:33):
own teams. They were managers, they were coaches, they were
team physicians, they were traveling secretaries. They fulfilled every aspect
of the business of the game of baseball. So, yes,
we want kids dreaming of playing at that next level
in the major leagues, but we also want them to
understand where the other opportunities might lie in this sport
(53:53):
and how to prepare to compete for those opportunities. And
so it's a very holistic kind of approach. We want
to build these athletes, but we also want to build
great people, and I think that's what we're attempting to do.
But I think you're going to see those numbers shift
over time. We just have to be patient.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
You obviously are proud of what you've done. Give it
me a sense of the legacy you think the Negro
League's Museum has and where you think the future of
the museum is headed.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
Well, we're obviously very proud because here we are thirty
years later, and I can tell you now, when we
started this museum in a one room office across the
street inside the Lincoln Building, in an office not as
big as this space that we're recording is right now,
no one gave the Negro League's Museum any chance of
succeeding because we were going to build this museum here
at historic eighteenth and Vine at a time when there
(54:44):
was nothing at eighteenth and Vine. And honestly, some of
our most ardent supporters were really against us building here,
and you can understand why because there was nothing else here.
So the question is, who's gonna come see you? There's
no built in foot traffic and Buckle Neil, for all
of its infinite wisdom, said this is where we will
build this museum. This is where the origins of this
(55:06):
history began. We will build this museum here, and in
doing so, we will help resurrect historic eighteenth and Vine.
That's exactly what we've done. And so for us, it
was never a self serving proposition. This is always about
the greater good. Because there were likely better business opportunities
for the Negro League's Museum to locate somewhere else where.
(55:27):
You did have that built in foot traffic, but it
was never self serving. We wanted to be a part
of helping resurrect historic eighteenth and Vine. And I can
tell you very few museums carried at burden. We carried
it very proudly. And so yes, as we reflect now
thirty years later, we are very proud of what we've
(55:47):
seen happen here at eighteenth and Vine. People are living here,
people are playing here, people are working here, and we
still think that we've only scratched the surface and what
eighteenth and Vine can be. And so I think that's
one of the reasons why people in this community have
really gained a strong affinity for what this museum has
(56:08):
represented because they know that this museum has been the
anchor of that attempted effort to resurrect historic eighteenth and Vine.
And so now as we look at the future, we
think the future is very bright. Like I said, I
think we've just scratched the surface in terms of what
this institution can be. Initially, we put our focus on
building a great attraction because that's what you had to do.
You had to hook people into wanting to come and
(56:29):
experience it. Now it's about becoming a great institution, and
that occurs I think as we move forward with the
building of the Buck O'Neil Education and Research Center and
start this next phase of growth for the Negro League's
Baseball Museum, we want to be that institution when we
have these very sensitive but needed conversations in and around
(56:51):
race and sports. We want people to turn to the
Negro League's Baseball Museum. We want to be looked at
as one of the voices in one of the levels
of expertise when it comes to that area, because ultimately,
that is what this story is all about, is about
race and sports. And so thus that starts the next
phase of growth for our institution. You know, we're starting
(57:14):
to look at opportunities to create satellite exhibitions across the country.
Because we smartly focused on the national more broader story.
We can't tell every city's history the way that it should.
So Chicago has its own history as it relates to
Black baseball, Indianapolis has its history, the New York area
(57:36):
has its history, Atlanta and Baltimore. So we're starting to
look where there might be these satellite exhibition opportunities in
the hopes of creating almost a Smithsonian like affiliation of
local regional museums with all roads coming back to the
Negro League's Baseball Museum, and being able to get this
story out in a much more expansive manner, being able
(58:00):
to broaden our licensing program, and looking at traveling exhibition
opportunities and those things that would go along with that.
We're continuing to build traveling exhibitions. We will debut a
brand new exhibition April fifteen called Barrier Breakers, and the
Barrier Breaker exhibit will chronicle all of the players who
broke their respective Major League teams color barriers from Jackie
(58:23):
Robinson in nineteen forty seven with the Brooklyn Dodgers through
Pumpsey Green, who would become the last player to integrate
with Boston in nineteen fifty nine. Well, it didn't get
any easier for Pumpsey Green in nineteen fifty nine than
it did for Jackie in nineteen forty seven. And so
we know Jackie's story very intimately and rightfully. So he
(58:45):
was that pioneering, trail blazing first. But the others who
broke the color barrier with their teams, they desire to
be more than just a footnote because they all went
through their own level of trial and tribulation as they
were trying to send to this opportunity to play in
the major leagues. And for me, if we don't tell
these stories, who will. And so we've got designed to
(59:09):
create as many as three more traveling exhibitions over the
next five to seven years, and all of them uniquely
tell a different story. And so most of those guys
who broke the color baryer in Major League Baseball came
from the negro leagues, not all of them, but the
more majority of them came from the necro leagues, which
is ultimately what put the negro leagues out of business.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
This podcast was made possible by our great sponsors like
Eastern Roofing, the presenting sponsor of Kansas City Profiles at
the Dann klink Scale Reasonably Irreverend podcast Eastern Roofing, where
integrity matters. We hope you enjoyed the latest Danny klink
Scale Reasonably Irreverent podcast. Come back soon for something fresh
(59:52):
and new
Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast, insightful and
witty commentary, probing interviews and detours from the beaten path.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing. And
we're checking back in with Bob Kendrick and we got
a lot to talk about with him, and then we'll
pair it up with the great sit down conversation we
did a few years ago at the Negro Leagues Museum.
And first of all, Bob, I know you're on the road,
as you often are, and this time it's in conjunction
(00:36):
with the Savannah Bananas.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Yeah. No, it was a very exciting time.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm hanging out down in Savannah and we'll be part
of a tremendous announcement later on this evening that involves
the Negro League's Baseball Museum and the Savannah Bananas And
so what a great week this is going to be
for the museum. And then we get together on Saturday
and we will have the Legendaryedy Lee at the museum
(01:02):
signing copies of his brand new book, seventy two Stories,
and MNI prefers that brand new baseball book because it's
taken from his tremendous baseball collection for this new book
of his, and we are the first place that he's
doing a book signing, so needless to say, I am
tremendously proud of that.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, it's this Saturday at eleven o'clock. I'll give the details,
but they don't much matter now because you missed it, folks.
