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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Cleo Benson

baseball player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ105554776 ↗
Source-derived summary

Cleo "Baldy" Benson (November 15, 1913 – February 20, 1978) was an American professional baseball catcher in the Negro leagues. He played with the Chicago American Giants in 1942. He later managed the San Francisco Sea Lions beginning in 1946.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cleo Benson” as baseball player. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1913, 1978, 1942, 1946—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1913-11-15. The account is most persuasive where Cleo, Benson and baseball can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as baseball player. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105554776. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1978, 1942 and 1946.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cleo Benson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cleo Benson primary sources, Cleo Benson archive and Cleo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cleo Benson”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cleo Benson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.