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Saturday, February 5, 2011
More On The Cuban Giants
cuban-giants
from wikipedia
The Cuban Giants were the first African-American professional baseball club.
The team was originally formed in 1885 at the Argyle Hotel, a summer resort in Babylon, New York. The team was so skilled in the game, and achieved victory over so many of the nearby amateur "white" teams that they attracted the attention of a promoter, Walter Cook. To appeal to a broader audience, Cook styled them the "Cuban Giants," a common ploy to avoid referring to the players as "black" or "Negro." There were no Cubans on the Cuban Giants. The team remained one of the premier Negro league teams for nearly 20 years.
The team went on to become the "world colored champions" of 1887 and 1888, and spawned imitators.
Though there were no actual Cuban men on the Cuban Giants, the team had played in Cuba in the fall or winter of 1885–1886.
In the September 1938 issue of Esquire Magazine, Sol White recounts the early days of the team: "…when that first team began playing away from home, they passed as foreigners—Cubans, as they finally decided—hoping to conceal the fact that they were just American Negro hotel waiters and talked a gibberish to each other on the field which, they hoped, sounded like Spanish" (Coover, 3).
It was a popular practice in the Sporting press at the time to refer to African-American players as Cuban, Spanish, or Arabian instead of admitting to the truth.
In 1896 ownership issues would lead to a new offshoot team being created, calling themselves Cuban X-Giants. The older owner's team was then referred to as Genuine Cuban Giant or Original Cuban Giants.
There are two different tales on how the Cuban Giants got their start. According to Sol White, a player who would join the Cuban Giants several years after they got started, Frank P. Thompson, a headwaiter at the Argyle Hotel in Babylon, Long Island, would regularly play baseball with the other waiters that soon became an attraction for the hotel’s guests. Before long, he signed 3 star players from the semi-pro black team, the Philadelphia Orions, and the team went on the road to contend any team who would play them.
However, according to an interview with Thompson himself published on October 15, 1887 in the "New York Age," an African-American newspaper, the majority of the ballplayers did not come from the hotel's staff, but from several other black teams. In Philadelphia, Frank P. Thompson organized the Keystone Athletics in May 1885, and in July they were transferred to Babylon, L.I. By August the Athletics had partnered with the Manhattans from Washington, D.C. and the Philadelphia Orions, and it was the coming together of these three teams that created the Cuban Giants. Walter Cook from Trenton, New Jersey was their white owner and Stanislaus Kostka Govern was their black manager.
Govern, who was a native of St. Croix, Virgin Islands, understood how a team could financially prosper in the Caribbean at this time. His own team, the Manhattans, had been playing in Cuba since 1882. Thompson had a connection to Henry Flagler through Osborn D. Seavey, and once the team was through with their Cuban winter tour, they came to St. Augustine, Florida to entertain the guests at the newly forming resort hub.
The Cuban Giants would come back to Florida many times during their existence. During the St. Augustine years, Thompson put together an organization called the Progressive Association of the United States. Thompson was the president of the Association, and Govern acted as secretary. Thompson used his position to conduct annual sermons for the Cuban Giants and any citizens who wanted, to come together against prejudice in the South. These sermons were widely well received and inspired others to join him in the cause.
In 1886, Walter E. Simpson bought the team and gave them a home at the Chambersburg Grounds in Trenton, New Jersey. Two months later, he would sell the team to Walter I. Cook.
Cook came from a wealthy family and was generous to the team with his money, especially when it came to illness or injuries, and he is known as the Giant’s most well-liked owner. They even played a benefit game for him in which they donated their pay to him. J.M. Bright purchased the Cuban Giants from Cook in June 1887. Bright was able to get them into the Middle States League in 1889, as joining a league was something the team had been trying to do for some time. However, Bright was not nearly as well-liked as Cook, and had to deal often with renegade players. This would be the teams last year in Trenton. In 1890 the entire team fled and played as the Colored Monarchs of York, Pennsylvania. In 1891, the heart of the team fled to their rival, Ambrose Davis’ Gorhams of New York City, then called the Big Gorhams.
This dismantling and reassembling of the team became routine year after year until 1896, when E.B. Lamar Jr. from Brooklyn bought the team from Bright, renaming them the Cuban X-Giants. Bright responded by putting together an inferior team calling them the “Genuine Cuban Giants” or the “Original Cuban Giants.” The Cuban X-Giants had a successful ten year run as one of the best black teams in the East.
