Gibson was a Bunyanesque figure, known for his prodigious home runs, and sportswriters called him the “Black Babe Ruth” of his era. It’s fitting, then, that MLB’s decision vaulted Gibson over Ruth in two key offensive categories. Gibson now tops the MLB leader board in slugging percentage, at .718, surpassing Ruth’s .690; and in OPS, with his 1.177 mark topping Ruth’s 1.164. Gibson also now holds the single-season batting average mark of .466, which he recorded for the Homestead Grays in 1943.
Gibson’s posthumous recognition comes more than 75 years after his playing career ended, a tragic story of exclusion during MLB’s tightly enforced Jim Crow era. Suffering from high blood pressure and the ill effects of excessive drinking, he died of a stroke at the age of 35 in January 1947 — just three months before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier.
The world barely noticed Gibson’s death. The Washington Post published a single newswire paragraph Jan. 21, 1947, headlined: “Negro Homer King, Josh Gibson, Dies.” The New York Times gave it scant more coverage, publishing a three-paragraph wire-service 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 excluded from playing in Major League Baseball.
That Times wire story noted the era’s limitations in compiling Negro Leagues stats. “Because of incomplete records it is not possible to compile Gibson’s lifetime batting average,” the obit noted. “However, he was a power hitter and his smashing home runs won many a game for the Grays.”
In recent decades, researchers have filled in those statistical gaps by painstakingly reviewing newspapers, scorebooks and other archives, which helped lead to Wednesday’s announcement.
“We all know Josh Gibson had a great career in the Negro Leagues,” his great-grandson, Sean Gibson, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “He is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, but we always considered Josh Gibson a major leaguer anyway. It’s just now that he’s recognized in the Major League Baseball stats.”
Gibson starred for the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the early- and mid-1930s before switching to their rivals, the Homestead Grays, in 1937. The Grays’ original home was in Homestead, Pa., but they began splitting their games between Homestead and Washington before primarily playing in the nation’s capital. Gibson teamed up with another future Hall of Famer, Grays first baseman Buck Leonard, and together they formed a fearsome back-to-back threat. They became known as the “Black Babe Ruth and Black Lou Gehrig.” In his first season for the Grays, Gibson hit .417 with 20 homers and 73 RBI in just 39 games.
“Josh Gibson was the most feared hitter in the Negro Leagues because he not only hit with great power but also for high average,” Adrian Burgos Jr., a historian of U.S. Latinos, baseball, sports and urban history at the University of Illinois, wrote in an email. He added that Gibson was recruited by baseball leagues in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Venezuela.
Before Gibson joined the Grays, Leonard once recalled, the team employed a unique shift 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 middle infielders would play deep. And then the pitcher would throw the ball straight down 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. We’d gang up right in the center. He couldn’t pull it — not a fastball. Throw it straight down the middle of the plate, and just hope we catch it, because he’s going to hit it 400-something feet.
— The Washington Star
The Grays played at Griffith Stadium near the present site of Howard University, which was also the home of the Washington Senators, and the Negro Leagues team was a big draw in the city’s Black community. Gibson had one particularly dominant performance at the ballpark in July 1939, in a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Stars, when he homered three times and hit a triple.
“Each of his roundtrippers was well up in the stands, but the second, which nearly cleared the park, came with the score tied 7-all in the ninth and gave the Grays the victory,” The Post reported about the first game. The Post called him the team’s “mild-mannered backstop” and wrote that one of his homers “followed the left-field foul line until it went out of sight.”
There was one pitcher, however, who always seemed to vex him: legendary Kansas City Monarchs ace Satchel Paige. During a game in 1942, for example, Paige walked two men intentionally to load the bases and face Gibson, and then taunted him, “Three fastballs, Josh,” before fanning him on three pitches. The next year, when the teams faced off in the 1942 Negro World Series, Gibson came to bat with the bases loaded and the Grays trailing 8-4. Once again, Paige struck him out, and the Monarchs swept the four-game series. It was an uncharacteristic performance for Gibson, who managed just one hit — a single — in 13 at-bats.
But Gibson was proficient at more than just hitting and boasted a cannon of an arm from behind home plate. None other than former Senators ace Walter Johnson, considered one of the best pitchers ever, raved about him after seeing Gibson play in a 1939 spring training game in Orlando, comparing him favorably to Yankees catcher Bill Dickey, another future Hall of Famer.
“There is a catcher that any big league club would like to buy for $200,000,” Johnson told Post sports columnist Shirley Povich. “I’ve heard of him before. His name is Gibson. They call him ‘Hoot’ Gibson, and he can do everything. He hits that ball a mile. And he catches so easy he might just as well be in a rocking chair. Throws like a rifle. Bill Dickey isn’t as good a catcher. Too bad this Gibson is a colored fellow.”
Burgos called Gibson “a commanding presence at the plate, whether in the catcher’s box or batter’s box. Other Negro Leagues catchers were better known as defensive stalwarts, but no one presented the combination of offense and defense that Gibson did.”
The Senators, who leased their ballpark to the Grays, weren’t very good back then, but owner Clark Griffith whiffed on a chance to sign Gibson and Leonard — despite giving some lip service to the idea. Leonard recalled that one day in the early 1940s, the owner asked to meet with them.
According to a 1988 Post story by Holway, adapted from his book “Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers,” Griffith mentioned the campaign by Black sportswriters to put the two stars on the Senators’ roster. Then he posed this question: “Well, let me tell you something: If we get you boys, we’re going to get the best ones. It’s going to break up your league. Now what do you think of that?”
Leonard said they replied that they would be happy to play in the major leagues but would leave it to others to make the case. Gibson and Leonard never heard from Griffith again.
Progress toward recognizing Negro Leagues stars such as Gibson has taken decades. Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, whom some consider the best hitter of all time, deserves credit for giving the effort an early nudge in his 1966 Hall of Fame induction speech.
“I hope that someday the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way could be added as a symbol of the great Negro players that are not here only because they were not given a chance,” he said.
A few years later, that recognition came — 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 scrapped that plan and Paige was inducted as the first Negro Leagues star.
The next year, Gibson and Leonard were inducted, but some of the news coverage 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 glamorized figures were inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame today,” the New York Times reported, lumping the Negro Leagues stars in the “less glamorized” category.
This week’s recognition was greeted with far more respect. Gibson, Burgos wrote, “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 book.