Later Life
After retiring permanently as a player in 1955, Leonard worked as a truant officer, a physical education instructor, and the vice-president of a minor league team in his birthplace of Rocky Mount, a team of which he was also a board member. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972 along with Josh Gibson.
In 1994, the Major League All-Star Game was held in Pittsburgh, hometown of the Grays, and the 88-year-old Leonard was named an Honorary Captain. He appeared wearing a model of a Grays uniform. He was one of Negro league baseball's foremost ambassadors until his death at age 90 in Rocky Mount.
In 1999, he ranked Number 47 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, one of five players so honored who played all or most of their careers in the Negro leagues, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
According to Negro league statistics compiled in a project sponsored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Leonard's career batting average was .320 and his slugging percentage was .527. In 1,472 recorded at bats, he had 471 hits, 60 home runs, 73 doubles, and 26 triples, drew 257 walks, and scored 352 runs while driving in 275.
Read more about this topic: Buck Leonard
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)
“History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don’t use the stuff—well, it might as well be dead.”
—A.J. (Arnold Joseph)