In 1885, the year of the inception of the Cuban Giants, Henry Flagler built the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. Many members of the Cuban Giants worked at the hotel and played exhibition games as entertainment for the patrons of the hotel (Malloy). This is a point of contention, because some people say that the Cuban Giants actually worked at the hotel and began their baseball careers as something fun to do after they got off work, and others say that they didn't actually play at the hotel until their team was actually established. What is known though is that "playing for the wealthy clientele that frequented Flagler's empire kept the team afloat until they headed... to... Trenton, New Jersey" (Heaphy 16).
During their first summer season, 1886, the Cuban Giants played a game at a field in Trenton, NJ. At the time, Trenton did not have a hometown baseball team. The Cuban Giants gladly took the space, and Trenton became their “home base” (Malloy). Soon after moving to Trenton, a man named Walter Cook took over the job of booking games for the team. Cook also established salaries for the players (Heaphy 16). Walter Cook used the position that the player filled to determine how much they earned. The average pay for pitchers and catchers was about $18.00 per week, plus expenses. Outfielders made about $15.00 per week, and infielders made about $12.00 per week. These salaries were much more money than African Americans could have expected to make in a regular job at the time (Heaphy 16). Today, these salaries seem very low. In 2006, the minimum baseball player’s salary was $380,000, while the average salary was $2,699,292 (mlbplayers.mlb.com).
“The Giants…played a number of winters in Havana, Cuba” (Heaphy 17). The Giants had discovered that the key to being financially stable was to play baseball all year round. Cuba was a perfect place for them to play their winter seasons, because they could avoid the cold temperatures that were common in New Jersey in the winter, and they drew huge crowds when they played in Havana. They were so popular in fact that they played “…in front of as many as 15,000 fans” (Heaphy 17). This is very impressive for the late 19th century, considering that the average attendance per game for the Philadelphia Baseball Grounds, a popular baseball venue at the time, in 1890 was 2,231 per game (baseball-statistics.com).
Some of the prominent players were:
* Ben Boyd
* Frank Grant, infield
* Abe Harrison, shortstop
* Andrew Jackson
* Oscar Jackson
* William Jackson
* John Nelson, pitcher
* William Selden, pitcher
* Arthur Thomas
* Sol White, infield
* Clarence Williams (baseball player), catcher
* George Williams (Negro Leagues infielder), infielder and captain
Black Baseball’s Rich Legacy
black-baseball-times
an excerpt from a 2008 nytimes article by Kevin Coyne
ON a fine September night in 1946, in a ballpark out on the marshy edge of Newark’s East Ward, the Newark Eagles — one of the two professional baseball teams, one black and one white, that shared Ruppert Stadium — trotted onto the field in jerseys so new and bright they looked almost incandescent under the lights.
The players were black, the uniforms white. The team’s co-owner, Effa Manley, had just spent $700 on a new set, about as much as she paid her best players each month. It was the Eagles’ first time in the Negro World Series, and she wanted them to look the part of champions.
The stands were packed with both dignitaries and ordinary fans, black and white alike, and the field was dense with players on their way to the National Baseball Hall of Fame: Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, Leon Day and Manager Biz Mackey for the Eagles; Satchel Paige, Hilton Smith and Willard Brown for the Kansas City Monarchs. Conspicuously missing was the Monarchs’ shortstop from the previous season, Jackie Robinson, who was playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm club in Montreal, and was on the verge of rendering moot this whole segregated enterprise.
Sitting in the stands was an old ballplayer, creeping up on 90, who lived at the Y.M.C.A. in nearby Orange, N.J., Ben Holmes. He had brought along a treasure from the earliest days of black baseball: a silver ball awarded in 1888 to the team he played third base for, the Cuban Giants, the first full-time professional black baseball team, when they won an earlier version of the black championship. The heavyweight champion Joe Louis threw out the silver ball to start the game, the opener of the World Series.
“The ’46 series, that’s really the crème de la crème,” said Lawrence D. Hogan, a history professor at Union County College, in Cranford, N.J., and the author of a definitive book on black baseball, “Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball” (National Geographic, 2006). He has trolled through old records and memorabilia for decades, but Holmes’s silver ball has remained elusive, as if it — like the Negro leagues themselves — disappeared from the earth soon after that series.
“There’s never been any sighting of that ball,” Dr. Hogan said. “It’s the holy grail of black baseball.”
