Category Archives: Managing Career

Honus Wagner on Charleston, and Charleston on the color line

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Evaluation, Indianapolis Clowns, Managing Career

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Just came across this testimony on Oscar Charleston’s abilities from Honus Wagner, as quoted (or remembered by) Wendell Smith, crusading sportswriter for the Pittsburgh Courier.

The quote from Wagner is wonderful. But more wonderful is the direct, contemporary quote from Oscar about not getting the chance to play in the majors. This is the only place I have seen where he addresses the issue personally and directly.

(August 21, 1954, Pittsburgh Courier, p. 12)

I believe Oscar played against Wagner’s “All-Stars” in an exhibition game in 1929 or 1930, when Oscar was with the Homestead Grays. Wagner was, of course, long retired by then. But presumably he knew an elite ballplayer when he saw one. And he may well have seen or played against Charleston before then, although I have not come across such a game.

Within four months after Smith published this column, Charleston was dead. Wagner died the next year, in December 1955.

Clipping of the week

28 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in Indianapolis ABCs, Managing Career

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Oscar Charleston had a sense of humor, as this week’s clipping indicates. He evidently also knew that in his youth he had been too hotheaded.

Negro Leagues umpire Bob Motley wrote in his memoir that Oscar was always respectful toward him when he was managing late in his career — more respectful than anyone else. Everyone mellows.

By the way, this is one of any number of anecdotes from baseball history about umpires (and others) carrying guns onto the field (and in the clubhouse, on team buses, etc.). The subject is worth an article in and of itself.

Charleston New York Age 070325 rev

 

Charleston and the women

01 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Indianapolis Clowns, Managing Career

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Oscar Charleston’s one year managing the Indianapolis Clowns–the final year of his baseball career and, indeed, his life–was made particularly remarkable by the team’s inclusion of two women: Connie Morgan and Mamie Johnson. These were the second and third women to play for the Clowns, actually, following the lead of Toni Stone the year before.

Prior to the Clowns’ 1954 season, owner Syd Pollock hired Charleston to replace Buster Haywood as his manager. Haywood had left to manage the Memphis Red Sox. Alan Pollock implies in his history of the Clowns, Barnstorming to Heaven, that part of the reason for Haywood’s departure was Syd’s decision to bring in female players.

Barnstorming to Heaven

Charleston, writes Alan, was to Syd “the greatest baseball player who ever lived.” By 1954, Charleston had been retired for a year from managing the Philadelphia Stars. Perhaps his health was already slipping. In any case, when he was hired by Pollock in early 1954, he was living in Philadelphia near Connie Morgan, the Clowns’ new second baseman.

Charleston immediately took Morgan under his wing. She recalled:

Oscar Charleston was my mentor. Once the Clowns hired me and hired him, he took me off-season and taught me all he could about sliding and running the bases and, when it warmed a touch, hitting and fielding. He was a strict manager, not so you couldn’t have fun, but stern enough so you knew to get down to business. He had us self-disciplined. Didn’t talk much about the old days. He was interested in winning here and now.”

The other Clowns’ woman player was Mamie Johnson, a pitcher. She said, “with Oscar Charleston, you either played ball or you went home.

The Clowns played ball; in 1954, they won the league championship. In retrospect, it was a fitting close to Charleston’s career.

Carl Erskine and the Clowns

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in Managing Career

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

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 in Managing Career

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

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.

Managing the Brown Dodgers

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Brown Dodgers, Managing Career

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

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

Oscar Charleston and Jim Robinson

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Managing Career

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Today I had the privilege of speaking to James Robinson, an ex-Negro Leaguer who played a few games for Oscar Charleston’s Philadelphia Stars in late 1952.

Mr. Robinson was playing for North Carolina A&T University in 1952 when Charleston, in town with the Stars, stopped by to do some scouting. “After that particular game he approached me and said ‘Look, when the season is over I’d like you to join the Philadelphia Stars.” Robinson agreed. A week later, though, Robinson broke his wrist and sent Charleston a letter saying he wouldn’t be able to join the team right away.

“So late that season — maybe late August, the last Sunday in August — the Stars came to New York to play in Yankee Stadium. I caught up with them there.” There were only a few games left in the season, but Charleston took him on and, in his first game, turned to him and said, “‘Robinson, go into left field.’ So my first Negro League game was in Yankee Stadium.”

Robinson later played with the Indianapolis Clowns and, after a stint in the Army, latched on with the Kansas City Monarchs for three full seasons in 1956-58, playing third base, second base, and shortstop for managers jelly Taylor and Dizzy Dismukes. In retirement, he became the head coach at South Carolina State University.

Mr. Robinson turns 86 next month. He didn’t know Charleston well, but he is a great source for information about Negro League baseball in its later days. It was a great honor to speak with him.