Joe Christopher was from St. Croix, largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Once a port of call for pirates, it is known for its exquisite beaches and excellent rum.
Christopher Columbus visited the island in 1493 and named it Santa Cruz (Holy Cross), and over the years, through multiple translations, it derived into St. Croix.
Almost 500 years later, Christopher _ Joe, that is _ played in Columbus, for a baseball team affiliated, naturally, with the Pirates.
An outfielder trained in a Branch Rickey farm system, Joe Christopher played for both a World Series champion (1960 Pirates) and a team with 120 losses (1962 Mets). After making a fielding blunder, Christopher got a letter of encouragement from Jackie Robinson and went on to have the best season of his career.
A .260 hitter in the majors with the Pirates (1959-61), Mets (1962-65) and Red Sox (1966), Christopher was a terror against the Cardinals. He batted .418 against them in 1964, a season when he led the Mets in nearly every hitting category. Three years later, he was playing in the Cardinals farm system. Christopher was 87 when he died on Oct. 3, 2023.
Path to the pros
A right-handed batter with speed, Christopher, 18, was playing shortstop with a team from St. Croix at the National Baseball Congress amateur tournament in Wichita, Kansas, in 1954 when he drew the attention of Howie Haak, the same Pirates scout who signed second baseman Julian Javier. According to The Pittsburgh Press, Haak convinced Christopher to accept a Pirates offer of $200.
Branch Rickey was Pirates general manager and he made a lasting impression on Christopher. “Branch Rickey enhanced my spirit,” Christopher told author Edward Kiersh in the book “Where Have You Gone, Vince DiMaggio?” “What a courageous man. He knew all about the hidden order and the way to higher realms.”
In 1959, Christopher, 23, was in his fifth year in the minors, playing for the Columbus (Ohio) Jets, when he got called up to the Pirates in May to replace Roberto Clemente, who went on the disabled list.
“It was tough for me when I joined the Pirates,” Christopher recalled to The Pittsburgh Press. “I knew what the fans thought of Clemente and I knew what they expected of me. I was too tense and I just wasn’t ready.”
Christopher went hitless in 12 at-bats, sprained his right hand making a diving catch, jammed an ankle on the base path and was sent back to Columbus in July.
An energizer
At spring training in 1960, Christopher played so well, hitting better than .400, that the Pirates had to put him on the Opening Day roster as a reserve outfielder.
“The only candidate in the last few years to challenge Roberto Clemente as the most exciting player in Pirates camp is Joe Christopher,” The Sporting News declared. “He has speed to burn and has captured the fancy of the fans and his teammates with his head-first slides. He goes from first to third on singles and scores on short sacrifice flies.”
In the 10th inning of a game against the Dodgers on July 1, 1960, Christopher energized the Pirates and the crowd at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh when he scored from second on Clemente’s infield single. The fans “were up screaming at this burst of speed,” The Sporting News reported. Boxscore
Christopher appeared in three games of the 1960 World Series against the Yankees, reached base in his lone plate appearance and scored twice.
After another season with the Pirates as a reserve in 1961, Christopher was chosen by the Mets in the National League expansion draft. “I thought this was the break I was looking for,” Christopher told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Mets miseries
The 1962 Mets, who would finish the season 40-120, needed talent, and Christopher seemed to be a plus for them, but near the end of spring training he was sent to Class AAA Syracuse to make room on the Opening Day roster for a utility player, rookie Rod Kanehl.
Christopher, 26, resented the demotion. When Syracuse manager Frank Verdi saw him play, he told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “I think he’s the best outfielder the Mets own.”
(According to Dick Young of the New York Daily News, when the Syracuse team went to Atlanta, a Cardinals affiliate in 1962, and checked into the Henry Grady Hotel downtown, Christopher and three black teammates “were told they had to go across town, to the Negro section, where reservations had been made for them. They went, and it was such a fleabag that Christopher refused to check in.”)
Christopher hit .336 with six home runs for Syracuse and was called up to the Mets on May 21 to replace outfielder Gus Bell, who got shipped to the Braves. A week later, in a doubleheader versus the Dodgers, Christopher got three hits against Sandy Koufax in the opener, then tripled and scored versus Johnny Podres in the second game. Boxscore and Boxscore
Another 1962 highlight for Christopher came on Sept. 2 when his two-run single with two outs in the ninth knocked in the winning run against Cardinals reliever Bobby Shantz, a former teammate with the 1961 Pirates. Boxscore
Christopher hit .244 for the 1962 Mets but .346 versus the Cardinals that season. With nine hits and four walks in 30 plate appearances, his on-base percentage against the 1962 Cardinals was .433.