Baseball is thriving today on the outskirts of New York, with a crop of minor-league teams and bustling new stadiums that grew quickly over the last decade or so. But these new teams were planted in fertile ground, inheritors of a rich regional tradition of black baseball — of an era when an archipelago of green diamonds stretched from Bacharach Park in Atlantic City to the Argyle Hotel in Babylon on Long Island to Bulkeley Stadium in Hartford. That was a time when much of America still believed that blacks and whites shouldn’t be neighbors or schoolmates, co-workers or teammates.
Frank Grant: Breaking The Barrier Before Robinson
In 1886, the Buffalo Bisons, a top minor league baseball team, signed a versatile infielder from Massachusetts named Frank Grant. The next day, a local newspaper announced Grant’s arrival by describing him as “a Spaniard.”
Grant was in fact one of five African-Americans playing in the otherwise all-white minor leagues that year, on teams from Kansas to Connecticut. Their presence was accepted if not widely acknowledged in the 1880’s, passed off with a wink and a nod, a dodge that labeled players like Grant as Spaniards, Portuguese or Arabs.
The ruse did not hide what historians now concede, that some 60 years before Jackie Robinson famously broke organized baseball’s color barrier, integrated teams of white and black athletes played hundreds of professional games. African-Americans even played in the major leagues.
To most Americans, the history of black baseball means the Negro leagues, an enterprising, culturally rich response to the Jim Crow-era segregation in professional baseball. But blacks played professional baseball for decades after the Civil War, long before the Negro National League began in 1920.
On Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will induct by special election 17 stars and team owners who predate modern professional baseball’s integration in the mid-1940’s.
Two of the special inductees, Grant and a onetime teammate, Sol White, trace their baseball lives to the most obscure period of black baseball — the 1880’s, the last decade before the game imposed its color barrier.
The recently documented life stories of Grant and White, 19th-century pioneers who dared not be recognized as such, have helped complete the chronicle of the African-American baseball experience. Theirs are the forgotten tales of men rushing to play at the highest professional tier, aware that their immediate offspring would probably be prohibited such an opportunity.
“They are the players who just vanished from baseball’s narrative, like a secret no one talks about,” said the baseball historian Jim Overmyer, who specializes in black baseball. “But it is important to know that they are the beginning of baseball desegregation. Somebody had to do the early heavy lifting, and even if few people know it, these guys were there first.”
Overmyer and another historian of black baseball, Greg Bond, were among 12 members of a committee that voted for the Hall of Fame’s special election.
“It complicates our understanding of race relations in sports to realize that the color barrier was not a natural outcome of mixing races after the Civil War,” Bond said. “The fact is there were a lot of blacks on mostly white teams. The color barrier became a choice people made at the expense of people like Grant and White, who then disappeared.”
The first black professional baseball player is believed to be John Fowler, who used the nickname Bud and played for minor league teams in Lynn and Worcester, Mass., in 1878. Through recommendations from fans, historians and Hall of Fame members, Fowler was among 94 candidates for the special election, but he was not among the final 17.
Through meticulous work, representatives for the Society for American Baseball Research discovered that Fowler was born John Jackson 20 years earlier in central New York, and that he learned to play baseball, in of all places, the village of Cooperstown during the 1860’s.
Fowler played for 18 years in 13 professional leagues, from New England to New Mexico. He was a speedy base stealer who played every position, including pitcher..
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Stars Of The Negro League
judy-johnson-cards2
Shown above is the set of Judy Johnson tribute cards. One card with 5000 numbered copies is produced each season to honor a former Negro League player. The first card of the set was the Judy Johnson card issued in 1996. The cards are given away with admission to the Judy Johnson Tribute to Negro League Baseball held each August at the Wilmington Blue Rocks ballpark in Wilmington, Delaware.
Several of the honored players played for teams in the ManDak League in the 1950's and many other former Negro League players that played in the ManDak League played on the same teams with these players.
Leon Day, former ManDak League player with the Winnipeg Buffaloes, is inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Ted Radcliffe is a six-time Negro League all star player that played for the Elmwood Giants. Bill Cash was a catcher for the Bismarck Barons in 1955. Satchel Paige was the greatest Negro League pitcher. He is enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He was a Minot Mallard for their first three games in 1950.
The cards are illustrated by Michael D. Mellet and produced by the Judy Johnson Foundation. The cards are 6 inches by 8 inches. The back side of the cards gives biographical information.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Larry Doby Tribute
Back in the 1980's one of my favorite students from PS 397K was Natasha McLean. Her mom, Myrtle Doby was related to Larry.
