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6 reviews for:
Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Player
Jeremy Beer
4.21 AVERAGE
6 reviews for:
Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Player
Jeremy Beer
4.21 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
This book needed to be written: Charleston is the least-known great 20th century baseball star. It's a sad characteristic of US sports' segregation and discrimination that even a diligent research effort yielded relatively few details of the Charlseton's life.
Well researched dive into the career of a forgotten legend. I'm a huge baseball fan and I have to admit that I barely remember ever hearing about Oscar Charleston. After reconstructing stats from boxscores we get to see just how dominating Charleston was on the field. He more than earned his reputation as the greatest in the game.
Exactly what the title says. Oscar Charleston may not be quite entirely forgotten, but he's certainly largely unknown to white baseball fans. And he's certainly one of the greatest men ever to have played the game.
The author has done massive research and is careful in making his case. He has to be, because the records are so spotty (Charleston played most of his career between the two world wars). I enjoyed learning about how ad hoc were the games played by black players in this era. A team would form. Maybe it would be in a league, maybe not, but the team would play a great many non-league games. It was really more like a band playing gigs wherever they could find some. Because it all meant getting paid and staying afloat just a little longer. Sometimes it wasn't even clear whether a game played between two league teams would be counted as a league game.
Charleston was an interesting figure and Beer did a good job catching my interest, but maybe I'm not the right audience here. A goodly part of many chapters is spent just sort of relating games played. Beer hits the highlights, but read enough of those sort of chapters and it all sort of ran together.
In addition, a number of baseball biographies follow a similar formula. We hear about the main character. Then we are introduced to key figures in his life: parents, wife, managers, team-mates. At each introduction, for the important ones anyway, the narrative promptly rolls back and gives us an abbreviated biography of them. For me, this detracts from the focus and from the pacing. I found myself just sort of powering my way through the later chapters.
Anyway, for a baseball enthusiast, you really ought to read this. Charleston was one of the greatest hitters and fielders of all time. Contemporaries compared him to Cobb and Gherig, and Jeremy Beer certainly agrees.
The author has done massive research and is careful in making his case. He has to be, because the records are so spotty (Charleston played most of his career between the two world wars). I enjoyed learning about how ad hoc were the games played by black players in this era. A team would form. Maybe it would be in a league, maybe not, but the team would play a great many non-league games. It was really more like a band playing gigs wherever they could find some. Because it all meant getting paid and staying afloat just a little longer. Sometimes it wasn't even clear whether a game played between two league teams would be counted as a league game.
Charleston was an interesting figure and Beer did a good job catching my interest, but maybe I'm not the right audience here. A goodly part of many chapters is spent just sort of relating games played. Beer hits the highlights, but read enough of those sort of chapters and it all sort of ran together.
In addition, a number of baseball biographies follow a similar formula. We hear about the main character. Then we are introduced to key figures in his life: parents, wife, managers, team-mates. At each introduction, for the important ones anyway, the narrative promptly rolls back and gives us an abbreviated biography of them. For me, this detracts from the focus and from the pacing. I found myself just sort of powering my way through the later chapters.
Anyway, for a baseball enthusiast, you really ought to read this. Charleston was one of the greatest hitters and fielders of all time. Contemporaries compared him to Cobb and Gherig, and Jeremy Beer certainly agrees.
A good biography of, as the title indicates, one of the great forgotten baseball players of all times. The author has to deal with the handicap of the limited information on Charleston but works through this using the information available, including access to family members and related documents. In addition, Charleston passed away over sixty years ago so the ability to interview individuals who actually saw Charleston play in his prime is limited. If nothing else, this book reminds us of the greatness of this player and the sad fact that Charleston could not display his tools to a broader audience.