1932-Oscar Charleston
Centerfielder and First Baseman
In Cooperstown? Yes (Inducted in 1976 by Negro League Committee)
Best Season-1920
Career WAR-48.1, 3317 AB, 1210 H, 143 HR, .365 BA, 854 R, 853 RBI, 210 SB, .449 OBP, .615 SLG, 1.064 OPS, 184 OPS+
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. -Terence Mann, played by James Earl Jones, in Field of Dreams.
The movie Field of Dreams was based on the book, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. In the book, the writer was the elusive J.D. Salinger, but he didn’t want his character in the movie, so it was changed to Terence Mann and James Earl Jones was cast. He did the speech above and, though it’s one of the most famous parts of the movie, it takes me out of the movie for a minute. Mann’s character was a rebellious 1960s writer and I find it hard to believe that he looked back at a game that had its race issues for so many years with fondness. It’s still one of my favorite movies of all time.
Oscar McKinley Charleston, born on October 14, 1896 in Indianapolis had a career affected by those very issues. The five-foot-eight, 185 pound lefty played his entire career in the Negro Leagues due to baseball’s segregation. He’s a player in the same era as Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby and it would have been great to see him play against these other greats.
Charleston was 23 when the official Negro Leagues began in 1920 and he was the Negro National League’s first superstar, slashing .353/.418/517 for an OPS of .963 (179 OPS+), while playing for the Indianapolis ABCs. He led the NNL in WAR (5.2), WAR Position Players (5.5), Offensive WAR (4.5), runs (80) hits (122), total bases (179), triples (11), Runs Created (74), extra base hits (36), times on base (161), defensive games as centerfielder (87), putouts as centerfielder (206), assists as centerfielder (17), double plays turned as centerfielder (3), putouts as outfielder (209), assists as outfielder (18), range factor per game as centerfielder (2.56), and fielding percentage as centerfielder (.987). This was a very typical season.
Oscar would bounce around throughout his career, like so many of these great Negro League players and only play in the postseason once, with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1935. They would defeat the New York Cubans in the NN2 Championship Series, 4-3, and Charleston would belt three homers in those seven games while hitting .308 (eight-for-26).
Charleston retired as a .365 hitter, .001 behind Ty Cobb. He was cocky and brash, but also one of the greatest players of all time. He died at 57 on October 5, 1954 in Philadelphia.
Next year’s ONEHOF nominees-Turkey Stearnes, Willie Wells, Charlie Bennett, Elmer Flick, Art Fletcher, Carl Mays, Wally Schang, Biz Mackey, Harry Heilmann, Dazzy Vance, Branch Russell, and Al Simmons.
ONEHOF (One-A-Year Hall of Fame) 