The song is the Robby Doby Boogie by Brownie McGhee.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Willie Mays: The Say Hey Kid
I'm a lifelong Yankee fan who grew up idolizing Mickey Mantle, but I must admit that Willie was the greatest.
sung by the Treniers, the lyrics
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
Say hey, Say who, Swinging at the plate
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
That Giants' kid is great
When he fits the ball it's long gone man
Hits it farther than Campy can
Swings the bat like a little lead pipe
When they reach the ball it's overripe
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
Say hey, Say who, Swinging at the plate
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
That Giants' kid is great
He runs the bases like a choo choo train
Swings around second like an airplane
His cap flies off when he passes third
And he heads home like an eagle bird
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
Say hey, Say who, Swinging at the plate
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
That Giants' kid is great
Yes he covers center like he had jet shoes
The other batters get the Willie blue
Anything hit his way is out
Man it just don't pay those guys to clout
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
Say hey, Say who, Swinging at the plate
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
That Giants' kid is great
When Willie served his Uncle Sam
He left the Giants in an awful jam
But now he's back
And he's Leo's joy
And Willie's still a growing boy
Say Hey, Say Who, Say Willie,
Say Hey, Say Who, Swinging at the plate
Say hey, Say who, Say Willie,
That Giants' kid is great
That Giants' kid is great
Say Willie
What you going to say
Say Hey
Pee Wee Reese And Jackie Robinson
the audio is from an npr broadcast of Sept. 28, 2001 images of Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson and some of their teammates, including the racist Dixie Walker. Also a few scans of the children's book "Teammates," by Peter Golenbock that are relevant to the story. In the book version, however, Pee Wee refuses to sign the petition. Note in the team picture of 1947, Dixie has his head turned on purpose to show his displeasure of being Jackie's teammate. Branch Rickey would have him traded soon afterwards to Pittsburgh.
The year was 1947, and Jackie Robinson, baseball's first African-American player, was being unmercifully taunted by fans and opponents in Cincinnati's Crosley Field. Sickened by what he was hearing, my father walked from his shortstop position and draped his arm around his teammate. The simple gesture not only stopped the racial razzing that day, but it sent a profound message throughout baseball and the nation.
Remember, this was eight years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. A public show of support between a white southerner and black man was unprecedented in 1947.
Long before terrorism had entered the American lexicon, another ism -- racism -- was the shadowy enemy that threatened to tear this country apart from within.
So there we were, looking at the statuettes, thinking of a different era when an unexpected visitor entered. The windows rattled and our souls shuddered -- terrorism arrived in a horrifying manner.
We now know the terrorists are trying to tear our county apart from the inside out. "Freedom and fear," said President Bush, "are at war." In some cases, that fear has provoked racism against American Muslims. Where does that leave freedom?
In 1947, these freedoms were tested when my father's teammate and best friend Dixie Walker circulated a petition that tried to bar all black players from Major League Baseball. And anyone who supported Robinson, Walker warned, also would be chased out of the game. At first, my father gave in to his fears, and supported the petition.
But in 1999, the year my father died, he told me he had learned an important lesson that trying day in Cincinnati: Don't give in to your fears. When the first World Trade Center tower crumbled like a house of glass, I held my mother close. I wanted to keep her from being trampled to death or pelted by debris. We ran into a neighboring building as fast as my mother's 79-year old legs would allow. In the dark of a bomb shelter, mom turned to me and said, 'I'm just glad your father isn't here to see this.'
At that moment, I couldn't help but think about those miniature bronze statuettes that had been left behind to fend for themselves at city hall. Amid the debris and dismay they represent courage, determination, and teamwork -- something we as Americans have been seeing a lot of lately. So I turned to my mother and said, 'No, mom, something tells me Pee Wee is here with us. And so is Jackie. Because we need their courage now more than ever.' My mother bravely smiled and nodded in agreement.
Mark Reese is a Los Angeles-based documentary film maker and writer. He and his mother were within a few blocks of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Roy Campanella
from wikipedia and the official roy camapanella site
A successful catcher is defined by his ability to handle the pitching staff, throw out would-be stealers, and keep errant throws and pitches in front of him. Roy Campanella possessed all these skills and then some.
