Another View
The St. Louis Cardinals signed their first Black players in 1954. Peete was second
Second in a series
The St. Louis Cardinals baseball team was as talented and diverse as a 1960s major league baseball club could be, barely over a decade after Jackie Robinson’s MLB debut in 1947. Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Curt Flood and others helped create the club, beginning in 1960, that would eventually win three National League pennants (1964, 1967, 1968), the 1967 World Series, and finishing second in two others.
Thomas Alston was the Cardinals’ first Black player in 1954. A promising rookie named Charlie Peete was the team’s second Black player and might have been the club’s starting centerfielder in 1957 had he not become the first active major leaguer to die in a commercial plane crash in November 1956.
Journalist and author Danny Spewak’s second book, “Cardinal Dreams: The Legacy of Charlie Peete and a Life Cut Short,” “was probably a two-year process,” Spewak told the MSR at the Society of American Baseball Researchers (SABR) convention in Minneapolis in August.
“A couple of years ago, I had kind of always been familiar with the story, but really thought there was more to do with it,” Spewak said. “I started to do some research, found some archives, did a lot of newspaper articles, research, and interviewing players that came across him that knew him, and friends of his.
“[It] all came together,” noted Spewak.
“It’s a name that you wouldn’t know. It’s a name that I think that more baseball fans should know about, and that was kind of the goal behind the book,” Spewak pointed out on Peete, who according to the author, “left a legacy as one of the first Black players in St. Louis Cardinals history.”
Charlie Peete was born in Franklin, Va. in 1929. Nicknamed “Pistol,” Peete mostly grew up in Portsmouth, Va. and played semi-pro baseball.
“He actually dropped out of high school so that he could pursue this professional endeavor,” added Spewak. “[He] pretty much played every position except for pitcher.”
The 18-year-old Peete got his pro start in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1950. “He was very competitive” but didn’t play much, said Spewak.
After serving in the armed services in Korea, Peete played baseball in Canada. “He’s not a household name, but he plays well,” said the author. “He comes back [to the States] and he tries out and makes the Portsmouth [minor league baseball team]. He becomes one of the first African American players in the Piedmont League” and became an all-star.
This caught the eyes of the Cardinals, and the team selected Peete in late 1954. He was assigned to their Triple-A farm club. He eventually was called up to the parent club and made his MLB debut on July 17, 1956 against Pittsburgh.
“He plays 23 games for St. Louis,” said Spewak on Peete. “He didn’t hit well. He had some moments—he had a triple against the Phillies’ Robin Roberts.
“His defense is really where he makes his mark,” and the Cards saw Peete as a potential outfield starter for the next season. This is why he was on the team’s active roster, explained Spewak.
“He decides to go to Venezuela for winter ball and brings his entire family because they wanted to spend Christmas together. All the accounts say the pilot made some kind of catastrophic error, didn’t anticipate the [weather] conditions and crashed into the mountain range, just a couple of miles from the airport, killed all 29 people on board,” including Peete, his wife, and their three children.
After his talk, Spewak surmised, “I thought it deserves its own book. I think he’s a really important figure for baseball fans… I think his legacy should be widely known.”
Next – A Black baseball player played on an all-White Minnesota team before Jackie Robinson.