It's sold out. It's from one to three on Saturday.
And Getty Lee obviously has been a lifelong baseball fan.
In fact, he's often said that baseball was in his
bones before music took over. And back in two thousand
and six or eight I believe it was, he donated
(01:47):
a huge collection of signed or have used baseballs from
the Negro leagues.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Correct, Yeah, he did.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
I mean the collection would be tremendous on his own merit,
regardless of who would have donated it. But the fact
that Getty Lee donated it, it makes that collection even
more incredible and is obviously a conversation piece for people
who walk through the museum because when they see these
baseballs and he donated the first donation was a little
(02:17):
over two hundred dase balls, and then he came back
and donated an additional lot of two hundred, giving us
one of the largest collection of single signed Negro League
player autograph baseballs anywhere in the world. And so when
people walk through and they see the name Gedty Lee,
and particularly my Canadian fans, they'll say, is that the
Getty Lee? I said, yes, that is the Getty Lee
(02:40):
lead singer and bass guitars of the legendary Hall of
Fame rock Canadian Hall of Fame rock group Rush and
so and not only did he donate the baseballs, he
came back and dedicated them. And so for him now
as he launches this new book, he's had these New
York Times best selling books and all this stuff previously,
(03:05):
this book that is dedicated to his baseball collection is
pretty cool. And for us to be the first stop
for him to sign copies of the book, well, I
think that speaks volumes to Getty Lee and his affinity
for the Negro League's Baseball Museum and this piece and
chapter of baseball and American.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
History seventy two stories it's called, and they're sort of
based on the baseballs, and I can't even imagine. I mean,
Geedtty Lee obviously is a very rich man, he's a songwriter.
Is in addition, and that's where you really make your money.
But individually signed baseball, single signed baseballs from the Negro Leagues,
(03:43):
with many of which would be incredibly rare, that's got
to be worth an untold amount of money.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, you know, he never disclosed what he paid for them,
but you're right if we you know, if we were
to praise him right now, right, they would be worth
a significant and monetary amount. And so what a tremendous
collection for us, because as I tell people all the time,
(04:10):
we couldn't have gotten those signature us even if we
wanted them, because ninety nine point nine percent of the
names on display in those cases they're dead. Yeah, they're dead, right,
And so that made it even more valuable to us
and its fans to gain it. It goes from guys
who were Hall of famous, you know, who played in
(04:32):
the Negro Leagues, to guys who were a couple of
coffee guys in the negro Leagues.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
But they're all important to us.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
And then people always get a kick out of one
particular baseball because it's kind of a novelty. It is
a baseball signed by the late Great Country Western singer
Charlie Pride. Wow, And a lot of people did not
know that Charlie Pride played in the Negro League. And actually, guys,
Charlie Pride was a good picture in the Negro Leagues
who made ate his way into the New York Yankees
(05:02):
organization before he heard his arm. It was after he
heard his arm that he then fell back on a
pioneering country Western music career some seventy two million albums.
So later we should all have a fallback career like Charlie.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Pride, right, I say that arm injury was a real
boon to Charlie Pride.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
It was a blessing. Let me ask you just to
tell him. I used to tell him.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
I said, you know, you made a whole lot more
money saying and you would have Pitcher.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Sure, there's no question about it.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Let me ask you about your first interactions with Geddy Lee.
You know, Rush is a kind of an esoteric type
of band. I think there's a lot of Rush fans
who maybe became baseball fans because they found out that
Getty Lee was a baseball fan. They may have not
have been baseball interested that much, interested in baseball anyway,
but Geedty Lee eventually would just come out on st age,
(06:00):
often wearing baseball jerseys on stage. And so what was
it like to sort of get to know Geedty Lee,
who maybe had you really heard about Rush and Getty
Lee when you get together.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I tell the
story oftentimes when I'm.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Taking people on a tour of the museum.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
When we get to collection, I knew who Rush was, right,
but to be honest, I couldn't say that I was
a Rush fan, right, But needless to say, I'm a
Rush fan now.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So when he came.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Back to dedicate the baseballs, you know, he's standing there
with me and he's got on his Kansas City Monarch cap,
and you just got the understanding of how important baseball
was to him and.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
For me as a baseball fan.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And I considered myself to be a baseball fan prior
to my involvement with the Negro League's Baseball Museum. But
as a baseball fan, you want to know the history
of this game, and the Negro Leagues are an important
part of the history not only of this game, but
the history of this country. And I think that's why
it related to him so well. When they were touring
(07:13):
before the band retired. They were doing a concert here
in Kansas City several years before the band retired, and
he had a friend that lived in Kansas City who says,
I'm going to take you by to see the Negro
League's Baseball Museum. Well, like most who come to the museum,
he fell in love with the museum as well, and
after leaving that collection came up in an auction and
(07:34):
he decided that he would be in on them with
the hope and intent of winning them so that he
could donate them back to the Negro League Baseball Museum.
We had no idea this was going on. He wins
to bid. His office calls and says, Geddy Lee has
a few baseballs he liked to donate.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Would y'all like to have them? But naturally we say yes.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
But I'm thinking three or four that he might have
picked up somewhere, And as I mentioned earlier, it turned
out to be two hundred, and then he said donated
an additional lot of two hundred. It's an extraordinary collection,
made even more so by the person who donated it.
And you know, just getting to know him on the
surface level, I can't say that I just you know,
(08:14):
intimately know him, but I do. What I do know
is that he has a tremendous appreciation, understanding, and affinity
for the history of this game. And as I mentioned,
the Negro Leagues are an important part of the history
of our game.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And of course he'll sign the book and people get
a book with the ticket, And as I mentioned, it
is now a sold out event, so you're gonna have
to go somewhere else, to some other book signing, some
other place to get a chat with Geddy Lee. But
that particular collection, there's so many highlights about the Negro
League's Museum that must certainly be one of them.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Oh, there's no question. There's no question. We're so proud
of that collection, as we are with all the stories
that we share in the museum. But in some ways
this contemporizes our story to draw that connection. You know,
our story had typically been a connection between Negro Leagues
and jazz, but now we have this rock connection as
(09:11):
well through this incredible collection donated by Getty Lee. You know,
obviously one of the greatest bass guitars in the history
of music, no matter what genre, and of course an
iconic band in Rush, which I heard rumors that they
might be getting back.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Together for a tour. So it's a very exciting time.