The man they called "Campy" was the complete package, leading National League catchers in putouts six times, and clubbing 242 home runs in his 10-year Major League career. From 1948-1957, Roy Campanella was securely anchored behind home plate for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Campanella's 1946 season, for the Dodger minor league team in Montreal, proceeded largely without racial incident, and in one game Campanella took over the managerial duties after manager Walter Alston was ejected. This made Campanella the first African-American to manage white players on an organized professional baseball team. Nashua was three runs down at the time Campanella took over. They came back to win, in part due to Campanella's decision to use pitcher Don Newcombe as a pinch hitter in the seventh inning. Newcombe hit a game-tying two-run home run.
He caught in five World Series, won the National League Most Valuable Player award in 1951, 1953, and 1955, and was the first black catcher in Major League Baseball history. In 1969, he joined baseball’s elite with his induction into the Hall of Fame.
Campanella lived in Long Island while owning a liquor store in Harlem, which he also operated during the baseball off-season. On January 28, 1958, after closing the store for the night, he began his drive home to Long Island. However, before he arrived, his car hit a patch of ice, skidded into a telephone pole and overturned.
The accident left Campanella paralyzed from the chest down. Through physical therapy, he eventually was able to gain substantial use of his arms and hands. He was able to feed himself, shake hands, and gesture while speaking, but he would be confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life.
Birth name: Roy Campanella
Nickname: Campy
Birth date: November 19, 1921
Birth place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Death date: June 26, 1993
Death place: Woodland Hills, California
Height: 5' 9" Weight: 190 lbs.
Parents: John and Ida Campanella
Campanella's father was of Italian descent; his mother was African American. Therefore, he was barred from Major League Baseball prior to 1947 — the season that non-white players were admitted to the Major Leagues for the first time since the 19th Century
Marriage: Ruthe, Roxie Doles, 1963-1993 (his death)
Children: Five children with his first wife, Ruthe
Athletic position: Catcher
Athletic teams: Brooklyn Dodgers (1949 -1957), Baltimore Elite Giants [Negro National League] (1937- 1942)
Threw: Right Batted: Right
Hall of Fame: Elected in 1969
In 1991, Roy and Roxie founded the "The Roy and Roxie Campanella Physical Therapy Scholarship Foundation." Equipment, education, information, and support for those living with paraplegia was provided by the foundation. It also awarded scholarships to students pursuing a degree in the field of physical therapy.
Was a star for nine seasons in the Mexican and Negro Leagues.
He played in five World Series.
Led National League catchers in putout six times.
Hit 242 home runs as a catcher.
Was selected the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1951, 1953, and 1955.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Jackie Robinson: Opening Day
April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century. World War II had just ended. Democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for justice on the home front -- and Robinson had a chance to lead the way.He was an unlikely hero. He had little experience in organized baseball. His swing was far from graceful. And he was assigned to play first base, a position he had never tried before that season. But the biggest concern was his temper. Robinson was an angry man who played an aggressive style of ball. In order to succeed he would have to control himself in the face of what promised to be a brutal assault by opponents of integration.In Opening Day, Jonathan Eig tells the true story behind the national pastime's most sacred myth. Along the way he offers new insights into events of sixty years ago and punctures some familiar legends. Was it true that the St. Louis Cardinals plotted to boycott their first home game against the Brooklyn Dodgers? Was Pee Wee Reese really Robinson's closest ally on the team? Was Dixie Walker his greatest foe? How did Robinson handle the extraordinary stress of being the only black man in baseball and still manage to perform so well on the field? Opening Day is also the story of a team of underdogs that came together against tremendous odds to capture the pennant. Facing the powerful New York Yankees, Robinson and the Dodgers battled to the seventh game in one of the most thrilling World Series competitions of all time. Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration's promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball's ultimate story.
Josh Gibson: A Biography
from wikipedia
Joshua Gibson (December 21, 1911 - January 20, 1947) was an American catcher in baseball's Negro Leagues. He played for the Homestead Grays from 1930 to 1931, moved to the Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1932 to 1936, and returned to the Grays from 1937 to 1939 and 1942 to 1946. In 1937 he played for Ciudad Trujillo in Trujillo's Dominican League and from 1940 to 1941 he played in the Mexican League for Veracruz. He stood 6-foot-1 (185 cm) and weighed 210 pounds (95 kg) at the peak of his career.
Baseball historians consider Gibson to be among the very best catchers and power hitters in the history of any league, including the Major Leagues, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Gibson was known as the "black Babe Ruth." He never played in Major League Baseball because, under their unwritten "gentleman's agreement" policy, they excluded non-whites during his lifetime.
