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Part II . The Fall of the Man
By
the end of the 1932 “regular” season,
Josh Gibson was an ascending star like few that had
ever emerged from the Negro Leagues. The only thing
that kept him from being a star in the all-white Majors
was the color of his skin. There is no doubt that
Gibson would have mauled white pitchers as he did
those unfortunate African-American / Latino pitchers who shared his second-class stage. It is
well documented that Gibson dreamed of the day when
baseball would come to its senses and measure individuals
on the quality of talent, not their shade. But each
year offered instead the promise unfulfilled. There
was always next year; but then it would come and go.
And aside from the occasionally bold op-ed of a sportswriter
pushing for it, the notion of big league integration
would evaporate. It is unfortunate but accurate to
say that many of the Negro League stars had come to
live with it. Whether Josh Gibson ever did remains
questionable. But thanks to the reconnaissance of
Satchel Paige and others, many of the Negro Leaguers
had found an eager opportunity in the meantime. South-of-the-border
businessmen, politicians and even small-time dictators
were putting out the call to blackball stars. Starting
with winterball, these players began to venture to
the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. With the
meager pay (in comparison to the Majors) earned on
the fields of organized Negro League baseball, a year-round
schedule and steady paycheck were requirements. But
the added enticement of high-living and hero worship
like no black man could attain in America, erased
such functional considerations. As William Brashler
writes in his bio of Gibson: “. . . [Negro League]
players were idolized and shown none of the discrimination
they saw as a matter of course in the States . . .”
During the winter of 1932, Josh Gibson suited up for
winterball in Puerto Rico. It would be his first taste
of a lauded partying lifestyle that would eventually
consume him.
Josh Gibson's Plaque in Cooperstown
National Baseball Hall of Fame
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The
mid 1930s were good to Gibson and Greenlee’s
Crawfords. And despite the penury depths of the Depression,
they were also good to blackball. The Negro National
League (to which both the Craws and Grays belonged)
found new life after collapsing. It became the dominant
league, with teams from New York to Chicago. The Southern
League (which included Nashville and Birmingham) eventually
fed teams into both the NNL and Negro American League.
(The NAL’s marquee team would always be Kansas
City’s Monarchs, especially after adding Satchel
Paige.) At a time when no one could have faulted the
professional game for contracting, if not folding
outright, professional baseball – and even more
impressive – professional “blackball”
thrived. The game was a distraction from the long
bleak days, a national therapy for blacks and whites.
It has been accurately documented that the Depression
didn’t change economic conditions much at all
for the majority of
African Americans. Most
had known nothing other than institutional poverty
as a matter of course. This certainly played a role
in keeping blackball alive during the Depression.
But in the end, the credit has to go the players.
These guys could play. The Gibson-Paige rivalry, the
growth of professional leagues / teams and more regular
end-of-season playoff series all added new life to
the black game. It brought fans through the turnstiles.
But perhaps the most significant feature of all was
the East vs. West All-Star Game. Under Greenlee’s
shrewd command, the NNL had been revived; but his
legacy would always be embedded in organizing what
would become the annual Negro League classic.
The first All-Star Game was held in Chicago’s
Comiskey Park in 1933. As mentioned, Gibson crushed
a monster homerun that rumor has it stuck into a loudspeaker
beyond the outfield fence. By this time truth and
legend were often one in the same when it came to
Gibson. A lot of this was due to the sportswriters
of regional, and distant, black newspapers. Both Greenlee
and Posey would virtually employ local writers, who
in turn showered their respective players and teams
with praise and legend, earned and exaggerated. Posey
himself would often contribute a column to the
Pittsburgh
Courier, always ratcheting up the hype of his
stars with salesman-like streams of adjectives. In
this is the age-old tactic by which great talent ascends
to immortality. What is often lost is the human at
the centre of the tale. Yet in Gibson’s case
one can hardly fault the sportswriters and various
owners for elevating Gibson as something above human
(despite the rapid manifestation of his off-field
“humanity”). For his years with the Crawfords
during the mid 1930s were just astounding, statistically.
