Digital music protested at funeral

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KANSAS CITY, Mo., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Kansas City, Mo., trumpet players are upset that a recording was used to play taps at the funeral for ex-Negro League ballplayer John J. "Buck" O'Neil.

O'Neil, who was featured in the Ken Burns PBS Documentary series "Baseball," died Oct. 6 in Kansas City at the age of 94, the Kansas City Star reported.

While the U.S. military allows a recorded version of taps for veterans' funerals when a live military horn player is unavailable, there are plenty of good trumpet players in Kansas City who would have played it from their heart in memory of O'Neil, trumpeter Mike Metheny told the newspaper.

"As special and important as Buck was, it's disturbing that somebody,

somewhere thought it was OK to have taps played ... by a machine," he said.