Oscar Charleston

Baseball Player

• Born: October 14, 1896
• Birthplace: Indianapolis, Indiana
• Died: October 6, 1954
• Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Sport: Baseball

Early Life

Oscar McKinley Charleston was born on October 14, 1896, to Tom, a construction worker, and Mary Charleston, a homemaker. The seventh of eleven children, Oscar grew up playing baseball with his neighborhood friends. Tossing newspapers each day to his regular customers helped to develop his throwing arm. As a youth, Oscar also worked as a batboy for the local black professional baseball team, the Indianapolis ABCs, and sometimes practiced with the club. Oscar attended Indianapolis public schools until age fifteen, when he ran away from home and joined the U.S. Army. While he was serving as a member of the all-black Twenty-fourth Infantry stationed in the Philippines, his natural athletic ability began to blossom.

The Road to Excellence

During his military service in the Philippines, Oscar excelled in both track and baseball. The underage soldier ran the 220-yard dash in 23 seconds and the 120-yard high hurdles in 15.1 seconds, both excellent times for the era. As a baseball player, he was the only African American to play in the Manila League. At the time, black players were not allowed to play professional baseball for American major-league teams, so after his discharge from the U.S. Army in 1915, Oscar joined the Indianapolis ABCs of the National Negro League.

The Emerging Champion

A 6-foot 1-inch, 185-pound rookie, Oscar quickly won a spot as the ABCs’ starting center fielder. During the next two seasons, the left-handed hitting and throwing newcomer played an important role for Indianapolis and helped the ABCs to defeat the Chicago American Giants in the 1916 Negro League Championship. Players in the Negro Leagues frequently shifted teams, and from 1918 to 1923, Oscar played for five different clubs. Although statistics for Negro League baseball are sketchy and unreliable, it is clear that Oscar compiled an impressive record. In 1921, for example, he led the Negro National League—whose teams played about fifty games that year—in hitting, with an average of .446; triples, 10; home runs, 14; slugging percentage, .774; and stolen bases, 28. From 1924 to 1927, he starred for the Harrisburg Giants of the Eastern Colored League, batting .411 in 1924 and .445 in 1925. In 1928 and 1929, he played for the Philadelphia Hilldales of the American Negro League, and he won the batting championship in 1929 with a .396 average. Throughout the 1920’s, Oscar also played winter baseball in Cuba, hitting better than .400 three times.

During 1930 and 1931, Oscar was a member of the Homestead Grays team that included Josh Gibson, Ted Page, and Smoky Joe Williams. By this time, Oscar’s weight had risen to 230 pounds, and he had moved from center field to first base. From 1932 to 1938, Oscar managed and played with the legendary Pittsburgh Crawfords, often considered the best Negro League team ever assembled. In addition to Charleston and Gibson, the squad also included legendary stars Satchel Paige, Judy Johnson, and James “Cool Papa” Bell. In 1932, the team compiled a 99-36 record, and Oscar batted .363 and hit 19 triples. For the next four years, the Crawfords dominated the tough Negro National Association. From 1939 until his death in 1954, Oscar managed various black teams, including the Philadelphia Stars and the Indianapolis Clowns, whom he led to a Negro League Championship in 1954. As the manager of the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers of the United States League formed by Branch Rickey in 1945, he helped to scout, evaluate, and sign black players, including Roy Campanella, as part of Rickey’s effort to integrate the major leagues.

Continuing the Story

Oscar was one of the most versatile players in baseball history. His blazing speed enabled him to play a shallow center field and to often lead various leagues in stolen bases. Satchel Paige insisted that Oscar, in his prime, could “outrun the ball.” A born showman, Oscar sometimes meandered after a fly ball and made an acrobatic catch at the last second or even turned a somersault before snagging a routine fly. Teammates and opponents told many stories about his “miraculous” catches. As a publicity stunt, Oscar occasionally played all nine positions in a single game.

Oscar was more than a mere showman, however; he was part of a select group of players who could hit for a high average while driving the ball with power to all fields. Oscar’s natural ability, excellent instincts, knowledge of the game, and competitive spirit all contributed to his greatness. His many accomplishments include an estimated .376 lifetime batting average in various Negro Leagues, a .361 mark for his nine seasons in the Cuban winter league—where he faced many top pitchers, both black and white, from the United States—and a .326 average in exhibition games against white major leaguers. He reputedly averaged 30 home runs a season in the Negro Leagues, and he hit 4 homers in a single exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals in 1921, two of them against hall-of-fame pitcher Jesse Gaines.

Oscar was often called the “black Babe Ruth” because of his home-run power, physique, personal popularity, and love of both life and baseball. Other sportswriters labeled him the “black Ty Cobb” because of his high batting averages, his base-stealing ability, and his habit of sliding hard with his spikes up high. His range and judgment in playing center field reminded many of major-league defensive great Tris Speaker. Like Cobb, Oscar lost his temper quickly and participated in many fights. He frequently brawled with umpires, opponents, agents who tried to steal his players, and even a Ku Klux Klansman and several Cuban soldiers. Oscar died of a heart attack in Philadelphia on October 6, 1954, and was buried in Indianapolis.

Summary

Judged by many to be the greatest Negro League player of all time, Oscar was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976. A fierce competitor and a superb “clutch” hitter, Oscar was tremendously popular with black fans. One journalist of the time wrote that Oscar was to thousands of black teenagers what Ruth was to white children. Both New York Giants manager John McGraw and sportswriter Grantland Rice reportedly called the multitalented lefty the best all-around baseball player ever.

Bibliography

Freedman, Lew. African American Pioneers of Baseball: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007.

James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Kirwin, Bill. Out of the Shadows: African American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Porter, David L., ed. African American Sports Greats: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995.