And I can tell you this.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
We got people coming in from all over the country
to be here for this autograph signing. And somebody called
me the other day driving in from Milwaukee, and other
people coming in from other parts of the country to
be here in Kansas City. So I owe Getty Lee
a great deal of gratitude for selecting the Negro League's
Baseball Museum as his first stop, maybe his only stop
(09:56):
for a book signing, but I got a front of
fielding that this thing is has been so explosively popular,
then maybe he'll add a few most stops in there.
I just had a Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame call
me wanted to know how they could get into a
book signing at their place, So you know, that makes
me feel even more special about what we're doing here.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Well, all kinds of exciting things. You mentioned, the Savannah
Bananas connection and now this Getty Lee event. Always something
fascinating and interesting going on at the Baseball Hall, at
the Negro League's Hall of Fame, and it just keeps
growing and building in prominence from the podcast, which is
such a cool thing that I listened to all the time,
on and on. All kinds of things burgeoning for you.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, now it's exciting. It's exciting time for the museum.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Bob Kendrick, the director of the Negro League's Museum. His
big event this Saturday. Well, he's got all kinds of
big events. But Getty Lee seventy two Stories book signing
of his new book, seventy two Stories from the Baseball Collection.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
Of Getty Lee.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And up next you'll hear the complete story of Bob
Kendrick from the interview. We did a great sit down
we did a few years ago at the museum. And
that's next on Kansas City Profiles presented by Eastern Roofing.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
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People can enjoy that. Weather's good, everything's great.
Speaker 7 (11:57):
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We're starting at New Bryn Saturdays and Sundays, starting at
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(12:18):
the water feature. It's so awesome. It's just a great
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Speaker 2 (13:44):
If you'd like to join these and other fine sponsors
and market your business to Kansas City's number one variety podcast,
contact us at Danny at danny clinkscale dot com. Look
forward to working with you. Bob, You're born in nineteen
sixty two and in Crawfordville, Georgia. To tell everybody, now,
you're younger than me, buddy. I guess the point of
(14:06):
me saying that was the fact that you were born
in Crawfordville, Georgia. Were you raised there?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
I was born and raised. Yeah, I grew up there.
Very humble roots, man. I mean, that's the kind of
north central part of the state, east of Atlanta, west
of Augusta, all of about five hundred people. As a
matter of fact, my dear friend, the late Great Buck
O'Neill says that I'm the only person from Georgia that
(14:32):
he ever met that didn't claim Atlanta as home. Yeah,
because no matter what you meet somebody from Georgia, they'll
say just outside of Atlanta. Now, they could be two
hundred miles outside of Atlanta and they'll still claim Atlanta.
But I'm not from Atlanta. I am from Crawfordville, and
I'm very proud of those humble roots.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
When I saw that, you know what, when you were
born and where you were born, it made me think
that as you were coming of age and your first
memories would be in the late sixties in the South
in a very turbulent time. But was that reflected in
a small town or.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, well it really was. My middle brother, Fred was
a connected to King and the civil rights movement. He
was actually one of King's coordinators from my little hometown.
And so yeah, so you know, you still had even
in the late sixties. As a kid, I'm still seeing
(15:29):
these remnants of what segregated South was like, and of
course the racial tensions that were there, even though Crowtoville
was predominantly African American. And so I tell the story oftentimes.
I remember as a kid when I had a brother
that lived in Atlanta. As a matter of fact, two
brothers that lived in Atlanta. And this was before the interstate,
(15:50):
before I twenty ran from Atlanta all the way to Augusta.
As it does now. And I remember when we would
go to see my brother that my mother would always
pack a lunch always, And as a kid, you don't
really understand why this was. All you know is that
it was in this shoebox. She put the wax paper
(16:12):
in this shoebox. She was gonna fry some chicken. It
was gonna be a great meal. She's gonna baker cake,
and we're all inside this shoebox. And as kid, you
don't really understand. You just know that the food is good.
We're gonna eat good on this trip. It's only after
you get older is that you realize they didn't want
to stop anywhere until they got to Atlanta. Yeah, And
(16:33):
so as you get a little bit older, you start
to understand that. And so you know, I reflect on
that from time to time, and as fate would have it,
I work in an environment where the backdrop of this
story is segregation.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, absolutely, So what were your first memories as a boy?
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I had, Crawford, I had an amazing childhood. I really did,
you know. I tell of all the time we were poor,
and I didn't know we were poor because everybody around
you had the same thing. We had nothing. So but
when everybody got the same thing you have, you don't
really know that you're poor. I didn't realize I was
poor until I got to college. I get to Park
(17:16):
College and I see all these kids driving cars and
they got their own apartments and this stuff. And I
called my mother and say, hey, wait a minute, y'all
hear this from me, But no, I would not change
my humble upbringing for nothing in the world. You know,
and my kids get tired of hearing me tell the
story of how I grew up in a house until
I was probably ten eleven years old that did not
(17:39):
have indoor plumbing. And so when they hear these war stories,
you know, they're like, okay, man, we've heard this enough.
But they're absolutely true. And what it does, though, it
gives you an appreciation for things that maybe others take
for granted. Yeah no, no, I was excited to get
into a plumbing. Yeah yeah, no, I still appreciate into
(18:01):
a plumbing. And the guys that I played golf with today,
they'll tell you if I have. If you see me,
go to what they call them now we call there
was an outhouse, but now they're modern day. They porter potties. Now,
you won't see me go to a porter potty. If
I go to a porter potter, it is that's breaking news.
And they laugh at me now because you know, we
(18:22):
had outhouses as a kid when I grew up, and
so I want no part of it. They can call it,
these fans a name. It's still just a modern day outhouse,
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So I read that your dad introduced you to the
game of baseball. Was what was the home life? Like
you mentioned your brothers. Where were you in the line
of siblings? How many how many siblings did you have?
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yes, six, I'm the baby of six and the youngest.
That's the one, the brother that's next to me. It's
ten years older than I am. So I'm the baby.
