MISGUIDED MAGAZINE SPRING 2020

VOL 4
SPORTS ICONS
JOSHUA GIBSON
“There is a catcher that any big league club would like
to buy for $200,000. His name is Gibson. He can do
everything. He hits the ball a mile. He catches so easy
he might as well be in a rocking chair. Throws like a rifle.
Too bad this Gibson is a colored fellow.”
Walter Johnson
Joshua Gibson was an American Negro league baseball
catcher. Baseball historians consider Gibson to be among
the very best power hitters and catchers in the history
of any league, including Major League Baseball. He was
referred to as the black Babe Ruth, but some – then and
now – believe it might be just as accurate to call the
Bambino the white Josh Gibson 1 .
“There exists no official source of statistics…no
compilations of scorecards.…Many gaps exist in the
historical record,” an authority on the Negro Leagues points out. The record-keeping was incomplete and
non-standardized, so the actual total is unclear and probably unknowable. That reality, that statistics
cannot be usefully compared between the Negro Leagues and the pre-integration major leagues, is an
unfortunate one, yet it is also largely irrelevant. Josh Gibson was, by so many accounts as to make the
claim indisputable, one of the greatest sluggers who ever stepped into a batter’s box.
For his “official” career, Josh Gibson hit 107 home runs and batted .350. His Grays teams won nine consecutive
league titles at one point, and he played on too many all-star teams to count.
Unofficially, he may have homered close to 900 times in various settings. Gibson’s National Baseball Hall
of Fame plaque credits him with “almost 800 homers” in a 17-year career, but it is the testimony of his peers
that truly underscores Josh Gibson’s prowess. “I played with Willie Mays and against Hank Aaron,” said Monte
Irvin. “They were tremendous players but they were no Josh Gibson.” Josh Gibson was elected to the Baseball
Hall of Fame in 1972, part of the inaugural induction of former Negro League stars. He was, truly, worthy of
the honor.
Source: Excerpts from Society for American Baseball Research written by Bill Johnson https://sabr.org/
bioproj/person/df02083c#sdendnote39anc
1 Ken Burns, volume 5 of the documentary series Baseball (“Shadow Ball”, 1994.
2 Lawrence Hogan, Shades of Glory (New York: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, 2006): 380
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