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Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

Monthly Archives: January 2016

One scout’s opinion

24 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Evaluation

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Bennie Borgin, Oscar Charleston, Quincy Trouppe

Some white scouts — not to mention players and managers — got a look at Charleston during his prime. They were usually blown away.

For example, in his memoirs, the former Negro Leaguer Quincy Trouppe writes that when he started scouting for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1953, he met a (white) Cardinals scout named Bennie Borgin. Borgin told him: “Quincy, in my opinion, the greatest ball player I’ve ever seen was Oscar Charleston. When I say this, I’m not overlooking Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, and all of them.”

Trouppe memoirs

Basic training

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Early Life

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Angel Island, Fort McDowell, Oscar Charleston

After he enlisted in the Army in 1912, Oscar Charleston’s first stop was Fort McDowell, which encompassed the whole of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. All things considered, not a bad place to do your basic training. But how different it must have been for a 15-year-old who may never have left Marion County, let alone Indiana.

392108-angel_island

A dirty city

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Early Life, Uncategorized

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Booth Tarkington, National Avenue, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Turmoil

The Indianapolis of Oscar Charleston’s youth was notable for its dirt. In the early 1900s soot would become so integral to the city’s landscape that it served as a literary device in the books written by Indianapolis native Booth Tarkington about the era, especially his Growth-trilogy novels: The Magnificent Ambersons, The Turmoil, and National Avenue. Black soot streaks the city’s statues and residents’ curtains in The Magnificent Ambersons. At times it is so thick it can be shoveled.

True to the booster spirit, the city’s new-rich industrialists take great pride in the dirt. The Turmoil’s capitalist protagonist, Dan Oliphant,

was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God’s country, as he called the some Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. And when soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. “It’s good! It’s good!” he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. “Good, clean soot: it’s our life-blood, God bless it!” The smoke was one of his great enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who called to beg his aid against it. “Smoke’s what brings your husbands’ money home on Saturday night,” he told them, jovially. . . . “You go home and ask your husbands what smoke puts in their pockets out o’ the pay-roll—and you’ll come around next time to get me to turn out more smoke instead o’ chokin’ it off!”

Oliphant’s words were no mere fictional fancy. In Indianapolis as elsewhere smoke was often regarded as a tangible symbol of progress—and Indianapolis had progress in spades. As one resident recalled, smoke fell from the sky so thickly that “if you rocked on the back porch all morning and then went in for lunch, when you went out again after lunch you had to clean the chair thoroughly again.” Anti-smoke ordinances passed in the late 1890s and early 1900s provided little if any abatement of the nuisance.

The city’s ubiquitous smoke signified an obsession with growth. In Tarkington’s portrayal, turn-of-the-century Indianapolis was fairly frenzied by a “profound longing for size” such as that which drove Dan Oliphant. “Year by year the longing increased until it became an accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger! Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen.” The factories and, just a bit later, the automobile were the primary instruments by which the “thing began to happen,” argued Tarkington. Together they brought “Death [to] the God of Things as They Are.”

Monte Irvin, R.I.P.

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Brown Dodgers

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Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson, Monte Irvin, Oscar Charleston

Nearly a year ago, I began to try to get in touch with former Giants great Monte Irvin. I was, of course, interested in talking to him about his memories of Oscar Charleston. Unfortunately, his health was already in serious decline. Today comes the sad news that he has died. May he rest in peace.

In his memoir, Nice Guys Finish First, Irvin wrote about Charleston and his role in helping Branch Rickey’s Dodgers scout black players–including, perhaps, himself:

“I had already gone to Puerto Rico when I heard that Jackie had signed with the Dodgers. I had gone down there to get back into shape shortly after I was discharged from the Army on September 1, 1945. Branch Rickey announced that he had signed Jackie on October 23rd of the same year. I was very happy for him. I wasn’t jealous of Jackie’s success, but I was envious. I thought, Gee whiz, why couldn’t that be me?

“Most people don’t know that Oscar Charleston was involved in the process of finding a player for Rickey to sign. Oscar was very smart and an astute baseball person. When they had their meetings, he was telling them who was out there, who was signable, and who would probably be able to make it. Oscar was probably working directly under Clyde Sukeforth. Clyde couldn’t have picked a better man to help him than Oscar, and Rickey couldn’t have picked a better man than Jackie Robinson.”