But it was almost like I was the only child
because they were all of age and starting to get
out the house. And so, yeah, my parents, I'm gonna
(19:05):
suspect that I surprised them when I came along.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I would think so ten years after five others exactly so.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
But I'm the baby of six and my father introduced
me to the game. But even in my little town
of Crawfordville, every Sunday, the grown folks would go play
they call it hardball. They'd have a hardball game at
the park, and people would absolutely gather around, sit on
the cars and watch these guys play. And so baseball
(19:38):
has always played kind of a role in my life.
My town was too small to field a high school
baseball team, so we had basketball and track. And I
just don't believe in running for the sake of running,
So if they have a ball involved with it, I
didn't want any part of it. So I played basketball,
which is what ultimately got me to Kansas City, to
the then Park College now Park University. Started off playing
(20:01):
a couple of years of small college basketball before I
got hurt and then I stopped and just focused on
my studies. But that's what got me to Kansas City.
But I've been a baseball fan since I can remember.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
What was it like as a teenager in that small town.
What was what was the life like, and what was
the life at home like? Your relationship with their parents
and such? Yeah, because like you said, your siblings were
all guns.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Yeah yeah, yeah, my parents by the time I came along,
I think they were a little tired, so I didn't know.
I didn't have the same stringent rules that my other
brothers had to it did too.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
The rules were, whatever I cook, that's what you eat. Well,
I had a little say so in those kinds of
things that she kind of catered to me a little
bit more. Now, growing up in a small town has
its pros and his cons. The pros is that you
know everybody and everybody knows you. The con is you
know everybody and everybody knows you, and so you couldn't
(20:52):
get in any trouble because literally everybody had jurisdiction over you.
And so it was funny. I tell this very often
times when I came to park and I started to
meet some of the guys and we would be walking
the campus and a car would drive by and I'd
wave and they would look at me like, did you
know that person? No, I didn't know them. Well, why
(21:13):
are you waving at him? Because that's what you do.
I couldn't walk by miss Jones' house. She's sitting on
the porch and I don't acknowledge her. By the time
I got home, my mother was like, well, miss Jones
just called and said you walked by the house and
didn't open your mouth, you know, And so that's that
kind of small town upbringing, tough on your social life. Yeah,
(21:33):
because every girl that I tried to date, my mother said,
oh boy, that's your cousin. But no, man, I look
back so fondly on those years of growing up in
Crawfordville and just being in a care free environment. Yeah,
being in a care free environment, two loving parents who
(21:57):
gave me everything I needed. Now may not have had
everything I wanted, but I had everything that I needed.
And they were two who growing up in the Deep
South themselves at the time in which they did, they
could only get a tenth grade education. That's all they
could get. That was as far as they could go.
But they always understood the value of an education, and
(22:19):
they instilled that in all of us about the importance
of an education. And they wanted, as I think any
family does, they wanted us to be better than them.
They wanted us to achieve at a greater level. They
wanted us to have more than them. And I think
we all want that for our children today. Sometimes though
we may be guilty of giving them too much. Yeah,
(22:42):
because sometimes I don't know if we gained the kind
of appreciation for stuff that we would like for our
children because they kind of take it for granted that
this is the way that things are always going to be.
People just gonna give me, you know, and so yeah,
but they they gave me everything that I absolutely needed.
And the person that I've become and hopefully will continue
(23:03):
to become is all due to them.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Was basketball The sole reason you ended up coming to
this area want to go to Park College?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
It was.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
It absolutely was. I chased the basketball from Crawfordville, Georgia
to Parkville, Missouri because from the time that I was twelve, Danny,
I was going to Howard University. Yeah, eleven to twelve
years old, I was going to Washington, DC every year
to spend the summer with my brother Fred, and so
I'm going to Howard University. And in my senior year,
(23:31):
I goten accepted to go to Howard University. And at
the thirteenth hour, I get a scholarship offer from Park
College because Howard wanted me to walk on. They ain't
have any money from me, and so they wanted me
to come to school and walk on, and I was
prepared to try and do that. And then at the
thirteenth hour, I get a scholarship offer from Park college,
(23:51):
switch gears and left to come to Parkville, Missouri. Haven't
looked back since I've been in this area ever since nineteen.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Eighty Do you have do you do you know the
story of how I mean you must how did they
find you? I mean, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
I have no idea how to found me in Croffodville, George,
I really don't, and I didn't. I never visited. I
saw the brochures, I saw the offer, I signed and
kept on coming.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
And like I said, I remember Kendrin's spirits in that regard.
I said, went sight unseated in the University of Kansas
from suburban Boston. So just went from brochures and such.
So we did the exact same thing.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
They sent me to bro shoes. Admittedly, they made it
sound like Parkville was a little bit closer to Kansas
City than it actually was. It wasn't exactly walking distance.
But you know, I'll never forget when I got here.
My brother drove me. My brother drove me from Croffordville
up to Parkville, and I remember when we went across
the at that time the old ASB Bridge.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Man.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
That was one of the scariest trips I think I've
ever seen that old raggedy bridge. That bridge was just
absolutely horrifying. And I remember getting on campus and the
dormitory that I was gonna stay in. Still remember this
to this day. During during dorm and it was kind
of old and it had, if you think Wrigley Field,
(25:17):
the vines that go on the wall, and it had
that on it. And my brother looked at me and said,
you're gonna stay. I said, yeah, man, I'm gonna stay.
And I've been here ever since.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
What was the course of your basketball career maybe not
going as well as you would have liked.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Well, yeah, I think it was. You know, you get
here and I love the game, and I still love
the game. I don't play anymore. And so we had
a lot of guys from a lot of different places playing,
and I think what you learn about competition is that
everybody was good from where they came from. I don't
(25:55):
care what level it is. And so I got there,
you know, and it's really interesting. I think I became
a better basketball player after I stopped playing, and for me,
I kind of fell out of love with the game
during that time, you know. And I think, and that's
what I told my own children as they were being
recruited for collegiate sports. You really gotta love it. You
(26:16):
gotta love it because they essentially do own you. They
own all of your time. They determine what you do,
when you do it, how you do it. And so
for me, I'm not sure I was really as prepared
to take on that level of competition as I thought
I might have been.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Now, you were from a small town, you probably dominated
the proceedings in your well.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
In my mind, I did. I thought I was pretty good, right,
and you know, and I played pretty well when I
got here. I didn't get a lot of playing time, right,
And I think you kind of fall out of love
with it when you think that you deserve what you
didn't get. And but that's the that's the beauty of competition.
