Charles Dougherty
Nickname: Pat, The Black Marquard
a.k.a. Doherty
Career: 1909-1918
Position: p
Teams: West Baden Sprudels (1909), Leland Giants (1909-1910), Chicago American Giants (1911-1914, 1918), Chicago Giants (1915-1917)
Bats: Left
Throws: Left
Born: 1879, Summershade, Kentucky
Died: July 12, 1940
Described by the press as a "big side-wheeler," Pat Dougherty was a star left-handed pitcher for the great Leland Giants of 1909-1910, who picked him up from the Sprudels of West Baden, Indiana. In 1909, when Rube Foster's injury kept the pitcher-manager out of the championship series. Dougherty stepped into the breach and the rookie won both of the Leland Giants' victories in the five-game playoffs against the St. Paul Gophers. Although he lost a tough decision in the finale, 3-2, to "Steel Arm" Johnny Taylor of the famous Taylor clan, Dougherty finished the series with 27 innings pitched and allowed only 8 hits and 4 earned runs while fanning 18. An interesting oddity involving Dougherty occurred during the Series, which resulted in the game being protested. Walter Ball had started the game and, when he got in a jam, Dougherty came in to strike out the batter, and Ball, who had left the game, returned to finish the contest.
That same year, in a postseason exhibition against the Chicago Cubs, he struck out the first three batters and shut down the Cubs after yielding a second-inning run, but lost a 1-0 duel with Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown.
The next season, when Rube Foster split with Leland Giants owner Frank Leland, Dougherty stayed with Foster and teamed with Frank Wickware to form an almost unbeatable mound duo for Foster's Leland Giants. Dougherty finished the 1910 season with a perfect 13-0 slate. Foster later called his team the greatest of all time, black or white. The following year the team was renamed the Chicago American Giants and Dougherty continued his sterling work, with partial records showing a 3-0 ledger. He also was a good-hitting pitcher, often helping his own cause with his stickwork. In 1913, when Wickware left the team, he assumed the role as ace of the staff and lived up to his top billing by hurling a no-hitter.
Two years later, he joined Frank Leland's Chicago Giants and encountered control problems. In 1918 he returned to the American Giants for his final appearance in black baseball. During the intermittent decade of his short career, he was the top left-hander in the game and was sometimes described as the "Black Marquard."
Source: James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994.