Looking for the team underdog? How about ‘Charlie Clutch’ Culberson?

Charles Edward Culberson remembers exactly where he was when he made the decision to quit baseball. He was in Memphis, Tenn.

He was 24 years old, and — having been drafted by the Giants a few years earlier — he had led the league in hitting in A-ball the previous year with a .320 batting average. But now, in his first year in Double A, things were not going well. His batting average was a paltry .205, his playing time had decreased, and 45 games into the season, he had just one home run. He was struggling to make the adjustments that coaches were asking of him, and with his wife working extra jobs at fast-food restaurants to help make ends meet for him and his young daughter, he decided it was time to step away from the game.

“I made a tough decision to leave the game and go home and just try to make a better life for my wife, my daughter, and just make a better life for myself,” Culberson says now in the heavy drawl of his native Georgia. “It was a tough decision, but I thought it was the right decision at the time. I enjoyed playing the game; loved playing, loved competing. But it ends for everybody at one point or another.”

Less than a year later, in April of 1989, Charles Edward Culberson Junior — “Charlie,” as you know him — was born in Rome, Ga.

Unsure of what was next after baseball, Charles first worked in the local mill, then spent a couple of years as a hitting coach with the Utica Blue Sox in the White Sox organization, teaching future big leaguers like Ray Durham and Mike Cameron.

“I went from job to job for about six, seven years, working two or three jobs at a time,” the elder Culberson says. “Finally, a good buddy of mine named Eddie Ashworth approached me about opening up an indoor batting cage. Rome didn’t have anything like that in ’94.”

And so it happened that any time young Charlie Culberson wanted to practice hitting, he could just stop in at the Double Day Sports Academy.

“I would just live at the cages,” Charlie says. “If there was a day where I didn’t have anything else to do, then I would be dropped off at the cages, and I would put tokens in all day and just hit.”

As his son began to show promise, Charles says he never did allow the disappointing ending of his own professional career to bleed into the advice or support he gave.

“No, no, I wouldn’t have said that at all,” Charles says. “I knew he had the ability and that’s what he wanted to do. He had a passion for it. Having my experience the way I had it, I had something to give him advice on: ‘OK, here’s your pros and cons,’ to try to lead him in a better direction than what I had. Because I really didn’t have anybody to lean on, to guide me through them tough times.”

Twenty-three years after (and 15 rounds earlier than) they had drafted his dad, the San Francisco Giants made Charlie their first pick of the 2007 draft. By 2012, he made his big-league debut, but found some struggles of his own, hitting .136/.136/.136 in 23 plate appearances.

“If I would have been the guy and came out and crushed it for the first week or so that I was there, maybe things would have been different for me,” Culberson says now, roughly 8 1/2 years later. “But I didn’t do that, so I was sent back down and then a couple months later, I was traded.
I think if I would have burst onto the scene differently, then that might have set my career a little different.”

The trade was to Colorado, Culberson for Marco Scutaro and cash. After one good year (he hit .293 in 47 games in 2013) and one extremely bad year (.195 in 95 games in 2014), Culberson missed the 2015 season after requiring surgery for a herniated disc. After that, he became a free agent and signed with the Dodgers. In L.A., a curious thing began to happen: The struggle to earn playing time continued, but Culberson frequently found himself coming through in big spots.

One such moment came at the end of the 2016 season — in Vin Scully’s final game, no less.

“That was a crazy day,” Charlie recalls now. “I remember waking up, going to the park, and reading about José Fernández. That was the same day that he had he had passed away, at like 3 o’clock in the morning from his accident. So it was just about as quiet as it could be from a clubhouse standpoint, no one was talking. It was a very weird feeling.”

In the top of the ninth inning of that game, another future Ranger, David Dahl, hit a home run off Kenley Jansen to put the Rockies up 3-2.

“(He) actually brought it up to me the other day,” Culberson says. “He goes, ‘Yeah, man — I came up and I hit the go-ahead homer’ … and I was thinking … ‘Man, this is the coolest thing ever. Trying to figure out what I’m going to say to reporters after the game, being Vin Scully’s last game and here I am, I hit the go-ahead homer, and we’re gonna win it.'”

Corey Seager wrecked that plan with a game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers were racing against another clock. If the San Diego Padres beat the Giants, that would clinch the division for Los Angeles.

“We wanted to make sure we won to clinch and not watch San Diego beat San Francisco,” recalls Chris Woodward, Charlie’s now manager/then third-base coach. “So we go into the 10th inning … I’m watching that other game and I’m just like, ‘That game is gonna end before we do. And we’re gonna know we won the division without actually like walking it off to do it.’ Two outs, nobody on base. 0-1 count to Charlie. And in your mind, you’re thinking, ‘It would be cool if he hit a walk-off.’

“As soon as he hit it, I just remember the feeling of going, ‘I can’t believe that just happened,'” Woodward says. “The San Francisco game in the ninth inning, it was about to end. If we don’t score there, that game is for sure ending.”

“I can still picture the ball coming in and I can still picture the ball leaving my bat,” Culberson says now. “The crowd erupting. Going around second base, the whole bullpen coming from left field, sprinting in as fast as they could. High-fiving Woodward at third base, and tossing my helmet as high as I could. So it was about as cool a baseball moment as I think I’ll ever be a part of … and then immediately just giving our attention back up to the booth to Vin Scully and thinking, ‘Man, he has done so much, not just in baseball, but in all sports, for 67 years. It’s just pretty wild to think about and for me to have a little sliver of history with him.'”

