Opinion: Buck O'Neil is finally a Hall of Famer. That it took so long is another stain on baseball.

Baseball righted an egregious wrong Sunday by voting the late John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil into the Hall of Fame.

O’Neil was a player and manager in the Negro Leagues, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs, and became a scout for the Chicago Cubs in the 1950s. He was the first Black coach in the major leagues when the Cubs hired him in 1962.

His greatest legacy, however, is the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which he founded in Kansas City in 1990.

What can’t be undone is the travesty that O’Neil is no longer around to give his own Hall of Fame speech. He died Oct. 6, 2006, a month before his 95th birthday – the same year a committee inducted 17 other individuals who had contributed to Negro Leagues, but not O’Neil.

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“When he died, I don’t know, it killed a little of my enthusiasm,” said Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, from his office – where at least two paintings of O’Neil rest on the walls. “And that’s a little selfish on my part. Because we wanted to celebrate with our guy. And we can’t do it.”

The first Hall of Fame class was chosen in 1936, and segregation would last in baseball another 11 years. Systemic racism kept Negro Leagues players out of the Hall for decades, but committees began voting in legends from the era starting in 1972. It then became the shortsightedness of the people assembled that prevented O'Neil's election, even as he fought for more Negro Leaguers to be inducted.

In 2021, the Hall of Fame formed the Early Baseball Committee. Comprised of historians, academics and experts, it considered candidates whose contributions to the game came prior to 1950. They met Sunday and, finally, voted O’Neil in.

A legion of loyal fans – some who saw him in Ken Burns’ 1994 documentary “Baseball,” others who received a tour of the museum from him, others who learned of his life after his death – have long advocated for his induction, astutely arguing that his impact stretched across decades. That made Sunday an occasion worth celebrating, Kendrick said.

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“If he were to get in, it would be hard not to be happy about all those who had been so passionate about the fact he should be there, and in some ways feel vindicated if it did happen, because they would feel their voices had been heard,” Kendrick told me. “It would be impossible not to be happy. You understand what it could mean for the museum if he did get in.”

That day has now arrived, but the past heartbreak simply cannot be forgotten.

There is a five-minute video that follows O’Neil from Feb. 27, 2006, the day he should have received the news he was going into the Hall. The video starts with a confident O’Neil climbing into his car and arriving at the museum and includes a passionate defense of his Hall of Fame credentials from Kendrick, then the museum’s marketing director.

During his playing days, O’Neil wasn’t much of a slugger. But Kendrick commented that defense is unfortunately overlooked in Hall of Fame debates, and he talked up O’Neil’s prowess at first base.

“Bob! Bob!” O’Neil called out. The room fell silent. “I could hit!”

An eruption of laughter followed. In his saddest moment, O’Neil lit up a room.

Of course, a Hall of Fame resumé doesn’t exist in box scores. O'Neil was a fine player -- a lifetime .258 hitter who made three East-West All-Star games and helped the Monarchs win the 1942 World Series. But cases are merited by impact and legacy.

Through that lens, Buck O’Neil should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer. What he did to preserve the history and memories of the Negro Leagues is a civic achievement. Rather than inducting him, the Hall of Fame decided to name an award after him instead; the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award is presented once every three years to an individual “extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball's positive impact on society, broadened the game's appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O'Neil.”

O’Neil was the first recipient, which was awarded to him posthumously in 2008. They built a bronze statue of him. But he should have received a happy phone call from the Hall that day in the winter of 2006. Instead, Kendrick wiped tears away and told O’Neil they were one vote short.

“I feel good,” said in his soft voice. “Sure, a little disappointed that it didn’t happen, but I knew it could be just like this. So I was prepared.”

Born in 1911 in Sarasota, Florida, O’Neil was the grandson of slaves. He graduated high school and took college courses. He lived the final 12 years of his life as a minor celebrity, and on the day it came to honor the other 17 individuals inducted into the Hall ahead of O’Neil, it was Buck who gave the induction speech on July 29, 2006.

Even at 94, O’Neil could still captivate and organize from the podium. This was three months before his death, in some ways his final public duty to the people he loved with every fiber of those 94 years. At O’Neil’s behest, the crowd in Cooperstown held one another’s hands and – in song -- repeated after him:

The greatest thing

In all my life

Is loving you

He could have been so bitter. He chose love because that is who Buck O’Neil was.

And on Sunday, the sport Buck O’Neil dearly loved finally loved him back – for good.

Follow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Buck O'Neil is finally a Hall of Famer; tragic it came after his death