Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player by Jeremy Beer (review)

On August 9, 1976, more than two decades after Oscar Charleston’s death, the great Negro Leagues ballplayer was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. At the induction ceremony, Charleston’s sister, Katherine, remarked that Oscar’s “life was baseball” (331). Jeremy Beer’s splendid biography tells the story of that complicated and fascinating life.

For nearly forty years, Charleston excelled as a player, manager, and scout. For two seasons, he worked as an umpire in the Negro National League (306). He bridged several generations of players and saw the sport change, both in terms of how it was played and in who was allowed to play at the Major League level. As a player, he moved from team to team, and league to league, playing not only in the states, but also internationally in the Philippines, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. Although he is best known for his performance as a Negro League player in the early twentieth century, he also played nine seasons of winter ball in Cuba and often competed against the best white major leaguers in exhibition games.

The statistical record is incomplete, though Beer has done an impressive job of documenting Charleston’s twenty-six seasons as a professional ballplayer. The book includes a statistical appendix that provides data on nearly seven thousand at-bats, though Beer acknowledges that some unknown number of Charleston’s at-bats are missing from this tabulation. The appendix also notes that Charleston compiled a 606-535 record as a manager.

To assess Charleston’s skill and place in the game, Beer offers anecdotal tributes from his contemporaries, the players, and sportswriters who saw him in action. Respected for his skills, leadership, and baseball intelligence, he earned the admiration of his competitors. Many likened Charleston to other great outfielders of his era, specifically Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker: Cobb for his competitive nature; Speaker for his abilities as a defensive centerfielder. The Chicago Defender sportswriters accorded him the highest possible honor, frequently referring to him as the “colored Babe Ruth” (124).

The comparison to Ruth doesn’t quite hold up, at least in terms of their respective numbers as power hitters. Beer’s appendix credits Charleston with 209 home runs, a far cry from Ruth’s total of 714. Charleston’s other key stats—batting average, slugging percentage—more closely resemble the numbers put up by Cobb and another contemporary, Rogers Hornsby.

Granted, Charleston’s stats are only a fragment of his entire record, and it is a challenge for any baseball researcher or analyst to evaluate players across eras or, in Charleston’s case, to compare his performance in the Negro Leagues with the skills of his contemporaries in the white major leagues. Thus, some of the richest and most compelling testimony in Beer’s narrative comes from his description of Charleston’s success in games played against white all-star teams. Over the years, Charleston competed in exhibition games against players like Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Al Simmons, and Walter Johnson. From all accounts presented here, Charleston demonstrated that he had the flair and abilities of the greatest Major Leaguers.

No less an authority than Bill James concurs. In his Historical Baseball Abstract, James ranks Charleston as the fourth greatest baseball player of all time, surpassed only by Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Willie Mays (11).

Charleston’s career began five years before the Negro Leagues were formed and continued through the early years of integrated baseball. Beer documents the rough times these teams confronted at their inception, noting the financial and logistical challenges faced by owners and players during an era when brawls were common, and umpires sometimes carried firearms to protect themselves from angry fans or competitors (113).

In later years, as a scout for Branch Rickey, Charleston discovered and recommended Roy Campanella to Rickey, who signed the future Hall...