His stature was small, his nickname was crude and his story has largely been ignored. But as the statistics of the Negro Leagues officially enter into Major League Baseball’s historical record, a new hero emerges in the form of Charlie “Chino” Smith.

And it’s time to pull his story out of hiding.

To peruse MLB’s updated leaderboards is to be struck by Smith’s newfound inclusion in the all-time top five in single-season batting average (.451, second), on-base percentage (.551, fourth) and slugging percentage (.870, fourth).

All of those marks came in Smith’s transcendent 1929 campaign with the New York Lincoln Giants of the American Negro League, which is now recognized as a Major League. Smith is credited that year with 22 homers, 29 doubles, four triples, 16 steals and 81 RBIs in 66 games played, primarily as a right fielder.

Alas, Smith’s career ledger is unsatisfyingly short. After appearing in five games in 1924 with the Washington Potomacs of the Eastern Colored League -- also now recognized as a Major League -- Smith played from 1925-27 with the Brooklyn Royal Giants of the ECL and three more ('28, '30 and '31) with the Brooklyn Royal Giants and the New York Lincoln Giants in leagues that are not statistically recognized by MLB.

With Smith's death at age 30 on Jan. 15, 1932, precious little else is known about him, and his is certainly not a name commonly cited among the Negro Leagues legends.

And yet, here he is now, with a career .398 average and 1.147 OPS in four-plus MLB seasons -- numbers that are so much bigger and louder than his reputation.

So what have we missed about Charlie “Chino” Smith? And what can we learn about him now that he has his place in the statistical sun?

"There's a lot of people who need to know about Chino Smith,” the late Buck O’Neil told The State [Columbia, S.C.] in 2006. “Tell the story."

Here is the story.

* * *

Per the now-official record, Charlie Smith is believed to have been born on Sept. 24, 1901, in Hamlet, N.C., which, incidentally, is also the birthplace of jazz legend John Coltrane.

But Smith’s origin has been alternately traced to Greenwood, S.C., or Antioch, S.C. Back in 1999, when Sports Illustrated published its 50 greatest sports figures from each state during the 20th century, Smith was on the list for South Carolina. And just last year, Smith was inducted into the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame.

Regardless of whether his birthplace belongs to the Palmetto State, Smith is known to have matriculated and played baseball at Columbia’s Benedict College. In his early 20s, he made his way to New York City, where he worked hauling luggage at Penn Station and playing second base for the Pennsylvania Red Caps of New York -- an independent Black club largely made up of “redcaps” (porters) at that bus depot.

Smith faced a barrage of insults and slights because of his relatively small size (5-foot-11, 180 pounds) and his narrow eyes. It was around this time that he is believed to have been given the nickname “Chino” because of his resemblance to a Chinese immigrant. Some even (wrongly) questioned whether he might actually be a Chinese person pretending to be Black.

A pugnacious sort (MLB’s official historian John Thorn describes him as “personally combative”), Smith was fueled by the putdowns. He was so productive that it did not take long for him to reach the big time in Black baseball. The left-handed-hitting Smith joined the Brooklyn Royal Giants in 1925, at the age of 23, and promptly batted .316 in 35 games of available box score data. He hit .363 in 102 known at-bats in 1926 and .457 in 127 known at-bats in 1927. He also lit up the Cuban winter league with a .342 average in the 1927-28 season.

“He and Pop Lloyd were two hitters of the same type, but I would think Chino had better power than Lloyd,” Royal Giants outfielder “Terrible” Ted Page once told Negro Leagues author and researcher John Holway. “His line drives would go farther. Golly, he hit line drives out of the park.”

Royal Giants outfielder and pitcher Jesse Hubbard told Holway of the time the team played an exhibition against a semi-pro team featuring former Pirates and Cubs pitcher Claude Hendrix, who would routinely mow down his opposition in such games.

“I’m going to hit a home run off this man,” Smith told Hubbard.

“If you hit a home run, Chino,” Hubbard replied, “by the time you get back here, here’s a $10 bill.”

The first pitch Hendrix threw to Smith was clobbered over the right-field fence.

“When he came in,” Hubbard said, “I handed him his 10.”

Smith was a colorful character. He is reported to have not-so-warmly gestured at opposing fans who jeered him. And while his bat got the most attention in his time, he was also said to be a terrific defender in right field -- no small feat, given that the Royal Giants’ home field, Dexter Park in Queens (a former horse racing facility), featured a big incline in right field where a prized racehorse had been buried.

“He could do everything,” Hall of Famer Cool Papa Bell once said.

The Royal Giants dropped out of the Eastern Colored League after the 1927 season, so there are no records of Smith’s performance for them in 1928. But in 1929, he joined the Lincoln Giants for the launch of the short-lived American Negro League, and that would be the year that would land him a prominent spot in MLB’s single-season record books.

