Ken burns: jackie robinson

As a big leaguer, Ed Charles was perhaps the most accomplished player in the brief history of the ill-fated Kansas City Athletics, and he achieved fame as a baseball poet, reciting his poetry on television a few times per year and mailing verse to young fans with requested autographs. But he is best remembered today for the end of his playing career, providing sorely needed veteran presence and perspective on the magically youthful “Miracle Mets” championship squad of 1969. He was known as “The Glider,” “Ez,” and “The Poet Laureate of Baseball,” but the first name that stuck — so to speak — was “Gum,” a nickname he inherited from his father.

If Edwin Douglas Charles had never played a day in the big leagues, his story would still be remarkable. Coming of baseball age in the era immediately following the triumphs of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, Ed Charles — along with legends such as Hank Aaron and largely forgotten contemporaries such as Percy Miller and Nat Peoples — was part of the generation that repeated Robinson’s and Doby’s brave stories in dozens of minor

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