Less than a month later, Culberson was off the 40-man roster, outrighted to Triple-A Oklahoma City where he spent most of the 2017 season. But when Seager was injured, it was Culberson who filled in, hitting .455 in the NLCS and cracking an 11th-inning home run in Game 2 of the World Series.

But even a second consecutive bout of late-season heroics wasn’t enough to keep him on the Dodgers roster. In December, he was traded again. This time, he was going home, packaged with Adrián González, Scott Kazmir and (current Rangers assistant to the GM) Brandon McCarthy to his hometown Braves in exchange for Matt Kemp. It didn’t take long for him to win over the Georgia faithful: On May 28, Culberson hit his first home run with the Braves — another walk-off, this one to beat the Mets in the first game of a doubleheader to open a homestand. On June 3, he finished the homestand the way he had started it: Yet another walk-off, this one against the Nationals. Hometown hero “Charlie Clutch” was born.

“Oh, man, it was great for us, we get to go see him play!” Charles says. He and the family, along with friends, would regularly make the one-hour drive south from Rome to watch Charlie’s games. It wasn’t only proximity that allowed them to do that on a regular basis. In 2018 — for the first time in his big-league career — Culberson played in over 100 games. He responded with his best big-league season to date: a slash line of .270/.326/.466 (.792 OPS) and 12 home runs.

“That was a big year for me, getting a few hundred at-bats and (being) able to produce a little bit,” the infielder says. “To show people that I can belong, I do belong, I can do this.”

In addition to being a Georgia native and a prototypical underdog, Braves fans also took notice of a trait that had gotten attention since Culberson’s time in the Giants system — his hair. He says he and his wife are too busy taking care of their three kids to notice the attention too much, but …

“I am aware of it,” he acknowledges. “I don’t use Twitter anymore — I haven’t used Twitter in probably a little over two years. But I knew that there was a Culberson’s Hair account.” (It’s still active, by the way.)

Additionally, his resemblance to teammate Dansby Swanson became such a common observation that the Braves leaned into it, making them a half-and-half bobblehead.

Alas, baseball can be cruel. Culberson logged his second-highest OPS (.731) in 2019, playing his second-highest number of games (108), but after a fractured cheekbone in September ended his season, he found himself off the roster yet again, returning to the Braves on a minor-league deal in 2020. He did make it back to the big leagues, but played just nine games, getting a mere seven plate appearances.

“I pretty much just watched baseball all year and it was just such a weird year for a lot of people,” he says. “So I kind of read the writing on the wall too, that my time there was coming to an end, but I looked at the positives of it — to be able to play from home for three years, not many guys get a chance to say they did that and I just knew that there was a new start for me somewhere else. ”

That somewhere else was Texas, playing for a manager he knows well.

“You play for that name on the front (of the uniform), you play for the name on the back. But then you have a manager … He’s your skipper, and you play for him, too. So yeah, Woody definitely played a factor into (coming to Texas).”

As part of his year spent watching baseball, Culberson took the time to work on his swing mechanics. His manager says he can tell.

“He has made some definite adjustments and I’m intrigued to see,” Woodward said after Friday’s game. “The thing is, if you don’t get enough at-bats, it may not come out; you may not see the results actually show. So I’m trying to get him in there as much as possible. (But) his path, his entry, his balance, and his swing are much better than I remember. And I always thought there was a lot in there.”

(Kelly Gavin / Courtesy of the Texas Rangers)

Culberson knows the path to everyday playing time isn’t the clearest — that’s nothing new. He’s competing against Rougned Odor and another would-be hometown hero Brock Holt for the starting third-base job, and he and Holt appear to be in direct competition for the utility job.

“It’s a friendly competition,” Culberson says. “As long as we’re there to push one another, competition is a good thing. And I think that’s a good thing from the team’s perspective, too. I’ve never been a true starter. And if there’s a chance to grab starts and be that guy, I’m all for it. I’d love to get that chance to be able to go out there and play and play a lot.”

It was a year ago in February when Charles Edward Culberson was inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Rome-Floyd County Hall of Fame, to be precise. Standing beside him on the stage: fellow inductee Charles Edward Culberson Jr.

The Culbersons were inducted as one of the first two father/son duos to go into the local Hall.

“It was a memorable experience,” Charles says. “I didn’t want to take a lot of credit for things we do; you always want somebody else to brag on you. I always want somebody else to brag on my son. But to be able to go into something like that in your hometown with your son, it’s a dream come true for me.”

Some dreams take 22 years to come true. Some come true in fits and starts: a call-up, then a trade, a good year, then a bad one. A surgery, a new team. Heroics, rejection, heroics, a trade, heroics, a fractured cheekbone, and another year spent watching baseball and adjusting swing mechanics. Rejection, reunions. Culberson recognizes that he could retire if he wanted to, much like that Padres/Giants game threatened to do five seasons ago. Sometimes baseball makes a decision for you, for better or worse.

But don’t put it past Culberson to take matters into his own hands in the late innings.

(Photo of Charlie Culberson: Joe Camporeale / USA Today)