Gibson was born in Buena Vista, Georgia on or about December 21, 1911. In 1923 Gibson moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his father, Mark Gibson, had found work at the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company. Entering sixth grade in Pittsburgh, Gibson prepared to become an electrician, attending Allegheny Pre-Vocational School and Conroy Pre-Vocational School. His first experience playing baseball for an organized team came at age 16, when he played third base for an amateur team sponsored by Gimbels department store, where he found work as an elevator operator. Shortly thereafter, he was recruited by the Pittsburgh Crawfords, which in 1928 were still a semi-professional team. The Crawfords, controlled by Gus Greenlee, were the top black semi-professional team in the Pittsburgh area and would advance to fully professional major Negro league status by 1931.[3]
In 1928, Gibson met Helen Mason, whom he married on March 7, 1929. When not playing baseball, Gibson continued to work at Gimbels, having given up on his plans to become an electrician to pursue a baseball career. In the summer of 1930, the 18-year old Gibson was recruited by Cum Posey, owner of the Homestead Grays, which were the preeminent Negro league team in Pittsburgh, and on July 31, 1930 Gibson debuted with the Grays. A few days later, on August 11, 1930, Gibson's wife Helen, who was pregnant with twins, went into premature labor and died while giving birth to a twin son, Josh Gibson, Jr., and daughter, named Helen after her mother. The children were raised by Helen's parents.
The Negro leagues generally found it more profitable to schedule relatively few league games and allow the teams to earn extra money through barnstorming against semi-professional and other non-league teams.[4] Thus, it is important to distinguish between records against all competition and records in league games only. For example, against all levels of competition Gibson hit 69 home runs in 1934; the same year in league games he hit 11 home runs in 52 games.
In 1933 he hit .467 with 55 home runs in 137 games against all levels of competition. His lifetime batting average is said to be higher than .350, with other sources putting it as high as .384, the best in Negro League history.
The Josh Gibson Baseball Hall of Fame plaque says he hit "almost 800" homers in his 17-year career against Negro League and independent baseball. His lifetime batting average, according to the Hall of Fame's official data, was .359.[4] It was reported that he won nine home-run titles and four batting championships playing for the Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. In two seasons in the late 1930s, it was written that not only did he hit higher than .400, but his slugging percentage was above 1.000. The Sporting News of June 3, 1967 credits Gibson with a home run in a Negro League game at Yankee Stadium that struck two feet from the top of the wall circling the center field bleachers, about 580 feet from home plate. Although it has never been conclusively proven, Chicago American Giants infielder Jack Marshall said Gibson slugged one over the third deck next to the left field bullpen in 1934 for the only fair ball hit out of Yankee Stadium.
There is no published season-by-season breakdown of Gibson's home run totals in all the games he played in various leagues and exhibitions.
The true statistical achievements of Negro League players may be impossible to know, as the Negro Leagues did not compile complete statistics or game summaries. Based on research of historical accounts performed for the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues, Gibson hit 224 homers in 2,375 at-bats against top black teams, 2 in 56 at-bats against white major-league pitchers and 44 in 450 AB in the Mexican League. John Holway lists Gibson with the same home run totals and a .351 career average, plus 21 for 56 against white major-league pitchers. According to Holway, Gibson ranks third all-time in the Negro Leagues in average among players with 2,000+ AB (trailing Jud Wilson by 3 points and John Beckwith by one. Holway lists him as being second to Mule Suttles in homers, though the all-time leader in HR/AB by a considerable margin - with a homer every 10.6 AB to one every 13.6 for runner-up Suttles.
Recent investigations into Negro League statistics, using box scores from newspapers from across the United States, have led to the estimate that, although as many as two thirds of Negro League team games were played against inferior competition (as traveling exhibition games), Josh Gibson still hit between 150 and 200 home runs in official Negro League games. Though this number appears very conservative next to the statements of "almost 800" to 1000 home runs, this research also credits Gibson with a rate of one home-run every 15.9 at bats, which compares favorably with the rates of the top nine home-run hitters in Major League history. The commonly-cited home run totals in excess of 800 are not indicative of his career total in "official" games because the Negro League season was significantly shorter than the major league season; typically consisting of less than 60 games per year. [6] The additional home runs cited were most likely accomplished in "unofficial" games against local and non-Negro League competition of varying strengths, including the oft-cited "barnstorming" competitions. Though these numbers are still based on incomplete evidence, this study does at least provide concrete proof that Josh Gibson was a power hitter of very high caliber.
