Oscar Charleston

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 a 43-year career, he played or managed with more than a dozen teams, including the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Negro leagues' leading clubs in the 1930s. He also played nine winter seasons in Cuba and appeared in numerous exhibition games against white major leaguers.

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. He was the second player to win consecutive Triple Crowns in either batting or pitching, after Grover Cleveland Alexander, a feat matched by a batter just one other time. He is now credited with having won the Triple Crown — leading in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in — three times, the most for any player in Major League Baseball, and holds the third-highest career batting average. He was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.