ZONE HE HAD AN EYE FOR THE GAME How one of the greatest players became MLB’s 1st black scout

This article has been excerpted from “Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player” by Jeremy Beer (University of Nebraska Press).

By spring 1945 two years had passed as Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, deliberately searched, to no avail, for the first black man to sign for his team.

Part of the problem, he believed, was that it was hard for his white scouts to show up at Negro League games without arousing suspicion. It was even harder for them to get accurate inside knowledge about the character and background of any given player. Oscar Charleston and a new black baseball circuit called the United States League (USL) provided Rickey with a solution to this twofold dilemma.

The USL was not Rickey’s idea. It was former Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee’s. Believing that the two existing black major leagues were both poorly run and unpopular, and knowing that the war had brought relative prosperity to black communities in northern cities, Greenlee had spied a financial opportunity. By February 24, 1945, his plans were largely in place. The revived Pittsburgh

Crawfords would be one of the league’s eight franchises. Best of all, the popular Oscar Charleston, who had led the Crawfords in the 1930s and was, by general consensus, the greatest black player of all time, would serve as the manager of the league’s Philadelphia-area club.

Meanwhile, the drama of de-segregation was beginning to gain steam. On April 16, 1945, the Boston Red Sox bowed to political pressure and reluctantly gave tryouts to Negro League players Jackie Robinson, Sam Jethroe, and Marvin Williams. No matter how pro forma, these tryouts piqued Branch Rickey’s interest. When Wendell Smith, the Pittsburgh Courier journalist who had helped make the Red Sox tryouts happen, came to Brooklyn shortly thereafter to meet with Rickey, Rickey asked for his report on the players. Smith delivered his opinion, and while he was there, the new USL came up.

Rickey already knew about the league. He had been approached earlier that month about potentially placing a team in Brooklyn. Doing so, he now realized in talking to Smith, might help him gain privileged access to black players. Was there an opportunity here for a partnership?

Just a couple of days later, on April 19 and 20, USL representatives met in secrecy with Rickey in New York. There they made a deal.

Rickey would home a franchise called the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers at Ebbets Field, and Oscar Charleston would serve as the team’s manager. Rickey would serve as an adviser to the league. He would also publicly give the USL his blessing and do all he could to help make it a success.

Greenlee and his colleagues were thrilled. With a powerful backer in Rickey, their fledgling league had a bright future.

None of these men, at least publicly, considered the notion that integration, which seemed increasingly like a plausible if still frustratingly elusive hope, might soon mean that all-black leagues would be rendered untenable.

In fact, as Rickey would soon reveal, they hoped that the USL would eventually become a Minor League within the confines of organized baseball. Regardless, Rickey viewed the USL as a way to scout Negro Leaguers more freely, to build organizational ties within the black community and start winning blacks’ allegiance, and to make a little money at Ebbets Field while the Dodgers were away—a priority never far from Rickey’s mind. Furthermore, with Oscar Charleston as his manager, he could easily leverage the knowledge, insight, and connections of the Negro Leagues’ most respected figure.

Just when Charleston learned that Rickey wanted him not only to manage the Brown Dodgers, but also to scout and advise on Negro

Leagues players for the Major League Dodgers, is unknown. Charleston never spoke publicly about his role with the team. Nor did Rickey. But since Rickey believed he had little time to lose, in all likelihood Charleston had been brought into the loop by the time he joined Rickey for a head-turning press conference held at Rickey’s Brooklyn office on May 7.

Flanked by Greenlee, Charleston, and other league officials, Rickey kicked off the proceedings seated behind his large mahogany desk. Speaking at length, as was his wont, he announced to the two or three dozen reporters crowded in front of him that the United States League, a new black baseball circuit,