Jesus David Castellano / @_JDCastellano
«There is a catcher that any Major League club would love. His name is Gibson… he can do anything, Walter Johnson once said; the legendary pitcher, about Josh Gibson, a name that you will see very frequently on the official MLB statistics page, after the report announcing the incorporation of the numbers to the database of the maximum baseball industry three years after they acquired Major League status.
That phrase by Johnson about the famous ‘Trucutrú’ or ‘Black Babe Ruth’ ended as follows: “Too bad that Gibson is a colored guy.”
Josh Gibson did not reach the highest level because of a historical injustice, which although it cannot be changed, baseball could amend it in other ways and this is one. This Tuesday, MLB took one more step, and perhaps the definitive one, to give its rightful place to Negro Leagues baseball, pioneers in many ways and that basically represent a golden chapter in the rich history of this sport.
The name of Josh Gibson alone represents a true myth, but also a legend of probably the best player to ever play the colored ball.
Gibson was born; According to Baseball-Reference, on December 21, 1911 in Buena Vista, Georgia, his parents were Mark Gibson and Nancy Woodlock. He was named – Joshua – in honor of one of Mark’s grandfathers and it is almost certain that he was the eldest of three brothers. Jerry (who pitched briefly for the Cincinnati Tigers – three years younger) and Annie (Gibson) Mahaffey, six years younger.
Great strength and weight for work
It should be noted that, at the age of 15, he left school to work in an air brake manufacturing plant and thus help support the family. According to his reviews, his height and weight allowed him to work with adults and perform heavy labor; some of that defined part of the power that characterized him in baseball and as a legend of the Negro Leagues.
Now, Josh Gibson played in 1929 and 1930 for the semi-professional Crawford Colored Giants, earning a few dollars a game and seeing action in front of five thousand or more spectators. This is how the news of his power reached the ears of the Homestead Grays and Judy Johnson; player on that team and friend of Gibson. «I had never seen him play, but we had heard a lot about him. Every time you looked at the newspaper you saw where he hit a ball 400 feet, 500 feet,” Johnson said.
An injury to one of the “Grays” catchers led to Gibson’s debut and thus began his history in the Negro Leagues.
Gibson won 11 home run titles, he also won batting, doubles, triples, RBI and Slugging championships. To make matters worse, he won two triple batting crowns (1936 and 1937), being one of just four players to have won it more than once. They are Oscar Charleston (who won it three times), Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams.
His legendary status was earned hard
John Holway tells us in his Complete Book of the Negro Leagues that Josh Gibson established his legendary status in a 1930 postseason series against the New York Lincoln Giants.
«In the second game he hit the first ball to overcome the 457-foot center field fence at Forbes Field and tripled in a game that was 17-16. He added another home run two days later, on September 27 at Yankee Stadium, when he hit a drive that, according to Judy Johnson, went through the roof. Others questioned whether the ball actually went over the roof of Yankee Stadium, but done or not, it must have traveled about 505 feet. In the series he hit .368 and during that season he averaged .333 as a regular guard for the Grays.
“Officially,” Josh Gibson hit 107 home runs (166 according to Baseball-Reference) and batted .373; average that will now be the highest on all-time Major League records, and he played in too many All-Star games to count, just nine in the Negro National League. It is believed that he has connected nearly 900 hits adding up all the scenarios in which he participated, a figure that cannot be corroborated.
He was batting champion three times, leader in Slugging and OPS nine times, twice led the LNN in doubles and triples, in addition to being the top run scorer for five years.
Historians classified him as a martyr
However, some media outlets and historians at the time classified ‘Trucutrú’ as a martyr of segregated baseball and who died with a “broken heart” for not being able to play in the Major Leagues. However, his son Josh Jr. indicated that these statements were far from reality: “When I hear that my father died of a broken heart, it bothers me. Because that wasn’t my father. He was the last guy who thought about something he couldn’t do.”
Josh Gibson was diagnosed with a brain tumor, but continued to play; putting up big numbers, bringing crowds of people to the stadiums. In fact, it is reported that he hit more home runs at Griffith Stadium (home of the Washington Senators) in 1943 than the entire American League that year. They claimed that he had alcohol and marijuana problems, that this had diminished his abilities; They said he couldn’t squat behind the plate, but he made it clear that he was still the best black paddler in the game.
He finally died on January 20, 1947 of a stroke at the age of 35. His funeral took place at the Macedonia Baptist Church where he had married Helen Mason 20 years earlier. According to accounts, people lined up more than half a mile long to pay their respects to a man who dominated black baseball for 17 years. His death was three months before Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Its greatness reached Latin America
Josh Gibson’s career was not only limited to the Negro Leagues, he also played winter ball in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, batting well over .300 in all of those countries. He is even a member of the Hall of Fame of Mexico, a nation in which he hit 33 home runs in one season (1941), breaking a record of 12 by Cool Papa Bell. He also played in Venezuela, going back to the time before the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League, playing and being famous first for Águilas del Concordia and then for Centauros de Maracaibo.
His induction into the Cooperstown Hall of Fame in 1972 was historic. She was part of the first class of former Negro Leagues stars to be elevated to the rank of immortal. Gibson’s plaque credits him with “almost 800 home runs” in a 17-year career, but the testimony of his teammates is what defines and highlights his greatness.
«I played with Willie Mays and against Hank Aaron. They were tremendous players, but they were not Josh Gibson,” said Monte Irvin, who once also added that: “He had an eye like Ted Williams and power like Babe Ruth. He hit to all fields ».
References consulted
- SABR BioProject
- Baseball-Reference
- BR Bullpen
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2024-05-29 03:59:31
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