In those days, the first baseman on a team in the Negro League often played the clown.  They had a funny way of catching the ball so the fans would laugh, but Leonard was strictly baseball:  a great glove, a hell of a hitter, and drove in runs.”

The rock-steady, dependable, quiet, easy going Buck was named captain of the Grays team and served in that capacity until they folded in 1950.  Leonard was the son of John Leonard, a railroad fireman and Emma.  He left school at age 14 to work as a shoeshine boy and a mill hand for the Atlantic Coast Railroad.  He played semi-pro ball until he lost his job during the Depression, when professional baseball proved to be his only alternative.  At the age of 25, Leonard left the sandlots of Rock Mount to become one of the finest first baseman in the game.

Leonard and his brother Charley 9a pitcher) received their initial training with the semi-pro Rocky Mount Elks, the Black Swans and Dougherty’s Black Revels.  In 1933, Buck went to Portsmouth, Virginia, to play for the  Firefighters, where  he was discovered by the legendary first baseman Ben Taylor, manager of the Baltimore Stars.  Taylor signed Leonard and taught him the art of first sacking and power hitting.  When the Stars went bankrupt later that year, he caught the eye of manager Cannonball Dick Redding and singed with the Brooklyn Royal Giants, an independent team.

A close friend of Redding’s, another former pitcher, now a bartender, Smokey Joe Williams recommended Leonard to Cum Posey, owner and manager of the Homestead Grays.  Leonard joined Posey’s Grays in 1934 and stayed for 17 years, anchored at first base.  The next year, he was voted to his first of twelve East-West All-Star squads.  His All-Star average was .317, with a record three All-Star home runs.  Teaming with Josh Gibson Vic Harris, Howard Easterling, Cool Papa Bell, Jud Wilson and others, he and the Grays won nine straight league championships form 937 to 1945, with a repeat performance in 1948.  In 1948, now 40,
and without the late Gibson batting behind him, pitchers still respected Leonard.  He tied with teammate Luke Easter for the NNL home run crown with 13 and grabbed the batting title with a .395 average.

The 1948 edition of the Grays were Buck’s favorite team.  They featured Easter, Sam Bankhead, Luis Marquez with Wilmer “Red” Fields as their ace.  They defeated an up and coming Birmingham Black Barons team, which featured rookie Willie Mays for a unprecedented third Negro World Series championship.

At the time of the Grays’ demise, Leonard was earning $1,000 a month and $2 a day for meal money.  By 1948, Leonard claimed he was earning about $10,000 annually, including winter league ball.  When he retired, it was reported that he was the third highest paid player in Negro League history behind Satchel Paige and Gibson.

The raiding of Negro League players by the majors caused the Grays to break up in 1950.  Leonard went south to Mexico and played three years with Torreon and two years with Durango.  He played 12 winters in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Mexico and with the Satchel Paige All-Stars in the California winter league against the Major League All-Stars in 1943.  He batted .500 in eight games before commissioner Judge Landis halted the exhibitions.  Buck Leonard retired with an unofficial lifetime average of .324 and hit .419 in 27 post game appearances.  In 1936 and 1943, in seven exhibition games against major league pitchers, Leonard hit .421.

On December 31, 1937, he married Sarah Wroten, from Hertford, NC.  They were married until her death on February 22, 1966.  They had no children.

At age 46, Leonard made his only appearance in Organized Baseball with a 10-game stint, in 1953, with the Portsmouth club, hitting .333.  He played two years in Mexico with Durango and retired at age 48.  Later in 1962, the generous Leonard helped organize the Rocky Mount club in the Class-A Carolina League, serving as vice president.  Later, in 1966, he became a probation officer and athletic director for the school district and opened up his own real estate company in Rocky Mount where he lives today with his second wife, Lugenia.

When the color line was broken, Bill Veeck tried to sign the 40-year old Leonard.  Looking back on his career, Leonard admits, “I was not ‘bitter’ by not being allowed to play in the major leagues.  I just said, ‘The time has not come.’  I only wish I cold have played in the big leagues
when I was young enough to show what I could do.  When an offer was give me to join up, I was too old and I knew it.”

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Courtesy of "The Biographical Encyclopedia of The Negro Baseball Leagues"
by James A. Riley