![\"Baseball](\"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Baseball-012.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIt was a penny wise pound foolish strategy like so many that were employed by Washington teams during the 20th century. From the same pool of talent the other expansion team, the California Angels, formed a capable starting rotation that featured young pitchers like Dean Chance, Ken McBride and Eli Grba. Adding Bo Belinsky in 1962 carried the Angels to third place in the American League in 1962 while the Senators were settling comfortably into the same AL basement that had been home for the old Senators.<\/p>\n
Any bright spot for Washington drew out-sized fan appreciation, which is where Chuck Hinton came in. Plucked from the Baltimore Orioles organization that had numerous talented African American outfielders in their minor leagues. Hinton was 26 when he was drafted by Washington. He was already a mature man who had spent a two-year stint in the Army. He had hit .369 with 20 home runs for Stockton in the California League in 1960. Before that he had played for Earl Weaver in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he had been the MVP for the Northern League, hitting .358 with 20 homers and more than thirty steals. His talent was undeniable.<\/p>\n
Hinton started his career with Washington at Indianapolis but was tearing up the American Association and summoned for his first taste of the bigs in May, 1961. He more than held his own, hitting .260 and stealing 22 bases while playing numerous positions on the field that season.<\/p>\n
In 1962 Chuck Hinton became a fan favorite in Washington. He had speed on the bases and pop in his bat and could play anywhere on the diamond. He was the spark plug for a team that was plodding at best. His 28 steals that season were second in the AL to Luis Aparicio. He hit .310 for the season and was in the batting race until the final weeks of the season. And he hit 17 home runs to tie for the team lead in that category as well. The Senators had less power than speed, if it can be imagined, and Hinton was an instant sensation.<\/p>\n
Young Washington area fans like Phil Wood made him their favorite. Phil grew up to become a radio sports personality in the Baltimore-Washington area who today works for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) that broadcasts the Orioles and Nationals games. He called Hinton one of the two most popular position players to ever play for the expansion Senators. Frank Howard was the most beloved of Senators, but Hinton was a close second, according to Wood, who well remembered his 1962 season.<\/p>\n
As important as that ’62 season was for Hinton, it had significance beyond the numbers. The Washington Senators had been what author Brad Snyder called ”a pillar of segregation,” through out the 1950’s. There was no Larry Doby, no Minnie Minoso, no black stars playing in Griffith Stadium. When the original Senators, nee the Nationals, left for Minnesota, there had been no proven players of color on the team.<\/p>\n
Chuck Hinton became the first African American player with noteworthy skills to take the field for any Washington major league team. He dispelled the myth that Washington fans would not support a black star, that the city was essentially too southern in its makeup to take to heart a great African American athlete. It was a ridiculous notion on its face. Southern cities like St. Louis were embracing black ball players. But Washington clung to its insecurities and watched baseball slip through its grasp as a result.<\/p>\n
As Phil Wood recounted for Chuck Hinton’s autobiography, My Time at Bat<\/em>, Washington fans embraced Chuck Hinton with gusto. The sports pages made him the center piece of their coverage through out the summer of 1962 and for his remaining seasons in Washington. He was the first sign of hope that maybe the expansion team could find enough talent to compete. Yet whatever the reasons, the front office in DC clung to the old concerns that having too many black faces in the outfield might run off the paying white customers. As Chuck Hinton said in his book, many teams persisted well into the 1960’s with a quota on the number of blacks they would play concurrently.<\/p>\n The effect according to Chuck was to take only the cream of the black talent. “You could only have so many black players on your team,” Chuck asserted. It meant that the black talent was in a tight competition with only the best allowed to make it to the top. The argument that Washington continued to cap the number of black players well into the 1960’s certainly has circumstantial support. Chuck Hinton, Fred Valentine, Paul Casanova, there were only a handful of African American players who cracked the starting lineup for the Washington Senators in the 1960’s.<\/p>\n Today Chuck Hinton is remembered for his remarkable talents and anything else obscures the magic he brought to the diamond. He was a great player on the field, equally adroit with the glove as the bat. But he also became a remarkable figure when he left the professional game. He took the job as coach for the Howard University baseball team shortly after he retired and remained there for 28 seasons. His teams had remarkable success, winning the Mid Eastern Athletic Conference Title seven times. He launched players like Milt Thompson to pro careers from a small college that suspended baseball for several years because it just did not have the resources to support the team.<\/p>\n As with everything else, Hinton persevered through the tough times and fought on to fashion better ones.<\/p>\n He founded the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association. Along with Brooks Robinson, Fred Valentine and others, they made a presentation to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn for launching the effort in 1982. Since then it has underwritten hundreds of golf tournaments featuring ball players, umpires, coaches and others in support of charitable causes. It also supports baseball camps and other efforts to build a presence for the game among the young.<\/p>\n Chuck Hinton was important to the city of Washington, DC in many ways. Player, coach, golfer, and head of a large and talented family, his reach into the community was formidable. For those contributions he was inducted into the Washington, DC Sports Hall of Fame where his name stands next to those of legends like Walter Johnson, Sammy Baugh, Sonny Jurgenson, Wes Unseld, Elgin Baylor and Sam Rice. It is an admirable legacy for a young boy who had to hitch hike from North Carolina for his first baseball tryout at Griffith Stadium in DC. He made it and sports fans in this city are fortunate that he did.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a pregame ceremony Saturday, the Washington Nationals recognized the contributions of former Senators’ player Chuck Hinton who died January 27th, earlier this year. His wife Irma “Bunny” Hinton was at the game for the ceremonies along with daughter Kimberly and grand-daughter Gabrielle–they are pictured below. Though born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Hinton and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t