About Charlie and the Essig Report
Charlie was recently honored with selection into the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame as a 2012-2013 inductee.
Essig is a retired long time resident of Aurora and a member of the Illinois Softball Hall of Fame and West Aurora High School Hall of Fame. Charlie recently received Best of the Best recognition at the annual meeting of Illinois Park District Association for coaching Little League baseball for the past 32 years, while serving as Secretary and Board member for nearly 20 of those years.
As unofficial historian of boys baseball in Aurora, Charlie researched records of microfilmed newspaper articles and records to assemble the names of more than 15,000 players who have played in organized baseball leagues (Little League, Pony League and Legion League) in Aurora since the inception of Little League ball in 1952, along with the names of their teammates, and managers and their won-lost records.
As a basketball player, Essig captained the 1948 West Aurora team that won the schools’ first-ever conference championship, was the conference leading scorer, and was named to the all state team. He later played at Bradley University and in State AAU tournaments for several years thereafter. After several years of officiating, Charlie served as a play-by-play announcer for seven years with WMRO in Aurora.
His basketball accomplishments include playing in a YMCA youth tournament in which his team defeated another club 106-1 in a 5 minute per quarter contest in which the losers out shot the winners at the free throw line. A 53-0 field goal margin sealed the victory. The story received a large column in the Chicago Tribune and a two-sentence mention in the national Time Magazine.
Essig’s fast pitch softball career spanned 11 years, including playing first base in 7 world tournaments with Aurora’s 4-time World Champions in the late 50’s and early 60’s, while simultaneously serving as business manager.
While playing up to 100 games per year with the Sealmaster Bearings team, Charlie found time to play in the 1953 National Baseball Congress of America’s Illinois State Tournament where he was accorded first team honors on the team which finished second.
While Charlie initially developed the computer program that is the basis of the Essig Report, subsequent enhancements, including the web page, have been the work of his associate and friend, Bob Schmidt of Glencoe, without whom the Report would no longer continue to exist.