James Champlin "Champ" OSTEEN
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: Feb 24, 1877 - Transylvania County, NC
Christening:
Death: Dec 14, 1962 - Piedmont, South Carolina; buried Rose Hill Cemetery
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Richard Sentell OSTEEN (1838-1913)
Mother: Mary Ann SHIPMAN (1839-1930)
Spouses and Children
1. *Minnie Bell RIDDLE (Oct 17, 1884 - Sep 20, 1923)
Marriage:
Status:
Children:
1. Jack Hendricks OSTEEN ( - )
2. Elsie L. OSTEEN (1904- )
3. Elva Mae OSTEEN (1905- )
4. Gladys Irene OSTEEN (1907- )
5. Vernell OSTEEN (1909- )
6. Harry W. OSTEEN (1912- )
7. Daisy Lee OSTEEN (1914- )
8. Mary Bell OSTEEN (1916- )
9. Flora Jane OSTEEN (1918- )
10. Joe Francis OSTEEN (1920- )
Notes
General:
[Eugenia Lindsey Osteen.FTW]
Story taken from "From The Banks of The Oklawaha Vol. III by Frank L. FitzSimons, Chapter 92, pp. 232,233.
Champ Osteen
When he died on December 14, 1962, only the elderly still living here remembered James Champlin Osteen because Champ Osteen was an old man by then and he had lived in South Carolina most of his life. Champ Osteen was born in 1876 in Henderson County near Blantyre, the son of Richard and Mary Shipman Osteen.
James Champlin Osteen was the first person born in Henderson County to become a major league baseball player. His family moved to Greenville, S.C. when he was six or seven years old and he also became the first person from Greenville to make the major leagues. Champ Osteen had a long and brilliant career as a professional baseball player in the days before World War I when million dollar babies were unheard of and a player had to fight his way up through the ranks by sheer determination, hustle and ability.
Because he had all of the above qualifications combined with boundless energy, grit and a fighting spirit, Champ started at the bottom and went to the top of his profession. Professional baseball was a rough, tough game at the start of his career around the turn of the century, when he started playing semi-professional base ball in the textile league of South Carolina.
He soon attracted the attention of the baseball scouts. His first professional experience was with the Wilmington, N.C. team in the days when the outfielders often had to share their territory with a cow or two staked out to graze.
In 1901 he was traded to Newport News, Virginia whose franchise was soon transferred to Charlotte, N.C. Champ Osteen's proudest boast was that he played shortstop on the Charlotte team when it won 25 straight games. He was on his way up because in 1903, he was the shortstop with the Washington D.C. Senators. This was his first major league experience. The next season he was with the New York Highlanders in the American League managed by Clark Griffin. This team is known today as the New York Yankees.
Griffin sold Osteen to the Cleveland Indians but Champ refused to report and so in 1906 he came back to Greenville and coached the Furman University Baseball team that year. He was back in the major leagues in 1908 when he played shortstop with St. Louis Cardinals. His major league career as a played ended in 1910 but not his professional baseball career because in 1911 he managed the Dallas, Texas team and the Charlotte, N.C. team in 1912 and 1913. He finished his diamond career in 1914 as manager in Columbia, S.C. in the old South Atlantic League known to baseball players and fans as the Sally League.
He returned to live in Greenville and was an employee of that city until his retirement in 1957. Champ Osteen's career paralleled those of many other great ballplayers. He knew them all and either played with them or against them; Hans Wagner, Ty Cobb, the Georgia Peach, the great pitcher Christy Mathewson, Shoeless Joe Jackson and John McGraw. There was also Mordecai Brown, famous as "Three Fingered Brown" because he had only three fingers on his pitching hand. Brown was one of the greatest in his day and he kept a bottle of whiskey in the dugout and took a swig each inning before he went to the pitcher's mound. Brown always bragged that he was a better pitcher drunk than the best of them when they were sober. Champ Osteen knew them all, the great and the near great.
Many of Champ Osteen's relatives live here: Mrs. Margaret Osteen Taylor and Mrs Annie Thacker Stewart are nieces. The late Judge Jim Shipman, Mrs. Kitty Lane, Mrs R.P. Freeman, Mrs Kate Durham, Mrs Mamie Whitmire are first cousins of Champ Osteen.
Although the greater part of his life was spent in other places, Champ Osteen loved these mountains and at every opportunity he visited his relatives here as long as his health permitted.
James Champlin Osteen passed away on December 14 1962, one of the last of "the Old Guard" of professional major league baseball players when the game was a hard, rough, tough fight in the early years of the century.