Oscar Charleston lived much of his life relentlessly playing the sport he loved, so the action depicted in this biography takes place mostly in baseball parks. Some of the American ballparks of Charleston's day were small and offered close outfield fences for home runs, but most ballparks in the Negro leagues were cavernous places where doubles and triples provided most of the excitement. The conditions of the fields varied, but the infields were almost always rocky and hard— as were most major league infields of the time—and it was commonplace to see a fielder scoop up rocks and debris while he was fielding a ground ball.

Charleston was a master bat-handler who knew how to take advantage of the hard dirt and the tall grass. He could lay a bunt down each base line or to either side of the pitcher, and the ball would...