Despite the fact that statistical validation continues to prove difficult for Negro League players, the lack of verifiable figures has led to various amusing "Tall Tales" about immortals such as Gibson.[7] A good example: In the last of the ninth at Pittsburgh, down a run, with a runner on base and two outs, Gibson hits one high and deep, so far into the twilight sky that it disappears from sight, apparently winning the game. The next day, the same two teams are playing again, now in Washington. Just as the teams have positioned themselves on the field, a ball comes falling out of the sky and a Washington outfielder grabs it. The umpire yells to Gibson, "You're out! In Pittsburgh, yesterday!"
In early 1943, Josh Gibson fell into a coma and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Apparently coming out of his coma, he refused the option of surgical removal, and lived the next four years with recurring headaches. Gibson died of a stroke in 1947 at age 35, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just three months before Jackie Robinson became the first black player in modern major league history. The stroke is believed by a few to be linked to drug problems that plagued his later years. He was buried at the Allegheny Cemetery in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Lawrenceville, where he lay in an unmarked grave until a small plaque was placed in 1975.
In 2007 the Washington Nationals decided to honor Josh Gibson as one of the "greatest players to play baseball in Washington, D.C." with a statue as part of their new baseball stadium in Southeast DC. The statue is to be dedicated sometime in 2008.
His son Josh Gibson, Jr. played baseball for the Homestead Grays. His son was also instrumental in the forming of the Josh Gibson Foundation
The Untold Truth Of The Negro Leagues
The Story of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Kansas City, MO from theuntoldtruth.com
From the mid 1800’s to modern day, black baseball has had a rich history in America. The story, the history, and the accounts of black baseball in America in 1990 were neither documented in baseball record books or prevalent in African-American history educational programming. Though the stories were very much alive in the black baseball communities, in the families of the players, fans, and associates the black baseball stories were considered little more than folk tales.
The highlight of black baseball in America was the forming and surgence of the Negro Baseball Leagues. This powerful part of American history impacted many “modern day” African American successes. From Jesse Jackson’s father playing barnstorming exhibition games to Tiger Woods' father being the first black baseball player in the Big Seven Conference, it is the untold piece of our country’s Identity.
One of the more significant and vibrant hot beds for this history is Kansas City, MO. Not only is it the home of the famous Kansas City Monarchs, but it’s where the National Negro Baseball Leagues were formed (at the Paseo YMCA.) As in Pittsburgh, Pa., Birmingham Al., Newark N.J., and other cities that hosted Negro Baseball Leagues franchises, Kansas City’s community was greatly impacted by the existence of the Negro Baseball Leagues.
The Negro Baseball Leagues had a strong business and financial infrastructure that not only paralleled the Major Leagues in a lot of areas, but exceeded the standards set by Major League Baseball. The Negro Baseball League executives were strong leaders and innovators. For example, Monarch’s owner D.L. Wilkerson built the first lighting systems for night games and the leagues demonstrated diversity by accepting Hispanic and female players on their teams.
The players and the league itself had a lot of adversities to overcome. America was dealing with racism and unfair prejudice in social and business practices while struggling as a young country trying to find its identity.
Like the Major League Baseball All-Star games, the Negro Baseball Leagues All-Star games drew large crowds. The two leagues paired in exhibition All-Star games for a short while. The results were not pleasing to Major League Baseball. There is a story of Satchel Paige in an All-Star exhibition game, where he had the defense sit down on the field while he struck out the side. The dream of being in the Majors was a dream of playing baseball at its highest level and the Negro Baseball League players were doing just that.
The Negro Baseball Leagues gave players with the best ability the opportunity to play the game. Set in a time and place where the urban culture was Negro Baseball League; players like Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Buck O’Neil and Hank Aaron; gangsters and politicians like Tom and Dave Pendergast, Charles Binaggio, and Harry Truman; and jazz musicians like Jay Mcshann, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, Billy Holiday, Duke Ellington and Big Joe Turner, lighting up the streets, clubs, newspapers and baseball parks.
The Journey
A group of people from Kansas City led by Horace Peterson, creator and Executive Director of the Black Archives, took the approach of bringing certain awareness to the Negro Baseball Leagues. Their players, their great achievements, the enormous numbers of misinterpreted facts, and the lost stories were credited by forming the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
With 1,000 pounds of heart, a vision, and no real financial backing, Buck O’Neil and Don Motley along with small group of committed constituents (The Negro Leagues baseball Museum, a non-for profit organization) embarked on this ambitious task of building The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to preserve, protect, and promote the Negro Baseball Leagues rich history. Their tangible assets were their personal experiences, their relationships within the history and their personal dedication in creating the museum.
