Charles "Doc" Baker was an early professional American football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 halfback

Halfback (American football)

A halfback, sometimes referred to as a tailback, is an offensive position in American football, which lines up in the backfield and generally is responsible for carrying the ball on run plays. Historically, from the 1870s through the 1950s, the halfback position was both an offensive and defensive...

 for the Akron Indians of the "Ohio League

Ohio League

The Ohio League was an informal and loose association of American football clubs active between 1903 and 1919 that competed for the Ohio Independent Championship . As the name implied, its teams were based in Ohio...

" from 1906-1908. He returned to the team for one last season in 1911. He was the second-ever African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 to play professional football, the first being Charles Follis

Charles Follis

Charles W. Follis, a.k.a "The Black Cyclone," was the first African-American professional football player. He played for the Shelby Blues of the "Ohio League" from 1902 to 1906. On September 16, 1904, Follis signed a contract with Shelby making him the first African-American contracted to play...

. Baker, earned his nickname, "Doc", while serving as an aide to a physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 in Akron, Ohio

Akron, Ohio

Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan...

. He also a target of opponents trying to injure him. Although Baker was never implicated, his football experience was marred by several gambling
scandals. According to a 1911 article the Canton Respository, Baker was involved in just about every offensive and defensive play during a game between the Akron Indians and the Canton Professionals (later renamed the Canton Bulldogs

Canton Bulldogs

The Canton Bulldogs were a professional American football team, based in Canton, Ohio. They played in the Ohio League from 1903 to 1906 and 1911 to 1919, and its successor, the National Football League, from 1920 to 1923 and again from 1925 to 1926. The Bulldogs would go on to win the 1917, 1918...

 in 1915).

Very little is known of his life outside of football. However it is known that he was raised in the Akron Children’s Home, an orphanage

Orphanage

An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...

, and is believed to have died in the early 1920s.