Baseball’s record-book integration restored Oscar Charleston’s rightful place in the game’s history

On July 26, 1928, Oscar Charleston stepped up to the plate at Hilldale Park in Darby and answered hundreds of prayers.

Charleston spent two seasons of his Hall of Fame career on the Negro Leagues team from the outskirts of Philadelphia. Hilldale’s opponent on that overcast July day, the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, was on a six-game winning streak. The Giants were up by two with two outs in the ninth, and their seventh win seemed like a foregone conclusion.

But Charleston was at the plate, and with him there, nothing could be a foregone conclusion. The home crowd prayed for a miracle, and got one.

“Eye and bat and body of the Charleston synchronized,” W. Rollo Wilson wrote in the New Pittsburgh Courier. “Club and sphere met in perfect timing. Crack ‘o doom. Blasting of joy. Eruption of hopes. On and over the head of the furiously racing Chaney White sailed the ball. ... Three runs! The ball game! A fit end to an epic battle!”

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It was the type of performance that came to be expected of Charleston over his career, which spanned 39 years of Negro Leagues baseball as a player and manager. And it was also part of a legacy that has been largely forgotten by the general public.

Until now. When MLB updated its record books in May to incorporate statistics of Negro Leagues players, many largely forgotten superstars became new again.

With the culmination of the three-year research project, Charleston’s name rocketed up the leaderboards. He is now third all-time in career batting average (.363), behind only newly crowned champion Josh Gibson (.372) and Ty Cobb (.367). Charleston’s three Triple Crowns are the most of any player.

And because of the two seasons he spent with Hilldale and his five seasons with the Philadelphia Stars, the City of Brotherly Love can celebrate Charleston’s restored legacy.

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Charleston was born in 1896, and a baseball career that would last four decades started on a sandlot in Indianapolis.

At 15, he lied about his age in order to enlist in the Army, and he served in the Philippines. While there, Charleston played organized baseball for his regiment’s team. After receiving an honorable discharge in 1915, he returned home and made his Negro Leagues debut that year for the Indianapolis ABCs.

Charleston, who played mostly center field, was considered a true five-tool talent. He played for and managed more than a dozen different Negro Leagues teams over his career, and won batting titles in 1921, 1922, and 1925.

When Willie Mays made his MLB debut in 1951, he often drew comparisons to Charleston because of their shared position and all-around talent.

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“To this day, I always claim that Willie Mays was the greatest major league player I have ever seen, but then I pause and say that Oscar Charleston was even better,” Buck O’Neil wrote in his 1996 memoir, I Was Right on Time.

Charleston was known for his intensity, and he developed a reputation of being a bit of a hothead. Most of the stories that have circulated about his temper can be traced back to an incident that occurred during his rookie season with the ABCs.

During a postseason game against a team of white all-stars, including major and minor league players, a disagreement between an ABCs player and a white umpire turned physical. Charleston ran toward the scuffle from center field and punched the umpire. The sight of a Black man punching a white umpire caused chaos to break out on the field and the police got involved.

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Charleston and his teammate were charged with assault, and he issued an apology for his actions. He was fined $10 plus court costs.

In 1921, Charleston was on the St. Louis Stars when they played a five-game series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals won, three games to two, but Charleston impressed nonetheless with some acrobatic fielding and by hitting five home runs.

His 1925 season was likely his greatest. As a player-manager for the Harrisburg Giants of the Eastern Colored League, Charleston hit .427 with 20 home runs in 71 games, and finished the season with an OPS of 1.299.

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“Such an individual is Oscar Charleston,” the New Pittsburgh Courier wrote on June 20, 1925, “a meteor now flashing, and for many years, flashing across the baseball firmament with a dazzling luster which is at once a joy to behold and a glorious contrast to the mediocrities of present day baseball.

“Oscar, it appears, has everything.”

Following his stellar 1925 season, Charleston played for the Lincoln Giants in what was called a “Little World Series” against the semipro white Bronx Giants and none other than Lou Gehrig. The future Hall of Famer, who had just completed his first full season with the Yankees, went 1-for-2, while Charleston went 4-for-6, including a homer. He also made a one-handed catch in the seventh inning.

In 1928, Charleston’s Harrisburg Giants had dropped out of the Eastern Colored League and most of its players signed elsewhere. At 31, Charleston was highly sought after among Negro Leagues teams, turning down an offer from the Bacharach Giants to team up with Hilldale, a team he’d had many pennant races against while with Harrisburg.

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With Hilldale, he played a little first base in addition to his customary center field, and he hit .348 with 44 RBIs across 60 games. That September, just a few months after his ninth-inning heroics against the Bacharach Giants, Charleston helped Hilldale to a series win against the Homestead Grays. Though Hilldale was independent during the 1928 season, the New Pittsburgh Courier deemed the team winners of the “state title” for beating its rivals out of Pittsburgh.

Charleston played one more season with Hilldale, in 1929, and finished with a .360 batting average in 78 games. With turmoil in Hilldale’s front office, Charleston joined the Homestead Grays the next year and wouldn’t return to a local team until 1941.

By that time, Charleston was 46 years old and his playing days had all but ended, though he still made sporadic appearances on the field. He joined the Philadelphia Stars as manager; the team was owned by local Black businessman Ed Bolden, who had also founded the now-defunct Hilldale.

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The New Pittsburgh Courier described Charleston as having won “a warm spot in the hearts of each and every one of his players.”

Charleston played two games that year, including his last as a professional player. The team mustered a 15-46 record, and he was replaced as manager.

After some brief stints working as an umpire and the Stars’ first base coach, Charleston was rehired in 1948.

Over his next four years leading the club, Charleston faced challenges that had befallen Negro Leagues teams after MLB’s integration. Popularity of the team steeply declined, and some of the Stars’ top talent was acquired by MLB teams. Satchel Paige joined the Stars in 1950 after being released by the Cleveland Indians, though he wasn’t in Philadelphia for very long before being signed by the St. Louis Browns.

The Stars disbanded in 1952.

Charleston’s last year in baseball was 1954, when he managed the Indianapolis Clowns. Though retaining the name of his hometown, the Clowns actually had relocated to Buffalo three seasons earlier. They were one of the first professional baseball teams to sign women, done in an effort to bring more attention to the club and drive ticket sales after Hank Aaron left to play for the Braves.

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Pitcher Mamie “Peanut” Johnson and second baseman Connie Morgan — a Philadelphia native — played under Charleston for the one year he was with the Clowns. The Call, a Black newspaper in Kansas City, wrote in 1954 that Charleston “personally scouted” Morgan, and called her “one of the most sensational girl players he has ever seen, adding that her throws across the diamond rank on a par with many major leaguers.”

Charleston spent only one year with the club. He suffered a stroke and fell down a flight of stairs in his home, and died from his injuries at a Philadelphia hospital that October. He was 57.

Charleston’s playing career was over by the time Jackie Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier in 1947. But even if his opportunity to benefit from it never came, Charleston still played a significant role in the integration of the majors.

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Charleston provided Branch Rickey with background information on Negro Leagues players to aid him in his effort to integrate the majors. One such prospect was a catcher from Philadelphia who at the time was playing for the Baltimore Elite Giants. Roy Campanella would spend his Hall of Fame career with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In his day, sportswriters gave Charleston a lot of nicknames. “The Black Babe Ruth.” “The Black Tris Speaker.” “The Black Ty Cobb.”

But at long last his name is in the record books. And now the name Oscar Charleston — or perhaps, Charlie, which is what he was called by fellow players — can stand on its own.