Gibson was a Bunyanesque figure, known for his prodigious home runs, and sportswriters called him the “Black Babe Ruth” of his era. So it’s fitting that MLB’s decision favored Gibson over Ruth in two key offensive categories. Gibson now leads MLB in slugging percentage, at .718, surpassing Ruth’s .690; and in OPS, with his rating of 1.177 topping Ruth’s rating of 1.164. Gibson also now holds the single-season batting average of .466, which he recorded for the Homestead Grays in 1943.
Gibson’s posthumous recognition comes more than 75 years after the end of his playing career, a tragic story of exclusion during the Jim Crow era, strictly enforced by MLB. Suffering from high blood pressure and the ill effects of excessive alcohol consumption, he died of a stroke at the age of 35 in January 1947, just three months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier baseball.
The world barely noticed Gibson’s death. The Washington Post published a single paragraph on January 21, 1947, titled: “Homer King Negro Josh Gibson Dies.” The New York Times gave him little more coverage, publishing a three-paragraph obituary under the headline “Gibson, Hard Hitter, Dies,” at the bottom of its sports page. The story did not mention that Gibson, like other black players, had been barred from Major League Baseball.
This Times article highlighted the limitations of the era in compiling Negro Leagues statistics. “Due to incomplete records, it is not possible to compile Gibson’s batting average,” the obituary notes. “However, he was a power hitter and his shattering home runs won many games for the Grays.”
Over the past several decades, researchers have filled in these statistical gaps by carefully examining newspapers, scoreboards and other records, which contributed to Wednesday’s announcement.
“We all know that Josh Gibson had a great career in the Negro Leagues,” his great-grandson, Sean Gibson, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “He’s considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, but we always considered Josh Gibson a major league player anyway. Only now is he recognized in Major League Baseball statistics.
Gibson played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the early and mid-1930s before joining their rivals, the Homestead Grays, in 1937. The Grays’ original home was in Homestead, Pennsylvania, but they began sharing their games between Homestead and Washington before playing primarily in the nation’s capital. Gibson teamed up with another future Hall of Famer, Grays first baseman Buck Leonard, and together they formed a formidable back-to-back threat. They became known as “Black Babe Ruth and Black Lou Gehrig.” In his first season with the Grays, Gibson hit .417 with 20 home runs and 73 RBIs in just 39 games.
“Josh Gibson was the most feared hitter in the Negro Leagues because he hit not only with great power but also for a high average,” Adrian Burgos Jr., historian of American Latinos, baseball, sports and urban history at the University of Illinois, wrote in an email. He said Gibson was recruited by baseball leagues in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Venezuela.
Before Gibson joined the Grays, Leonard recalls, the team used a unique changeup against him, trying to neutralize his Ruthian power. In a 1970 Washington Star story with Negro Leagues historian John Holway, Leonard wrote:
The corner outfielders would play toward the gaps, the first baseman and third baseman would play away from the foul lines, and the infielders would play deep. And then the pitcher threw the ball straight to the middle of the plate. He could hit the ball 500 feet to center field and we would catch it – I say 500 feet, but I mean extreme center field. We would gather in the center. He couldn’t shoot it – not a fastball. Throw it straight to the middle of the plate and just hope we catch it, because it’s going to hit it about 400 feet away.
— The Washington Star
The Grays played at Griffith Stadium, near the current site of Howard University, which was also the home of the Washington Senators, and the Negro Leagues team was a big draw to the city’s black community. Gibson had a particularly dominant performance at the ballpark in July 1939, during a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Stars, when he hit three home runs and hit a triple.
“Each of his players was well placed in the stands, but the second, who nearly emptied the park, came up with a score of 7 tied in the ninth and gave the Grays the victory,” the Post reported of of the first match. The Post called him the team’s “mild-mannered safety net” and wrote that one of his homers “followed the left-field foul line until he was out of sight “.
There was, however, one pitcher who always seemed to vex him: legendary Kansas City Monarchs ace Satchel Paige. During a 1942 game, for example, Paige intentionally walked two men to load the bases and confront Gibson, then taunted him, “Three fastballs, Josh,” before fanning him on three pitches. The following year, when the teams faced each other in the 1942 Negro World Series, Gibson came to bat with the bases loaded and the Grays led 8-4. Once again, Paige struck out and the Monarchs swept the four-game series. It was an unusual performance for Gibson, who had just one hit – a single – in 13 at-bats.
But Gibson was proficient at much more than just hitting and possessed a cannon of an arm behind the plate. None other than former Senators ace Walter Johnson, considered one of the greatest pitchers of all time, was full of praise for him after watching Gibson play in a 1939 spring training game in Orlando, comparing him favorably to Yankees catcher Bill Dickey, another future Hall of Famer.
“There’s a catcher that any big league club would love to buy for $200,000,” Johnson told Post sports columnist Shirley Povich. “I’ve heard of him before. His name is Gibson. We call him “Hoot” Gibson and he can do anything. He hits that ball a mile. And he catches so easily he might as well be in a rocking chair. Launches like a gun. Bill Dickey is not as good a receiver. Too bad this Gibson is a man of color.
Burgos called Gibson “a commanding presence at the plate, whether in the catcher’s box or the batter’s box. Other Negro League catchers were better known as defensive stalwarts, but no one featured the combination of offense and defense that Gibson did.
The Senators, who leased their ballpark to the Grays, weren’t very good at the time, but owner Clark Griffith sniffed at the opportunity to sign Gibson and Leonard – even though he did some lip service of the idea. Leonard remembers that one day in the early 1940s the owner asked to meet them.
According to a 1988 article by Holway in the Post, adapted from his book “Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers,” Griffith mentioned the campaign by black sportswriters to put the two stars on the senatorial roster. Then he asked this question: “Well, let me tell you something: if we find you boys, we’ll get the best.” This will break your league. Now what do you think?
Leonard said they responded that they would be happy to play in the major leagues, but would leave it to others to make their case. Gibson and Leonard never heard from Griffith again.
Progress toward recognition of Negro Leagues stars such as Gibson took decades. Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, considered by some to be the greatest hitter of all time, deserves credit for giving an early boost to the effort during his Hall of Fame induction speech. fame in 1966.
“I hope that one day the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson can be added in some way as a symbol of the great black players who are not here solely because they were not given lucky,” he said.
A few years later, this recognition arrived – but initially with a big asterisk. In 1971, MLB agreed to admit Negro Leagues stars, but said they would be honored in a separate section. After a torrent of criticism that this amounted to “separate but equal” treatment, MLB abandoned the plan and Paige was inducted as the Negro Leagues’ first star.
The following year, Gibson and Leonard were inducted, but some news reports treated them as if they were afterthoughts. “In a perfectly appropriate blend of sentiment, humor and brevity, Yogi Berra, Sandy Koufax, Lefty Gomez and five less glamorous figures were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today,” the New York Times reported , bringing together the stars of the Negro Leagues in the “less glamorous category”.
This week’s recognition was met with much more respect. Gibson, Burgos writes, “represents the greatness that emerged in the Negro Leagues during the era of MLB’s color line,” which is now reflected in the sport’s record books.