Charles Alexander

Charles C. Alexander

• Schools Lamar State College, University of Texas

• Born 1935 in Cass County, TX USA

Biographical Information

Author Charles Alexander is the son of a school teacher and grew up in China and in Texas. He earned an undergraduate degree in history from Lamar State College in 1958, then earned graduate degrees from the University of Texas. He served as history teacher in a number of universitries before settling down at Ohio University in 1970. His first publications were on "mainstream" historical subjects, such as the Eisenhower administration or the Ku Klux Klan.

He wrote his first book about baseball, a biography of Ty Cobb which is considered one of the best on the subject, in 1984, and one of the first baseball biographies written by a professional historian. He explained that he found Cobb a fascinating character who would have been a compelling subject even if he had been something besides a profesional athlete. He followed that first effort with biographies of John McGraw (1988), Rogers Hornsby (1995) and Tris Speaker (2007). He won the Seymour Medal in 2003 for his 2002 book Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era.

He was honored with the Henry Chadwick Award in 2011.

Further Reading

• Rob Neyer: "Charles C. Alexander", in The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 40, Number 1 (Spring 2011), p. 122.

Related Sites

• SABR tribute page