Oscar Charleston

Biography

Oscar McKinley Charleston (October 14, 1896 – October 5, 1954) was an American center fielder, first baseman and manager in Negro league baseball and the Cuban League. Over his 43-year baseball career, Charleston played or managed with more than a dozen teams, including the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Negro league baseball's leading teams in the 1930s. He also played nine winter seasons in Cuba and in numerous exhibition games against white major leaguers. He was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976. One of the Negro leagues' early stars, Charleston was, by 1920, generally considered "the greatest center fielder and one of the most reliable sluggers in black baseball." He and Josh Gibson share the record for Negro league batting titles with three.

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