Player Profile: Charlie Neal

Charles Lenard Neal was born in Longview Texas on January 30th, 1931. After WWII the Dodger system churned out infield prospects like weeds. Many went to other teams, Chico Carrasquel, Bobby Morgan, Bob Lillis, Chico Fernandez and Billy Hunter to name a few. Robinson, Reese, and Gilliam were impossible to dislodge. But Neal was a keeper. His game was speed. But he was the invisible Dodger, overshadowed by a roster of All-Stars and six future Hall of Famers.

Neal came from a baseball family. His father, Houston was a carpenter, and his mother, Verdell, took in laundry. His dad formed a sandlot team. His older son, Jim, played for him, but Charlie was afraid of the hard ball. When he joined the team at 13, he got hit on the elbow his first game and started crying. After that, his father and brother pitched balls at him until he got over his fear. The Neals manned the outfield with Charlie in left, his dad in center and Jim in right. Charlie switched to SS when that position became vacant. There was no baseball team at Longview Colored High School, but he excelled in basketball and as a running back in football.

Charlie was 16 when Robinson signed with the Dodgers, opening white baseball to young black players. He began playing on semi-pro teams, first in Sweetwater Texas, where he met his future wife, Annie Lee Willis. The Tigers in Shreveport offered him a job in the summer before his senior year, but he was afraid he would be homesick. “My mom took care of that” he said. “She really got on me and told me to get on down to Shreveport and be a man.” In later years he also played for the Atlanta Black Crackers in the Negro Southern League.

After graduating from high school, he married Annie on September 12, 1949. That winter he was driving a meat truck when the Dodgers signed him. His bonus was a train ticket to spring training in Vero Beach. Starting in Class-D in 1950, Charlie played SS and 2B. The system was loaded with SS at the time, Zimmer, Lillis and Fernandez. He broke out in 1951 at Lancaster, a Class-B team in Pennsylvania. He hit .323, had an OPS of .955. He had 24 triples, 12 homers, and 22 stolen bases. He led the league in total bases, triples and steals.

Neal and outfielder, John Glenn became the first black players at Newport News, Virginia in the Class-B Piedmont League. That was in 1953. Neal and Lillis turned a league record 199 double plays. Joining Zimmer at AAA St. Paul in 54, He had another standout season, hitting 18 HRs and posting a .792 OPS. Zimmer, who was the same age was ahead of him on the depth chart. Zimmer was called up to Brooklyn in July as the designated successor to Pee Wee.

Not that Neal was being ignored, the Red Sox offered 100 to 125 thousand for him. But farm director, Fresco Thompson, said he figured in the teams’ plans for 1955. Robinson was entering his ninth year as a Dodger. The Red Sox still had no black players. The Yankees had signed Elston Howard, leaving only the Red Sox, Phillies and Tigers as the all-white teams.

The Dodgers five frontline black players made up a majority of the lineup when Don Newcombe was pitching, Campy, Robinson, Gilliam and Sandy Amoros. Joe Black was recovering from a sore arm. Neal and Cuban SS, Fernandez made a strong bids to make the team in spring training. In a magazine article, O’Malley was quoted as saying there is no such thing as a saturation point for black players. But Dick Young, the Daily News most read sportswriter disagreed and wrote, when it comes time to trim the squad down to 25, the retention of 8 negroes would bring about a percentage of 32%. I honestly do not believe that major league baseball is ready for that step right about now.

Neal and Fernandez were sent down before opening day. Black was traded to the Reds. Neal’s new manager, Greg Mulleavy, said he was a better fielder than Robinson was when he broke in. The younger and quicker Gilliam had forced Robinson off of second base, now the younger and quicker Neal forced Gilliam off of second in 56. Gilliam became his roommate and mentor along with Robinson.

Neal played in only 62 games, hitting with little power, so Alston benched him because the team was having trouble scoring runs. He slashed .287/.353/.382 over the year. With Robinson retiring after the 1956 season, Reese turning 39, the infield was shook up again. When Robinson’s heir apparent, Randy Jackson, hurt his knee, Neal and three others took a turn at the spot. Zimmer took over at SS for Reese but did not hit, so the infield was shaken up again with Neal moving to SS and Reese to third.

The normally quiet Neal became a principal in the Dodgers beanbrawl of the year. On July 11, Gilliam, another quiet sort, objected to a close pitch, dropped a bunt down the first base line and wrestled with the Reds pitcher, Raul Sanchez. Reds 3B, Don Hoak, charged into the fray, Neal wanting to protect his buddy, leveled Hoak with a single punch. Hoak tried to retaliate, but Gil Hodges wrapped the red faced Redleg in a bear hug. Hoak promised retaliation, league president, Warren Giles, told him to cool it. Gilliam, Neal and Sanchez were fined 100$.

In his first season of full time play, Neal hit .270/.356/.411 with 12 HR’s. But he was charged with 24 errors in just 100 games at short. The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958. The move was traumatic for some, but not Neal. He had gone home to Longview every winter, where he and Ann were raising their daughter, Brenda. He soon bought a house in Southern California, and their second daughter, Debbie, was born there.

In 1958 the team moved into the L.A. Coliseum. The field was shoehorned into a football stadium and the left-field fence was only 251 feet away, punctuated by a 42 ft. high screen. Neal took full advantage and clubbed 22 HR’s a career-high, 14 of them at home to tie Gil Hodges for the team lead.