It is very much a story from Rags to Riches. The first domicile was a one room office (about 12’ x 24’.) The staff was completely volunteers. There was a great number of people with serious doubts they would be able to complete their dream of creating the museum.
The Museum begin building assets by constructing exhibits with the facts and artifacts they owned and acquired. The small group paid most of the expenses out of their own pockets. They grew the museum’s assets very fundamentally within their capabilities.
The museum met a small owner/operated Display Company out of Abilene, Ks called ESA to design a gallery for the newly renovated 18th and vine District. ESA had some experience in developing assets for various museums throughout the country. The company was owned by Ed Scheele with his partner and wife Lynda Scheele. The couple’s vision for the museum gallery had an entrance and an exit to parallel the history. As you enter the museum, you are at the beginning of Black baseball. As you pass through the museum, you visit the chronology of events not only within black Baseball but coupled to significant events outside of Negro Baseball that give clue to the life and the times. The staff at the museum felt the Scheele’s had the right vision and that they were their designers
Kansas City felt it important to promote its baseball heritage by appropriating 2 million dollars for the build-out of the museum. It came with a couple stipulations that the museum had difficulty with. One; the city would select their designer/builder and two; the city would own the gallery. Mr. Motley and his group felt the agenda for the city was not conducive to the mission of the museum and decided that they wanted the Scheeles and ESA to build their gallery as well as have control over the future of the museum. The group was thenfaced with the challenge of funding and constructing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum Gallery without the city's funding.
The Negro Baseball Leagues was formed because there was no other choice, if blacks wanted to play baseball they had to organize their own leagues. If the museum wanted the stories to be a part of our history, they would have to form their own method to institute and implement the facts. When Major League baseball allowed the Negro League Baseball stars to play in the Majors, it was the eventual demise of the Negro Baseball leagues. The museum did not want another governing body or another agenda to be the demise of their plight to preserve, protect, and promote the Negro baseball history. History would not repeat itself this time.
The City was not exactly thrilled about the decision for the museum to be independent and did not go out of their way to make the construction an easy effort. Phase by Phase the team met the financial and timeline demands in the construction schedule and after one year it was Opening Day, The Moment of Truth.
Naturally the city and the community were anxious to see the results of what was a largely publicized, controversial, and busy-buzzing story of the building of a new museum in Kansas City. There was a huge turnout for the anticipated ribbon cutting ceremony.
The Destination
The city celebrated the achievements of the museum staff (Don Motley, Ray Doswell, Bob Kendrick, Tom Bush, dedicated associates and board members) and embraced Buck O’Neil as the ambassador of Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Since the opening of the new gallery the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum has become a national designation by US Congress. Today the momentum has propelled the stories to reach millions of people world-wide and has instituted programming to involve the biggest stars and public figures. The museum’s outreach has impacted today’s youth to observe their past so as to build for the future, to envision the possibilities through what had been made possible, and to believe their behavior truly makes a difference.
With much yet to do, the leaders and staff of The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City Missouri have achieved their dream of preserving, protecting, and promoting the legacy of a culture in time and a time in our culture. The End? No, just the beginning.
Josh Gibson
The folks at brooklynblowback provide a great service in posting read aloud videos on youtube. Here's one they did of the book, "Just Like Josh Gibson," by Angela Johnson
from amazon
Kindergarten-Grade 3--A young narrator opens this story about her grandmother with an anecdote about the legendary Josh Gibson, a Negro League player who once hit a baseball so hard in Pittsburgh that it landed during his game in Philadelphia the next day. That was the day Grandmama was born. Her father brought a Louisville slugger to the hospital and vowed that his daughter would "make baseballs fly, just like Josh Gibson." She became as good a player as the boys on the Maple Grove All-Stars, and sometimes she was invited to practice with them. When her cousin hurt his arm during a game, Grandmama got her chance to hear the cheers as she ran the bases, "stealing home." Peck's well-designed, richly colored pastel artwork, which shows people with emotion and depth, is clearly the highlight of the book. Young Grandmama, in yellow pedal pushers or a pink dress, stands out among the boys' white uniforms and the burnt orange chest protectors of the catcher and umpire. A close-up at the end shows the narrator holding the very ball her grandmother hit, as the older woman looks on, her hand on a photo of the team. Information about Hall of Famer Gibson is appended. Although the story is slight, it imparts the message that a girl can succeed at a "boy's game" if she sets her mind to it.
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