Carl Erskine and the Clowns

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Managing Career

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Brooklyn Dodgers, Carl Erskine, Indiana baseball, Indianapolis Clowns, Oscar Charleston

I had the privilege of interviewing former Brooklyn Dodgers star Carl Erskine this fall. Mr. Erskine was generous with his time and had many fascinating stories about Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and others.

I contacted Mr. Erskine because I wanted to know whether he had ever run across Oscar Charleston in person. Mr. Erskine was signed by the Dodgers in 1946, when Oscar may still have been working as a scout for Branch Rickey, and debuted for them in 1948. In addition, Mr. Erskine is from Indiana, having been born in Anderson in 1926, so I thought perhaps he might somehow, some way have crossed paths with Oscar locally.

Alas, he never met Charleston. But he had played against some all-black teams before he was signed by the Dodgers.

“I saw some really good black baseball teams,” he told me, referring to his semipro days in Indiana. “The Indianapolis Clowns had some terrific players, great athletes.” Mr. Erskine couldn’t recall whether he had played against them, but he had seen the Clowns when he was in high school. “I was pitching at 15 or 16 for a local semipro team. They’d give us $10 gas money and we’d drive and go play in Kokomo or Muncie or whatever.” This would have been in the early 1940s, well before Charleston was managing the team (which didn’t happen until 1954).

What was the quality of play in the Negro Leagues? Mr. Erskine estimated that it was “better than AAA. They would have fared very well against AAA, but not so well against the majors. It’s an awful hard thing to guess.” I would say that that, in fact, is probably the consensus judgment of former Negro Leagues players themselves.

Planning travel wasn’t easy…

09 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Managing Career

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Green Book, Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, Mary Corey, Negro Leagues, Oscar Charleston, segregation

Besides the grueling schedule necessitated by the need to make payroll (or at least the desire to make as much money as possible), Negro Leagues travel was often complicated by the difficulty of finding places to eat and sleep, especially (but certainly not only) in the South. As manager, and frequently the bus driver, of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Toledo/Indianapolis Crawfords, Philadelphia Stars, and Indianapolis Clowns, Oscar Charleston likely would have made use of the Green Book, which began publication in 1936, in his travels. The book listed restaurants, hotels, tourist homes, service stations, and other places of business where Black travelers could be sure to be served.

greenbooks_banner

Here is the Mississippi page from the 1947 edition. it appears that the state had seven hotels that served Blacks. Private homes took up some of the slack.

Greenbook Mississippi 1947 b

H/t Mary Corey posting in the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference group on Facebook.

The best Charleston essay

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Biography

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A Better Goodbye, John Schulian, Oscar Charleston, Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand, Sports Illustrated

The best single piece ever written about Oscar Charleston was published in Sports Illustrated in 2005. The author was John Schulian, an accomplished sportswriter who also created Xena: Warrior Princess. No one has done a better job limning Oscar’s personality, character, and achievements. Schulian did an enormous amount of research in just a few weeks for his piece, speaking to a number of former players and tracking down Oscar’s wife’s niece. Start here to get a feel for what Oscar was like.

Then, since you’ll love Schulian’s writing, buy his collection Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand, which includes the Charleston essay, and his new novel, A Better Goodbye. Would that more writers of Schulian’s quality would take the Negro Leagues as a subject.

Schulian

Managing the Brown Dodgers

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Brown Dodgers, Managing Career

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Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, Heritage Auction, Oscar Charleston, United States League

As this check shows, Oscar Charleston was paid $500 per month to manage the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers of the short-lived United States League in 1945. Usually referred to as the brainchild of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Branch Rickey, the league had another moving force in former Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee, for whom Charleston played in the 1930s.

This check was sold at auction for more than $35,000 in 2010. See this Heritage Auction page for more info.

Charleston Brown Dodgers check

Charleston enlists

02 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Early Life

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Oscar Charleston, United States Army

A century ago no less than today, the military looked like a damn fine option to poor, undereducated young men wishing to escape, or at least delay, a life of occupational drudgery. By early 1912, Oscar Charleston had decided that for him the Army made a lot of sense—and that his being only fifteen years old was no reason to wait. So, listing his birthday as October 14, 1893 (the right date, but the wrong year, which was actually 1896), he enlisted on March 7, 1912. Indeed, though when fully grown he would be 5’11”, Oscar’s youth is indicated by the fact that he is listed as just 5′ 5 1/2″ on the enlistment rolls. In the record shown here, Charleston’s name appears about halfway down the page.

Charleston army enlistenment 1912

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Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

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