That that's the beauty of competition. And so and then
I got hurt. I broke my foot. And when I
(26:59):
broke my foot, I think at that point it was like, Okay,
is this something that you really want to do? And
for me, I kind of said no. I think I
just want to focus on school and think about what
my next steps are going to be as I try
to get out of this well college at that time.
Now university, which was a great experience for me all
(27:22):
the way around, even the failures, you know, of not
maybe getting the playing time that you thought that you
wanted to get or could have gotten in that whole
nine yards, but yeah, but it was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
What when you did decide to walk away from basketball,
did you know at that point in time what you
wanted to focus on as far as your studies were concerned,
or where your goal as far as the.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Well, the Collllege was very good to me, and the
coaches there were also very good to me because what
they did was allowed me to kind of start doing
a little bit of the broadcast radio broadcast of the games.
And then I was always kind of I was studying
broad cast communications and journalism or communication arts, and so
I was writing about these games, and so that's they
(28:06):
let me hold onto my scholarship and I was doing
these kinds of things to support the athletic department. So
I was very fortunate from that standpoint. So yeah, I
was started to get a feel for what it was
that I thought I wanted to do, and that's what
ultimately led me to the kans City Star right out
of college. Even though I wasn't sure which route I
(28:26):
wanted to go. I didn't know if I wanted to
go to the editorial side or if I wanted to
go to the advertising marketing promotion side. Whereas fate has it,
I ultimately moved to the advertising marketing promotional side.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And what was it that drew you there? And what
were your duties like?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Then?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
The newspaper businesses a very different thing, and.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
It was, believe it or not for people who know
me and they see me wearing suits every day. When
I was working at the Kansaity Star, my first job
in the Kansay Star, I was wearing an apron. I
had an old denim apron because I started working in
the composing room. Yeah, I worked in the composing room,
which at that time, we actually put the paper together.
I'm cutting and pasting and putting the pages together as
(29:09):
it was laid out by the editors, and then we
would literally shove those in so that they could be
made out of printing presses to go to the presses
to create the paper. And now everything of course is
done via computer, but it wasn't always that way. So
we're literally were printing out the text cutting it and
trying to mimic what the editors had laid out and
(29:30):
so and then you learn how to work on the
pressure because you had the deadlines of trying to get
these pages in before it was time for them to
go to press, and so it was really interesting. But yeah,
I was walking around in a not so stylish apron
for the first two years that I was at a
ks Star. And then I moved over to what is
called the Promotions Group, which was the Star's in house
(29:51):
advertising agency, and that's how I actually got involved with
the museum. I drew the assignment of promoting the museum
first ever traveling exhibition. And so with the Promotion Group,
we had done a lot of really cool projects supporting
nonprofit organizations that the Star was involved with and trying
(30:11):
to promote their events and those kinds of things, and
has some success, won some awards, and I just happened
to be in the right place at the right time.
And my boss, guy by the name of Darryl Durham,
a great newspaper guy, he asked me about this role
with the museum in terms of would you be interested
in leading the campaign for the museum. We're gonna look
(30:31):
like we're gonna donate some print space for the museum
to promote a traveling exhibition. And I was like, yeah,
on this sounds like great. I'm a baseball fan. I
am a baseball fan. Did not realize how little I
knew about the history of the Negro leagues until that
took place.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, that is neat. So you come to Kansas City,
now you have a job, you're a working man. How
did you How did the course come that you would
meet your wife and raise a family?
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Well, after I leave the Star. I worked from a
Star from eighty five to ninety five, and I left
in ninety five to go work at Kaiser Permanente. And
my wife, my future wife, worked at Kaiser. She worked
at Kaiser in the public affairs department, the same apartment
that I worked in. She ultimately left and went to Sprint.
Speaker 7 (31:22):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
And then we had as I tell people, she courted me.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You were a single man for a single man for
quite a while.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
She courted me, and she caught me and as a
song kidsas city goes right up, crazy little women, I
ended up getting one, but no, no, we met at Kaiser.
She ultimately went to Spread and then we got married
in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Do you remember your first meetings and what kind of
a spark or connection it was or was it just
something that grew I don't.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Know if it was an instant spark, I don't you know.
And then I think we both just kind of grew
on each other, right at some point in time.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, So now you're at Kaiser Permanent day, you're in
the you know, you're in the corporate world, and I
think it was at that point in time that you
got interested in being member of the board of the museum.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Well, actually I became a member of the board while
I was working at the newspaper. All right after we
did that promotion. In nineteen ninety three, we had the
museum had its first ever traveling exhibition open up in
the storefront space where Bayou on the Vine currently operates
and that used to be Negro League Baseball Museum, where
we had our first ever traveling exhibition in an exhibit
(32:33):
called Discover Greatness. It is still touring. It is right
now on display at the Yogi Barro Museum in Montclair,
New Jersey. Yeah, twenty seven years later, that exhibit is
still touring and it stood literally has stood the test
of time. And so that's what was my first involvement
in nineteen ninety three, where we drew about ten thousand
(32:54):
people here to see that exhibit in the month of August.
