Chuck Coles was another Jefferson baseball star
?As the baseball season rolls on we continue to profile players from the area’s rich baseball history. Recently, we did a piece on Jefferson’s Dick Gray, who made it to the big leagues with the Dodgers and Cardinals. Gray had a high school teammate who also was able to make it to the major leagues, his name was Chuck Coles.
Coles came from a baseball family, his father Charles was a reknowned as a former sandlot and semi-pro player in the Middle-Atlantic League and later as a longtime manager in the Big Ten baseball league, he was inducted into the Big Ten Hall of Fame’s first class in 1954.
The younger Coles was born June 27, 1931 in Fredericktown, Pa., and excelled in football, basketball and baseball at Jefferson High School in the late 1940s.
“He pitched and played first base in high school,” Gray recalled. “He was good ballplayer, he was a good hitter. He had a good background, his dad was an ex-semi pro player.
“We were both in the Dodger organization and he was on the east coast and I was usually in the south. He played football, basketball and baseball in high school. We did all right, we didn’t win any championships on anything in high school, but we did all right.”
Before the 1950 season, Coles signed as an amateur free agent with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Gray signed on with the Dodgers in 1952.
“We were both signed by Dodgers scout Rex Bowen,” Gray said. “Baseball in western Pennsylvania was really good at that time. We had some really good semi pro teams back then and the competion was pretty good.”
When Coles signed with the Dodgers before the 1950 season, and he was assigned to the Class D Valdosta Dodgers in his initial season. He led the Georgia-Florida League in hitting with a .355 average and was selected for the All-Star team and was Rookie of the Year in the Georgia-Florida League.
Coles would spend the 1951 year with the Newport News Dodgers, where he would appear in 142 games, lead the Class B Piedmont League with 165 base hits, make the All-Star team and hit .299. His next stop would be with the AA Mobile Bears in 1952. He kept up his fast pace by playing in 153 games and hitting .296 which included 13 home runs. He again was picked for the Southern Association All-Star team, along with future major leaguers Frank Thomas and Dusty Rhodes.
Coles entered military service in 1953 and 1954, he returned to baseball in 1955 with the Elmira Pioneers, where he hit 13 homers and had a .278 batting average. He would appear in 128 games for the Pueblo Dodgers in 1956 and hit for a .279 average.
Before the 1957 season, the Brooklyn Dodgers sent Coles to the Albuquerque Dukes of the Western League in an unknown transaction and Chuck would respond by leading the league with 208 base hits that included 26 home runs and batted .344.
Coles was anxious for the 1958 season to get under way and said so in a letter to the Sports Editor of the Albuquerque Journal.
“I’m getting pretty anxious to get going again . . . plan to start working out in the school gym . . . guess the Western League’s in kinda shaky position, according to what I read.”
Coles never got back to Albuquerque, the Cincinnati Reds obtained him from Albuquerque as part of a minor league working agreement before the 1958 season.
The Reds would place him with the AA Nashville Volunteers in 1958 and Coles would again respond by leading the Southern Association with 107 RBI along with 29 homers and a .307 batting average.
One of his teammates in Nashville was former Major League hurler Jim O’Toole.
“He had some pop and could hit for average,” O’Toole remembered. “He was a smart hitter and he was adequate defensively, he was a good minor league player.”
Buddy Gilbert was also a hitting star in Nashville and remembers Coles well.
“He was a good a little hitter,” Gilbert said. “He had good smooth swing and he sort of reminded me of a guy who didn’t over swing, but he made good contact with the ball.”
Also on the Nashville roster in 1958 was lefty pitcher Jay Hook.
“Coles came up right at the end of the 1958 season with Cincinnati and so did I,” Hook stated. “Chuck was a really good hitter. He was a pretty good pinch hitter, too. He was a stocky guy, and only about 5-foot-9, and that was probably a negative for him at first base.”
Coles played some outfield and first base.
The stocky left-hand hitting Coles came up with Cincinnati late the summer of 1958 and made his big league debut on September 19. He picked up a pair of base hits in eleven at-bats for a .182 average in five games in his only shot at the majors. He doubled and knocked in a run on September 19 in a 7-1 win over Milwaukee. He stroked an RBI single in the Redlegs’ 2-1 loss to National League pennant winner Milwaukee on September 26.
“It was tough to break into the big leagues back then,” Hook offered. “It’s probably even tougher now because the scouting programs are more expensive and there are so many people each year, I would think that coming up through the minor leagues has got to be a tough road right now.”
Gilbert came up with the Reds the following season in 1959 and only played in seven Major League games.
“You could get lost in the shuffle very easily,” Gilbert opined. “Cincinnati had some very strong outfielders coming up through the organiztion at that time, guys like Vada Pinson, the farm system was producing some players. Coles was short for a first baseman and he wasn’t a real fast runner.”
Coles would play five more seasons in the minors, winding up his 12 year active career with the Tidewater Tides, of the Carolina League in 1963. Over these years he would appear in 1,537 games, go to bat 5,518 times, garner 1,619 base hits, including 176 home runs and wind up with a .293 batting average.
Following his baseball caree,r Coles was employed as a millwright in Jefferson, Pa. He died January 25, 1996, at age 64 in Myrtle Beach, SC.
Coles was inducted posthumously into the Washington-Greene County Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” columns appear in the Tuesday editions of HeraldStandard.com. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10?a.m. to noon on Saturdays.