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Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

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Charleston news

09 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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It has been far too long since I posted anything here. But Oscar is making his way in the world, and his life and legacy have been honored in Oscar Charleston‘s winning of SABR’s Seymour Award and Spitball Magazine’s CASEY Award. The book also has been named the winner of the Robert Peterson Award by SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee.

Needless to say, it’s an honor for Oscar Charleston to be recognized in this way. And even if the book doesn’t truly deserve these awards, Oscar the player and man surely does.

We are now trying to ensure that Charleston gets some recognition in Indianapolis this year, in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the Negro National League, whose first game was played in Indy in May 1920. Stay tuned…

Reviews and radio

16 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Reviews, Uncategorized

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Bob D'Angelo, Booklist, Oscar Charleston, Query and Schultz, The Guy Who Reviews Sports Books, The Sports Bookie, Wes Lukowsky

While we wait for the New York Times to weigh in, here are three reviews of Oscar Charleston from the last week:

Wes Lukowsky at Booklist:

An invaluable contribution to baseball history.

The Guy Who Reviews Sports Books:

Ask most baseball fans or historians to name the best players in the history of the Negro Leagues and the immediate answers are usually Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell. However, if one takes a closer look at both the statistics available and the excellence of his play for a long period of time, the answer must be Oscar Charleston. Charleston’s life and legacy are told in this excellent book by Jeremy Beer.

Bob D’Angelo, The Sports Bookie:

Oscar Charleston fills a void in baseball history, providing context and nuance to a great player who was enigmatic in life — and in death.

My thanks to D’Angelo for catching my error in spelling Ebbets Field with two “t’s.” Won’t be the last typo called out, I’m certain, but it is the first!

I was honored to do six radio shows last week. It was especially cool to be the Query and Schultz show, both of whom asked great questions, in Indianapolis on Friday. Here’s the recording.

 

The libraries are going to be full of OSCAR CHARLESTON,

25 Friday Oct 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Reviews, Uncategorized

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Gus Palas, Library Journal

surely, after this nice review in Library Journal.

Quoth one Gus Palas:

In this thorough account, Beer has created a definitive work on Charleston’s life and accomplishments. The result is a fascinating story and an important piece of sports history.

I ask you, dear reader, what self-respecting librarian could fail to order this book after reading such words? I would shudder to meet such a person.

Anyway, my thanks to Mr. Palas!

 

Books, books, books

23 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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Now I have the rest of my life to refuse to see any typos herein…

Here’s a photo of Oscar no one has ever seen . . .

13 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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Elizabeth Overton, Harrisburg, Jazz Age, John Clark, Miriam Phields, Oscar Charleston

. . . or almost no one, at any rate. And with exactly seven weeks to go until Oscar Charleston is released, it seems appropriate to share it here.

The photo was shown to me by Elizabeth Overton, great-niece of Oscar’s wife Jane, just months before she (Elizabeth) died in March 2018–far too young, I might add. Elizabeth and her daughter Dr. Miriam Phields were incredibly helpful to me. I owe them both a great deal.

In summer 2017, I paid Elizabeth a visit in her Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, home to talk to her about Janie and collect some photos. We had a lovely conversation, and I learned much about Janie and her family, but other than this photo of Oscar pasted onto a wooden statue, a gift he had once given Janie, Elizabeth had no pictures of Oscar.

Then, a day or two later, Elizabeth gave me a ring. She had found another of Janie’s photo albums, and this one included two pictures of my subject.

I soon dropped in on Elizabeth to see these images. One (below), of Oscar standing with Pittsburgh Crawfords secretary John Clark, a man who would go on to become an astute political journalist, I had seen before.

But the other was completely new. Here it is:

We have here, it seems, a young, Jazz Age Oscar, probably right around the time at which he met Janie (that is, 1922 or thereabouts). As you can see, he is leaning against a porch post and dressed casually in driving cap, sweater, tie, and pinstriped pants.

It’s like no other photo of Oscar I’ve ever seen. I especially love the way Oscar gazes straight into the camera with a steady, cool, piercing stare. You can see why few people ever dared mess with this man.

Ernie Banks was strange but honorable

17 Friday May 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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Ernie Banks, National Review

and over at (and in) National Review I explain why, by way of reviewing two new Banks biographies. The opening paragraph:

Ernie Banks was weird. Mister Cub was beloved for his perpetual “Let’s play two!” cheerfulness and his easygoing acceptance of whatever storms life and baseball offered. He also was married four times, adopted a child when he was in his late seventies, made it a goal to attend more weddings each year than in the year previous, often broke into song during press conferences, conducted faux interviews with himself for the entertainment of no one in particular, and once thought seriously about attending clown school. In his later years he greeted every man he met, whether he knew him or not, with the question “How’s your wife?” He also developed a troubling case of kleptomania.

 

Speaking on Oscar at SABR 49

12 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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Oscar Charleston, SABR

I am pleased to be speaking on Oscar Charleston on Thursday, June 27, at SABR 49 in San Diego. The talk will consist of a brief precis of the book, due out on November 1, of course. Hoping that the many real experts in the audience won’t find too many errors in my work!

Registration is here if you are interested.

Ruth and Durocher

02 Thursday May 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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Babe Ruth, Jane Leavy, Leo Durocher, Paul Dickson

My review of Jane Leavy’s The Big Fella and Paul Dickson’s Leo Durocher is now online at the Washington Examiner. Actually, it’s been online for a while–and ran in the March 19 print edition, as I found out today. Lesson: it pays to follow up one’s submissions.