The Mets again sent Christopher to the minors at the end of spring training in 1963. He ended up with more at-bats (295) for Buffalo that year than he did for the Mets (149).
Breakout season
Based on his first two years with the Mets, it’s hard to imagine anyone could have predicted how productive Christopher would become for them in 1964.
He made the team in spring training, hit a home run on Opening Day against the Phillies’ Dennis Bennett and kept on delivering. Christopher batted .375 in April and .321 in May.
On May 8, 1964, he beat the Cardinals’ Bobby Shantz again with a RBI-single in the ninth. Boxscore
In July, Christopher was 7-for-13 at the plate in a three-game series against the Cardinals at New York. A week later, in four games at St. Louis, he was 8-for-18.
Even then, not all went smoothly for Christopher. On July 14, 1964, Billy Cowan of the Cubs lofted a soft fly ball to right at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. It looked to be an easy catch to end the inning, but Christopher struggled to get under the ball. “So crookedly did he run toward the line, any cop worth his badge would have demanded that Christopher take a sobriety test,” Newsday reported.
The ball plopped to the ground, enabling a runner on second to score the winning run and putting Cowan on third with a triple. To Newsday, Mets pitcher Tracy Stallard said of Christopher, “He’s the only .300 hitter I ever saw in my life who hurts a ballclub.” Boxscore
Soon after, Christopher told The Sporting News, “I received a letter from Jackie Robinson in which he wrote that things like that happen in baseball. He told me not to let it bother me but go out and play my game as if nothing had happened. His advice couldn’t have come at a better time. It gave me confidence just when I needed it most.”
On the next-to-last day of the 1964 season, with the Cardinals needing a win to help their bid for a National League pennant, Christopher had three hits, including a home run versus Mike Cuellar, and scored twice in a Mets rout. Boxscore
For the season, Christopher batted .300 and led the Mets in total bases (253), runs scored (78), hits (163), doubles (26), triples (eight), RBI (76), walks (48) on-base percentage (.360) and slugging (.466).
His on-base percentage against the 1964 Cardinals was .431 in 58 plate appearances.
When former Cardinals general manager Bing Devine joined the Mets as assistant to team president George Weiss in October 1964, he told The Sporting News, “Joe Christopher has progressed as a hitter. There’s an example of a fellow who showed what he could do when he got the chance.”
If the spirit’s willing...
Christopher, paid $10,000 in 1964, was offered $12,500 for 1965. He instead wanted a 100 percent raise to $20,000. When he settled for $17,750 on March 9, he was the last Mets player to sign for 1965, the New York Times reported.
His 1965 season was a bust _ he hit .249 and, according to The Sporting News, was “having a fretful time in the field.” _ and when it ended he was traded to the Red Sox for Eddie Bressoud.
After 13 at-bats for the 1966 Red Sox, Christopher was sent in June to the Tigers, who placed him in the minors. He never returned to the big leagues.
In 1967, Christopher, 31, began the season back in the Pirates’ system at Columbus, but on June 10 he was traded to the Cardinals for pitcher Fritz Ackley. The Cardinals assigned Christopher to the Class AAA Tulsa Oilers, whose manager was Warren Spahn. Three years earlier, Christopher hit a home run against Spahn, who was pitching for the 1964 Braves. Boxscore
Christopher joined a Tulsa outfield with another ex-Met, Danny Napoleon. Among the Tulsa pitchers was Christopher’s former teammate and critic, Tracy Stallard.
Christopher hit .273 in 68 games for Tulsa in 1967. He was put on the roster of the Cardinals’ Class AA Arkansas club in 1968. Cardinals farm director George Silvey told the Tulsa World in March 1968 that Christopher would be given a chance to make the Tulsa club, but it didn’t work out. He spent the 1968 season, his last, with a Class AA Phillies farm team at Reading, Pa.
For his 1983 book about former ballplayers, author Edward Kiersh visited Christopher at his Queens, N.Y., apartment. Kiersh described Christopher as a spiritualist involved in astral geometry.
“Through my mathematical system, I can give you the spiritual characterization of any man, or coordinate him to nature,” Christopher said to Kiersh. “Numerology is sacred. You just have to gain entrance into the hidden order, learn the equations, and the potential for any person becomes visible.”
When Kiersh naturally wondered whether Christopher was touting science or hocus-pocus, Christopher told him, “Most people think I’m into some kind of black magic, but baseball spends millions of dollars on a player’s physical attributes while they should be spending it on his spiritual attributes … This isn’t voodoo. This is truth.”