He once tore the hood off a Ku Klux Klan member, was hired as a covert scout to help break baseball’s color barrier, and was ranked by modern statisticians as the fourth greatest player who ever lived. Yet almost no one knows his name. This deep dive pulls Oscar Charleston out of the vault.

We trace the evolution of the Hoosier Comet from bat boy to fearless center fielder to cerebral manager of the greatest team ever assembled.

• Enlisting in the Army at 15 and developing as an athlete in the Philippines
• His shallow center-field defense that dared batters to test his speed
• The 1915 umpire brawl that forced him to flee to Cuba
• Winning three Triple Crowns and posting a 1.066 career OPS
• Managing the 1932 Crawfords super team and later scouting for integration