The first paragraph…

In 1920, Babe Ruth changed baseball by hitting a then unthinkable 54 home runs. Thanks mainly to the advent of tabloid newspapers, that feat made him a national celebrity. Over the next 15 seasons, 611 more Babe Ruth fly balls would drop to Earth beyond the American League’s outfield fences. No one had ever seen anything like it. No one had ever seen anything like him.

More here.

I could never understand the appeal of Durocher–as a person, as a manager, as a husband or son, as anything. Having read not only Dickson’s bio, but as two new Ernie Banks bios (reviewed for National Review, forthcoming), Leo’s charm continues to elude me. In this review, it was fun to vent my spleen a little.

Coming November 1

22 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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and now available for pre-order on Amazon. As they say, buy early and buy often!

Oscar, race, and that story about the wrestler

26 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by Jeremy Beer in Uncategorized

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Clarence Palm, communism, Daily Worker, Dan Parker, Dave Wyatt, Jim Londos, Jimmy Powers, Lewis Dial, Martin Dihigo, Oscar Charleston, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Race, Satchel Paige, The Golden Greek

In 1920, when the first Negro National League was formed, Chicago Defender journalist Dave Wyatt predicted that “in the near future . . . Oscar Charleston will have to run bases protected by agile sons from all climes.” Oscar had taken note of that prophesy, pasting it in his personal scrapbook.[i] Sixteen years later, still waiting for Wyatt’s prediction to come true, he was happy to lend his name to the cause of racial equality.

In August 1936, the Daily Worker, a Communist newspaper, began an effort to life baseball’s color ban. Given the paper’s (correctly) suspected loyalty to Moscow and the sensitive geopolitics of the time, the Daily Worker was hardly an ideal vehicle for the fight for racial justice in America. Nevertheless, the NAACP, the Chicago Defender, and others, including white sportswriters Dan Parker and Jimmy Powers, rallied to its banner.

The Defender of August 29, 1936, ran head shots of Martin Dihigo and Oscar Charleston with a caption that read, “Charleston, Satchel Paige, and other baseball stars barred from the major leagues have shown by their fine sportsmanship on and off the field that they are well worthy of recognition. That they are barred because of their color has been admitted by the powers that be in baseball and a move is being made to wipe out this practice.”[ii] The Daily Worker’s initiative had been “hailed” by players, said the Defender, including Johnny Taylor, Frank Forbes, Silvi Garcia, Dihigo, and Charleston. Whether all or any of these players knew this effort was associated with communism is an open question. Charleston, after all, was a Republican.

Plus, unlike most revolutionaries, Oscar had a lively sense of humor. Cool Papa Bell recalled a waitress who said the restaurant didn’t “serve niggers” getting the response, “That’s fine, I don’t plan to order one.”[iii] A well-worn line, but significant that Bell attributed it to Oscar. And as frustrated as he must have been by Jim Crow, Charleston retailed the following anecdote to Lewis Dial of the New York Age:

Oscar Charleston, manager of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, tells a funny story on Clarence Palm, catcher of the Black Yankees. A Colored all-star team was playing a white all-star club down in Mexico; both groups were from the United States. Palm was at bat and a big white Texan named Pipgras was pitching. Pipgras threw a couple of fast ones at Palm’s head which angered the colored boy, who walked out to the mound and beleaguered the white lad. Palm called him a big cracker and told him that he was not in the United States now but down in Mexico, and another pitch like those would cause the cracker to have his head punched. When the Colored team returned to the States, Palm was the first man off the train, and who should be standing on the station platform but Pipgras. The colored boy quickly gathered his wits and realized he was again in Texas. Charleston said Palm went over to the white pitcher, tipping his hat, and said ‘Good morning Mr. Pipgras, how are you this morning? Do you still have that fast bucking curve?[iv]

 

Oscar was himself happy to push back against white men who took liberties, even when he was in the South. But on one occasion, at least, he decided that standing his ground wouldn’t be a wise decision. It has often been repeated over the years, as a way of illustrating his ornery toughness, that Charleston once threatened to throw a professional wrestler from a train. That is true. But the point of the story, as told (probably) by Oscar himself, is that he was a fool for doing so.

It seems that Oscar was traveling by rail to Harrisburg sometime in the early 1930s when he took a seat opposite a burly white man. After Oscar sat down, the man looked up and told him that he would have to move, as he was saving the seat for someone else. Oscar, perhaps sensing racism at play, flatly refused to comply, telling the man that if he didn’t let him have the seat one of them was getting thrown out the window. At that, the man gave a hearty laugh. Before anything else could happen, a railroad employee leaned in and asked Oscar if he knew who the man was. When Oscar said no, the employee told him it was Jim Londos, one of the most popular—and chiseled—professional wrestlers in the country. Oscar, taking another look at The Golden Greek, decided to find a different seat.[v]

 

 

[i] Dave Wyatt, “Sweeping Educational Campaign in Baseball.” Article in ocs.

[ii] Chicago Defender, August 29, 1936, 13.

[iii] Bankes, The Pittsburgh Crawfords, 58.

[iv] Lewis R. Dial, “The Sport Dial,” New York Age, September 12, 1936, 9.

[v] Chester Washington, “Ches’ Sez: Rap’s Homer Beats Grays,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 3, 1935, A4. Harry Beale told the same story, at less length, in the same issue of the Courier (PAGE), so he and Washington must have gotten it at the same time.

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Oscar Charleston: Life and Legend

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