How does one slash .451/.551/.870 with 29 doubles and 22 homers in a 67-game season?

Well, it helps to play your home games in a placed called the Catholic Protectory Oval, a tiny park connected to a Catholic boarding school in the Bronx that was estimated to have been 180 feet down the lines, 292 feet to dead center and 358 to its deepest point in left-center. There was no grass in the infield, and the field was so small that Bell is said to have been the only person to hit a triple there (and is also said to have missed second base on said triple).

So yes, in addition to the context of the shorter Negro League seasons, park effects must also be taken into account when we gawk at Smith’s single-season stats from 1929. But his numbers were far and away the best on what was a terrific Lincoln Giants club. And quotes from Smith’s contemporaries back up his special place in Negro Leagues lore during his time.

From Hall of Famer Satchel Paige, who claimed to have pitched around 2,500 games: “The two best hitters I ever faced were Jud Wilson and Chino Smith.”

From Lincoln Giants pitcher Bill Holland: “[Oscar] Charleston was a good hitter, but Smith was better because he could hit all kinds of pitching. He had good timing, good yes. If you pitched outside to Smitty, he hit a line drive over third base. If you pitched inside, he’d hit it over the fence.”

From Willie “Sug” Cornelius, longtime pitcher for the Chicago American Giants: “I’ve faced two tough hitters. Josh Gibson was one. But the best hitter I think I ever faced was a boy named Chino Smith. That was the best man I ever faced.”

The Wall Street crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression and crushed the Negro Leagues. The American Negro League, which had included Smith’s Lincoln Giants, did not organize for 1930. Instead, the team played a scattershot schedule not recognized today as “Major League.”

But Smith did keep playing. And keep hitting. In 1930, as Negro Leaguers passed the hat at games and split the take to survive, Smith slashed .417/.534/.726 in 51 games, according to Seamheads’ database. Most notably, he stepped up on perhaps the grandest stage of his career.

On July 5, 1930, the Lincoln Giants played host to the Baltimore Black Sox in a doubleheader not at the Catholic Protectory Oval but at Yankee Stadium, with a reported 20,000 fans attending the first Negro Leagues game at the ballpark. And for Smith, the parallels to a certain slugger of note were obvious: He was batting third for the home team and patrolling right field in “The House That Ruth Built.” And like the Babe himself, Smith owned the moment, blasting a two-run homer in the third inning, a run-scoring triple in the fifth and a three-run homer in the seventh in the opener, then adding a double and a triple in the nightcap.

Unfortunately, this would prove to be not only one of the finest but one of the final moments of Smith’s great and too-brief career. On Sept. 28, during another game at Yankee Stadium -- this time during a 10-game championship series against the Homestead Grays -- Smith chased down a bloop hit to right and collided with second baseman Rev Cannady. Smith was carried off the field in what turned out to be his final game with the Lincoln Giants.

That winter, Smith played in Cuba. The following year, in 1931, he suited up sporadically (Seamheads has only two of his games on record) for the Brooklyn Royal Giants. He died the following winter and left behind a bit of a mystery.

For many years, it was speculated that Smith had died of yellow fever contracted in Cuba, which would explain him missing so many games the following year. The researcher Holway had also speculated that the collision at Yankee Stadium might have contributed to Smith’s demise. But in more recent years, research has confirmed Smith had actually battled an aggressive form of stomach and pancreatic cancer, which, again, explains the interruptions to his playing career.

Smith died in Manhattan, and his coffin was taken to the very train station where he had once worked. It is believed to have traveled from Penn Station to Smith’s burial site at the New Hopewell Baptist Church Cemetery in Darlington, S.C.

Because of the abrupt and tragic ending to Smith’s life and career, he is not what you’d call a front-of-mind member of the Negro Leagues, a name familiar to most fans. And though Smith was among the 94 Negro Leaguers selected for consideration for entry into the Hall of Fame by the 2006 Special Committee on the Negro Leagues, the brevity of his career prevented him from advancing to the final ballot, despite the testimonials left behind by those who played with and against him.

“He played for six years,” Page once said. “If you can't judge a ballplayer in six years, you're not much of a judge.”

New information can make better judges of us all.

“Most fans may think that via a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, the Negro Leagues had been adequately recognized,” Thorn said. “Not so, and the stories behind the stats attest to the players' indefatigable professionalism and heroism in the shadows of the Major Leagues of that time.”

With the accreditation of the now-official Negro Leagues records and MLB’s new leaderboards, Charlie “Chino” Smith emerges from the shadows, a Negro Leagues hero whose name will now be known.