On advice from Walter Alston, he adopted a more upright stance with his feet closer together. Charlie is mainly a wrist hitter, scout Andy High said. Because he does not have the heft of guys like Hodges or Kluzewski, he uppercuts the ball. He also had a good year on defense back at his preferred position and the Dodgers set a league record recording 198 double plays. Those opportunities were there because Dodger pitching was quite frankly, very bad. They gave up the most HR’s in the league with the screen looming behind them. The team fell to 7th place, their worst finish since WWII.

In 1959 Neal was a huge part of the Dodgers’ surprise resurgence and run to the pennant. He, Gilliam and winter trade pick up, Wally Moon, were the only everyday players while Alston juggled an ever-changing lineup filled with over the hill Boys of Summer, and young players up through the organization. On the seasons final day, Neal hit a two-run homer, tripled and scored another run as the Dodgers beat the Cubs 7-1 to finish in a tie with the Braves. Charlie went 3-5 in the first playoff game, and homered in the second.

As the Dodgers played the first game of the Series in Chicago with no day off, they were pounded 11-0. In game 2, Charlie suffering from stomach pains he thought signaled an ulcer, fumbled a first-inning ground ball that led to 2 runs. Chicago was up 2-0 in the 5th when Neal lofted a long flyball to left, LF Al Smith retreated to the wall and watched as it landed a couple rows in. An excited fan spilled a beer in Smith’s face. There is a famous photo of that moment.

Essegian tied the game with a pinch homer in the 7th. After Gilliam walked, Neal hit a shot into the center-field bullpen where White Sox pitcher Billy Pierce made the catch. It turned out to be the game-winner. Neal would get a run-scoring single in Drysdale’s 3-1 win and he got 3 hits and 2 RBI’s in the clincher, game 6. For the series Charlie went 10-27, a ,370 average, clearly MVP numbers, but it went to Larry Sherry who relieved in 4 games, saving 2 and winning 2. Once more, Charlie was the invisible man. For the season, Charlie hit .287 with 19HR’s, a career-best .802 OPS, 83 RBI’s and 17 stolen bases. He and Moon tied for the league lead in triples with 11. He also earned a Gold Glove and was on the All-Star team.

The Dodgers doubled his salary to 24,000$ for 1960. His fall from the pinnacle of his career was sudden and unexplained. His power disappeared, he dropped to 8 HR’s and 2 triples with a sub .700 OPS. He was as puzzled as everyone else, suddenly he was missing ground balls before they got to him.

As he passed his 30th birthday in 61, injury and illness dragged him down even more. A knee injury in April became infected and he had to be hospitalized. He had an adverse reaction to penicillin was misdiagnosed as chicken pox. By mid season he was joking that next year he would be playing in Houston, where expansion baseball would be played in 1962.

Years later in his autobiography, Maury Wills wrote, Charlie was ill, psychologically and emotionally. If that was so, no one was talking about it. Some teammates did recall both Alston and Durocher berating him. Roger Craig said ” Charlie was the kind of player who did not respond well to rough treatment: if you yell at them in front of other players, they tend to go into a shell”.

The Dodgers held Neal out of the expansion draft, but then they went shopping him around the league. The expansion Mets took the gamble. It was an expensive one too, costing them $100,000, and Lee Walls, who had cost them $125,000 in the draft. Charlie did not complain when he got to Florida, but he said” there comes a time in men’s careers when they might be better off starting somewhere else”. Charlie’s time as a Dodger was over.

He had a lot of ex-Dodgers there with him. Hodges, Zimmer, Labine, Craig, and Pignatano, and a couple of ex-Giants, Hobie Landrith and Sherman Jones. It had been 15 years since Jackie’s debut, and the Mets stayed at the Colonial Inn motel in St. Pete. But black players were not allowed to eat in the motel dining room. So the Mets opened a private dining room so the players could eat together. Neal, Jones, Al Jackson and Sammy Drake bought a junk car to take them to the black part of town on their day off. The Met’s opening day lineup included Neal, Craig, Zimmer, and Hodges. The Mets lost 11-4. Neal drove in the first run in Mets history, and drove in another later in the game.

Charlie was one of the few who looked like a real major leaguer and was hitting .285 in mid-June. The Giants tried to get him for their stretch run, but the Mets felt obligated not to trade him to the Dodgers’ chief rival. He developed a painful cyst in his hand, but the team urged him to postpone surgery until the off-season. Swinging one-handed, his average dropped to .260. His 9 triples led the team and his 58 RBI’s were third best.

The now 32-year-old Neal moved to 3rd in 63. Larry Burright, a former Dodger, and Ron Hunt took over at 2nd. Stengel praised his defense at 3rd, but he hit only .225 in 72 games. He was sent to the Reds on July 1st in a waiver deal that sent him, and C Sammy Taylor for cash and C Jesse Gonder.

The Reds wanted Neal as a utility infielder, but he hit only .156 in 34 games. The Reds released him the next spring ending his 8 year MLB career. Charlie went home to Longview and played semi-pro ball for many years. Neal went on to manage a sporting goods store in Dallas and later owned a security business there. He returned to L.A. in 1971 for the Dodgers’ first old-timers game. It was a three-day reunion with former teammates. Even his Mets manager was there, Casey Stengel, who played for Brooklyn early in the century.

He and his wife Ann divorced in 1977. Charlie would get income from autograph shows in the 80’s and 90’s. Charlie died on Nov 16, 1996, of heart failure. He was invisible to the end, newspapers reported that his death was two days later.

His last baseball card as a Dodger was this 1961 Topps. Charlie was one of my favorite Dodgers in their early years in L.A. He was always in the middle of the big rally’s and the big plays. His sudden loss of skills was a mystery to all of his fans.