And you got to remember that was at a time
when there was nothing else at Historic eighteenth the Vine,
just the Lincoln Building. That was the only functioning building
here at Historic eighteenth the Vine. Although eighteenth and Vine
once upon a time had been a prominent African American Yeah,
but it had died. It had died, and so but
(33:17):
ten thousand people in the month of August, and so
the promotion was very, very successful, and I think at
that point in time, the officials here knew that we
had something special, and that is what ultimately prompted them
to ask me to join their board of directors. So
I did a lot of the PR, marketing, advertising, community
relation kinds of work for the museum as a volunteer
(33:38):
for about five years before becoming the museum's first ever
Director of Marketing in nineteen ninety eight, a role in
which I had all the way through twenty ten. I
subsequently left the museum in twenty ten as Vice president
of Marketing was going for about thirteen months and then
came back in April of twenty eleven to become president
of the New Worldings Baseball Museum.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
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Speaker 2 (35:41):
Our guest is Bob Kendrick. He is the president of
the negro Leagues Museum and has been in return since
the time he just mentioned just before you returned, and
actually subsequently in the first few years, the museum certainly
went through some tough times and really needed a boost
to get to the point where it is today.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
You know, and that was part of the reason that
I came back. The museum, and this is publicly known,
wasn't doing well and it had gone through a very
difficult transition going back to two thousand and six when
we lost my dear friend, the late Great Buck O'Neil,
and then ultimately an economic downturn that hurt a lot
of entities in this country, particularly cultural institutions, and really
(36:22):
a very murky transition.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Was part of that.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
When an economy goes bad, a lot of times, the
people and companies and whatever who support things like museums
see that as you know, sort of well that was
nice while we were going well, but you know, to
be a benefactor for a museum, But when the crash
hits in two thousand and eight, that probably dried up
(36:47):
quite a bit, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
You're absolutely right, and you can understand, you know, culture inheritage,
these kinds of things. These cultural institutions suffered quite a
bit because when you're going through a downturn like we
went through in two thousand and eight, you got to
help people, yeah, because people were suffering, and so the
art seemed to fall a little bit by the wayside
(37:08):
because the health and human services agencies need that support
because you've got to help people, and so it put
the museum and other cultural institutions in a very precarious position. Fortunately,
we had built up a fairly significant nest egg which
allowed us to kind of navigate through that very difficult time.
(37:30):
But we went through that transition, and I think, as
people will remember, I lost the job I was up
for to be at that time, it was the executive
director of the museum, and I ended up losing by
one vote, and people kind of remember that, and I
think they made a decision to bring someone else in
from the outside. And I think, ultimately, as I looked
(37:53):
at that situation, and I'm not sure that individual was
ever going to be comfortable with me being there, particularly
because there were so much public consternation about me not
getting the job the first time, and so ultimately I
made a decision that it was going to be in
his best interest and my best interest for me to
move on. And then I left to go take on
(38:14):
another role. And then thirteen months later here I come
right back to this role because the place wasn't doing well.
And I'll be honestand it was one of the most
difficult decisions I've ever had to make in my life.
I think a lot of people thought that it was
an easy decision for me to come back. No, it
really wasn't. It was a probably perhaps the most difficult
(38:34):
decision I ever had to make. And it wasn't just
because I didn't get the job the first time, but
because I think whatever little legacy that I may have
had was already in place. It was already in place.
People remember the great things that we were able to do,
particularly when Buck was still alive, and all the great
things that we had done for this institution. And so
(38:56):
you risk that coming back. But more accordingly, what happens
if you can't fix it?
Speaker 5 (39:04):
Right?
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Yeah, what happens if you can't fix it? Because I
know how we are as a society. We don't remember
the person or people who messed it up. We remember
the people who were there when it failed. And everybody
would have been looking at old Bob said, well Bob,
you let the place close. And so I'm really trying
(39:25):
to weigh this thing out. And I'll be lying. You know,
you're not supposed to make these decisions with your heart.
You're just not. These are supposed to be rational decisions.
You're supposed to think these things through. I'd be lying
to you if I told you I made the decision
with anything other than my heart. Yeah, Because every time
I tried to make a rational reason for why I
(39:47):
shouldn't come back, Old Buck was standing on my shoulder saying,
come on home, Come on home. Yeah. And so I
decided that given what we had put into this institution
for all those year, and even at the risk of
possibly failing, that I owed it to Buck. And I
felt like I owed it to myself to come back
(40:09):
to try and make sure we could keep his museum
healthy and whole. And I've been back, and we've had
a tremendous run from that time on. And I tell
people all the time, and I say this with all sincerity,
I really feel like Buck is still looking over my
shoulder and in many ways guiding my steps. I talk
to him every day in some capacity. There's not a
(40:31):
single day that goes by that I don't think about
Buck and everything that he shared with me. The wisdom,
you know. So when you got to make some tough
decisions and these kinds of things, I just fall back
and I think about, Okay, what would Buck do? What
would Buck say? And I think, if nothing else, it
(40:51):
just got it gives me greater resolve. You dig in
a little deeper and you just want to do whatever
you possibly can to make sure that his house is good,
it's strong.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Well, part of the reason that you had the opening
to come back is because there wasn't success. And part
of that, in many people's minds, was the fact that
your predecessor thought that it was a good idea to
separate the museum a bit from the legacy of Buck O'Neill.
This can't be just about Buck O'Neill. This has to
be and many people felt like they sort of deserted
(41:26):
the legacy of Buck O'Neill.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
It was unfortunate. I'm not sure why that mindset was
so prevalent. If you understand what museums are all about.
Museums keep people alive. That's why they're here. They keep
people alive. And for those who understood the importance to
this organization that Buck O'Neill held, well, he was the
(41:52):
man that built a house. Yeah, he's a man that
built a house. So you always want buck to be remembered.
I don't want people to ever forget Buck O'Neill. And
I think the other thing for me is that I
was never afraid to walk in Buck O'Neill's shadow. Yeah, no, no, No,
that's an honor to have bucks shadow looming over me,
(42:12):
because honestly, I think it's protecting me. You know, I'm
not sure everybody else would have felt the same way,
and so and it's I would be it would be
crazy for me to think that I could feel Buck
O'Neil's enormous You you can't, you cannot. No. But like
I said, I draw from that spirit, and I was not,
(42:34):
I said, never afraid to walk in his shadow. Where
some would kind of feel the weight of that shadow
and not want it, I wanted it because I felt
like it was a shield, you know, that is what's
guiding and protecting me. And so I think it was
just because I had that relationship with him for so
many years and so and I think you're smart enough
(42:57):
to understand too, that they're still great equity in Buck
O'Dell's name. Sure people love Buck and rightfully so and
so Yeah, you this is his house. Yeah, how do
you not want the guy who built your house to
still have a road, even if it's in spirit.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Part of the reason that Buck became Buck was the
Baseball movie produced by Ken Burns. He became maybe the
keynote voice of that particular of the particular segment about
the Negro leagues and what's talk about that a little bit.
