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A review by ellisknox
Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Player by Jeremy Beer
2.0
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.