And also Ken Burns is a very important person in
(43:38):
that history. But in he's at he really creates some real,
you know, attention and keynote to very important things that
he's passionate about. His most recent project was about country music. Yeah,
and he really highlighted the impact and prominence of African
Americans in the country music world as well. So he's
a very important person in this whole scenario.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
First and foremost, he's perhaps the greatest storyteller from a
filmmaking standpoint in the world. I mean, nobody does it
better than Ken. And it was the epic documentary Baseball
that catapulted buck international startup. As he would oftentimes tell me,
he says, Bob, I've been telling these stories for forty
(44:22):
years and nobody ever listened. And then Ken gave him
a platform in which people listened, and America literally fell
in love with Buck. At that time, Danny, he was
eighty two years old, and here you had this very
charming gentle man telling these wonderful stories to baseball fans
(44:43):
that they had not heard before. And he was doing
it with a twinkle in his eye and a smile
that lit up the screen. And as I said, America
fell in love with Buck at age eighty two. I'll
never forget the headline of the Kansas City Star says,
a star is born at eighty two. You know, when
most of us are shutting it down. It jettison an
(45:04):
entire new career and a new level of fame that
I'm not sure he ever reached. And he was a
star in the negro Leagues. I'm not sure he ever
reached that level of fame though, as he did through
the Ken Burns documentary. It jettison a whole new career
for him. God blessed them to live for another twelve
years where he literally gallivanted all over this country preaching
(45:27):
the gospel of the Negro Leagues and the virtues of
his museum to any and everyone who would listen. And
it drove him, it really did. It kept him young.
And it was only until that old ninety four year
old body finally ran out of gas that we finally
lost a man who we never thought we were going
to lose. And you know, we know that no one's
(45:49):
going to live forever. But if anybody was, it was
going to be Buck because he had defied age for
so long. He was so youthful, he was so charismatic,
Garrias and people just absolutely were drawn to him. He
was drawn to people, and so he's one of the
most inspirational people that I've ever known.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Major League Baseball has gotten more and more involved with
the museum, maybe you know, to a fault that they
should have been involved in it more before, but monetarily
as far as exposure is concerned, encouraging teams to come
by the museum and things of that nature. Talk about
your relationship with Major League Baseball now and how it
(46:31):
has evolved.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Well, and on both sides, both Major League Baseball and
Major League Baseball's Players Association, And we've seen this relationship
really grow and evolve. And I'm obviously very esthetic about
it because to have that not only the financial support
but the visible participation means a great deal to this museum.
(46:52):
It's almost like an endorsement. It validates how important this
museum really is. And so when we all got together
on February thirteenth to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of
the birth of the Negro Leagues here in Kansas City,
and we went back into the old pasel YMCA one
hundred years from the date that Rupe Foster signed these
(47:13):
leagues into existence, and the Commission of Major League Baseball
is there, and Xavier James, who was the chief operating
officer for the Major League Baseball Players Association, and Mayor
Lucas the great Mayor of the great City of Kansas
City was there in Frank White, former Royals lesend and
Jackson County executive, and Mike Keeho who is the Lieutenant
(47:37):
Governor of the state of Missouri. Of course John Sherman,
our new owner of the Kansas City Royals, are all
there gathered in that space. And of course it was
at that time that Major League Baseball and the Players
Association announced a one million dollar gift in support of
the Negro League's Baseball Museum, where you have to remember
that's their second one million dollar gift to this museum,
(48:01):
having done the same thing in twenty seventeen. So yeah,
now that feels me with great pride that number one
the financial support, because we obviously need that support to
continue to do the great work that we're doing. But
again to have their presence here means as much as
the million dollars, because in many ways it validates and
I hope that it gives us additional leverage to go
(48:23):
out and turn that million dollars into several million dollars
to help support and sustain the long term future of
this great museum.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Well, in preparation for doing this podcast, we had to
play some phone tag in such an you you mentioned
Buck O'Neill gallivanting. You do a lot of gallivanting in
your own in support of the museum.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Correct, And I've been barnstorming the US here, particularly in
the month of February with Black History Month, and of
course tying that into this centennial celebration. I've literally been
on a US barnstorming tour from east coast to west,
and I guess in my own way now preaching the
gospel of the Negro leagues and remembering and celebrating what
(49:06):
this rich history is all about, and of course the
importance of this museum as the caretake of that history.
And so you have to do these kinds of things,
you really do. I enjoy it as well, though, I
really do, And the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. People
are excited about this story and they're excited about the
heritage of our sport. And it's exactly what Buck and
(49:29):
the others who formed this museum way back in nineteen ninety,
because lost inside this one hundred year anniversary is the
thirtieth anniversary of this museum as the voice of this history.
And when they created the museum way back in nineteen ninety,
it was because they wanted these players to be remembered. Yeah,
they wanted them to be remembered for what they had accomplished,
(49:52):
both on and off the field. And that's what drove Buck. Yeah,
he wanted to build a place where they wouldn't be Forgott,
But I think in the final equazy, that's what we
all want. We want people to remember us, right.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
And so for me now to do this work and
to be out there trying to galvanize as much support
as I possibly can for this institution, you know, it's
it can get a little tiring at times because you
Chris crossing around the country, but man, it invigorates me
in ways in which I can't even imagine it is.
This work is as gratifying as anything I think I
(50:27):
could have ever possibly done.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Baseball probably still unsuccessfully, but seems to be more and
more trying to make an effort to get African Americans
back to the game. Somebody of my age, you're a
little bit younger than me, remembers, you know, the tremendous
litany of stars. And one of the reasons a National
league won All Star Game after All Star Game is
(50:50):
because they were way earlier to the party and bringing
African American players into the game. And that has waned significantly.
I mean, and it basically you can almost say it's
been replaced by Latin American players in much greater regard.
There were some Latin American players, but far more African
American players. Now it's sort of the opposite. Do you
(51:11):
think it's a fight that can be one? Do you
think the percentages can go up? And where do you
think baseball is at in getting African Americans and attention
from African Americans back into the year.
Speaker 4 (51:21):
You know, I absolutely believe that we will see these
numbers reversed. And I command both Major League Baseball and
the Players Association for recognizing that there is a problem
here that needed to be addressed. The thing that we
have to remember and it's probably one of the most
difficult things for us in this modern society of ours. Patients. Yeah,
(51:44):
we're not very patient anymore. We live in a microwave society.
We want to see things happen almost instantaneously, and you
have to understand that this decline did not happen instantly.
This was a slow, meticulous process as we started to
see the lack of African American players in the major
leagues until we got to this number that we are now.
(52:06):
And the fix won't occur overnight as well, but I
think baseball understands that this is something that needed to
be addressed. They've started to put in measures now to
help introduce this game to urban kids and what we'll
see and as we start to see the minor leagues
more populated with African American players, you can then start
(52:29):
to kind of gauge when the needle is going to
move the other way and they're putting in these places
for kids, you know. Number one, I think one of
the big things was to take away the economic gap
that our sport had almost created in his own way,
because unfortunately, sandalled baseball is a thing of the past,
(52:50):
so you're not playing on the Sandallies now, and so
when you play it, when it's organized, it is extremely
extremely expensive. And so that's one of the reasons why
we're so excited about having the Urban un Baseball Academy
right behind us, and to see kids being introduced to
the sport and then having a chance to see other
kids play the sport at a high level so that
(53:10):
it hopefully piques your interests and wets your appetite to
want to compete, and then to have essentially a Negro
league's museum basically attached to it, so now you can
come into this space and see people who look just
like you who played this game as well as anyone
ever played this game. But you know, the other thing, Danny,
is that not only did they play the game, they
(53:33):
own teams. They were managers, they were coaches, they were
team physicians, they were traveling secretaries. They fulfilled every aspect
of the business of the game of baseball. So, yes,
we want kids dreaming of playing at that next level
in the major leagues, but we also want them to
understand where the other opportunities might lie in this sport
(53:53):
and how to prepare to compete for those opportunities. And
so it's a very holistic kind of approach. We want
to build these athletes, but we also want to build
great people, and I think that's what we're attempting to do.
But I think you're going to see those numbers shift
over time. We just have to be patient.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
You obviously are proud of what you've done. Give it
me a sense of the legacy you think the Negro
League's Museum has and where you think the future of
the museum is headed.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
Well, we're obviously very proud because here we are thirty
years later, and I can tell you now, when we
started this museum in a one room office across the
street inside the Lincoln Building, in an office not as
big as this space that we're recording is right now,
no one gave the Negro League's Museum any chance of
succeeding because we were going to build this museum here
at historic eighteenth and Vine at a time when there
(54:44):
was nothing at eighteenth and Vine. And honestly, some of
our most ardent supporters were really against us building here,
and you can understand why because there was nothing else here.
So the question is, who's gonna come see you? There's
no built in foot traffic and Buckle Neil, for all
of its infinite wisdom, said this is where we will
build this museum. This is where the origins of this
(55:06):
history began. We will build this museum here, and in
doing so, we will help resurrect historic eighteenth and Vine.
That's exactly what we've done. And so for us, it
was never a self serving proposition. This is always about
the greater good. Because there were likely better business opportunities
for the Negro League's Museum to locate somewhere else where.
(55:27):
You did have that built in foot traffic, but it
was never self serving. We wanted to be a part
of helping resurrect historic eighteenth and Vine. And I can
tell you very few museums carried at burden. We carried
it very proudly. And so yes, as we reflect now
thirty years later, we are very proud of what we've
(55:47):
seen happen here at eighteenth and Vine. People are living here,
people are playing here, people are working here, and we
still think that we've only scratched the surface and what
eighteenth and Vine can be. And so I think that's
one of the reasons why people in this community have
really gained a strong affinity for what this museum has
(56:08):
represented because they know that this museum has been the
anchor of that attempted effort to resurrect historic eighteenth and Vine.
And so now as we look at the future, we
think the future is very bright. Like I said, I
think we've just scratched the surface in terms of what
this institution can be. Initially, we put our focus on
building a great attraction because that's what you had to do.
You had to hook people into wanting to come and
(56:29):
experience it. Now it's about becoming a great institution, and
that occurs I think as we move forward with the
building of the Buck O'Neil Education and Research Center and
start this next phase of growth for the Negro League's
Baseball Museum, we want to be that institution when we
have these very sensitive but needed conversations in and around
(56:51):
race and sports. We want people to turn to the
Negro League's Baseball Museum. We want to be looked at
as one of the voices in one of the levels
of expertise when it comes to that area, because ultimately,
that is what this story is all about, is about
race and sports. And so thus that starts the next
phase of growth for our institution. You know, we're starting
(57:14):
to look at opportunities to create satellite exhibitions across the country.
Because we smartly focused on the national more broader story.
We can't tell every city's history the way that it should.
So Chicago has its own history as it relates to
Black baseball, Indianapolis has its history, the New York area
(57:36):
has its history, Atlanta and Baltimore. So we're starting to
look where there might be these satellite exhibition opportunities in
the hopes of creating almost a Smithsonian like affiliation of
local regional museums with all roads coming back to the
Negro League's Baseball Museum, and being able to get this
story out in a much more expansive manner, being able
(58:00):
to broaden our licensing program, and looking at traveling exhibition
opportunities and those things that would go along with that.
We're continuing to build traveling exhibitions. We will debut a
brand new exhibition April fifteen called Barrier Breakers, and the
Barrier Breaker exhibit will chronicle all of the players who
broke their respective Major League teams color barriers from Jackie
(58:23):
Robinson in nineteen forty seven with the Brooklyn Dodgers through
Pumpsey Green, who would become the last player to integrate
with Boston in nineteen fifty nine. Well, it didn't get
any easier for Pumpsey Green in nineteen fifty nine than
it did for Jackie in nineteen forty seven. And so
we know Jackie's story very intimately and rightfully. So he
(58:45):
was that pioneering, trail blazing first. But the others who
broke the color barrier with their teams, they desire to
be more than just a footnote because they all went
through their own level of trial and tribulation as they
were trying to send to this opportunity to play in
the major leagues. And for me, if we don't tell
these stories, who will. And so we've got designed to
(59:09):
create as many as three more traveling exhibitions over the
next five to seven years, and all of them uniquely
tell a different story. And so most of those guys
who broke the color baryer in Major League Baseball came
from the negro leagues, not all of them, but the
more majority of them came from the necro leagues, which
is ultimately what put the negro leagues out of business.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
This podcast was made possible by our great sponsors like
Eastern Roofing, the presenting sponsor of Kansas City Profiles at
the Dann klink Scale Reasonably Irreverend podcast Eastern Roofing, where
integrity matters. We hope you enjoyed the latest Danny klink
Scale Reasonably Irreverent podcast. Come back soon for something fresh
(59:52):
and new
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