In James Riley’s impressive, definitive encyclopedia
of the Negro Leagues, he lists Gibson’s “official”
batting averages from 1933-36 with the Craws as .464,
.384, .440, .457 – these alongside “Ruthian”
homerun totals: 69 in 1934 alone. Those are indeed
superhuman numbers. For sure, Gibson faced some weak
pitching during that time. But he also faced Major
League caliber hurlers denied their place in the “bigs”
for the same reason as Gibson. The pinnacle of the
Negro Leagues was just as capable as the segregated
Majors. And like the Majors: talent got your there
and the repetitive showcase of that talent was required
to keep you there. Even knocking fifty points off
the mentioned batting averages would have put Gibson
in the yearly batting title hunt; and there was rarely
another player – white or black – that
could put up his homerun totals. In the end, Josh
Gibson would prove human through-and-through; but
a great deal of the legend-making was justified.
Gibson’s final two tours with the Craws in 1935
and 1936 proved two of his finest years. Mark Ribowsky
documents one-after-another illustrious achievement,
among them: a .500+ average for the month of July
1935, and a monster homerun in early 1936 against
the Philadelphia Stars that entirely exited Philly’s
spacious Parkside Stadium. As had become ritual, he
and Paige were the star attractions at the East /
West games during that time, leading a cast of exceptional
talent who sported such character-laden names as:
“Turkey” Stearns, “Mule” Suttles,
“Cool Papa” Bell and the versatile Cuban
right-hander, Martin Dihigo (who also regularly led
the old Negro AL in homeruns during the late 1920s).
Gibson’s bat went on to lead the formidable
Pittsburgh team to the 1935 NNL pennant – beating
out Dihigo’s New York Cubans in an end-of-season
7-game series – then repeating the feat in 1936
(on record, as a ’36 playoff series did not
materialize). It is regularly stated that the Greenlee-assembled
Crawford team of the mid 1930s was the greatest Negro
League team of all time. With perennial all-star “Cool
Papa” Bell, the occasional addition of Paige,
Gibson, the solid centerfielder Sammy Bankhead (who
would play an increasing role as Gibson’s drinking
chum), a number of other star players and many claimed
championships, the case is well made. They are at
least entitled to share the honor with Rube Foster’s
great early 20th century Chicago Giant teams. And
as Foster was always the core of his teams (for which
he both played and managed), Gibson was always the
core of the Craws’ successful teams. Cum Posey
would have certainly agreed. Having been forced to
play second-fiddle to the shrewd Greenlee, Posey felt
the time had come to make his move – which he
would do prior to the 1937 season. No doubt laying
the groundwork for a “raid” he hoped to
make, Posey wrote this October 1936 column in the
local
Courier – which seems intended
as more publicly flattering than factual:
“. . . Gibson is the only Negro player of the
1936 season whom we are certain could step right into
the National or American [Major] league and make good
as a regular without the usual procedure taken by
white players through minor leagues.”
Certainly there were many blackball stars that could
have “stepped right in.” But with Gibson
this was a foregone conclusion. Not only could he
have stepped in, he could have dominated. At least
some proof of this was provided via the admirable
and popular post-season traveling series St. Louis
Cardinal great Dizzy Dean had helped organize, in
which non-biased and willing white all-stars locked
horns with blackball all-stars. More exhibition than
anything, Gibson nonetheless shelled the white Major
Leaguers he faced, including Dean himself (who was
full of praise for Gibson and truly seemed to have
enjoyed helping provide blackball’s most talented
a stage). In retrospect, it seems impossible that
Gibson’s legend-making talent could have been
anything but dominating in the all-white Majors. And
amongst the many nicknames that had been hung on the
slugger (“fence buster,” for instance)
one did and still does stand out given the history
of race and its effects on this country – that
nickname being “the black Babe Ruth.”
By this point in an increasingly Hall-of-Fame-worthy
career many had begun to wonder if Babe Ruth was not
the “white Josh Gibson.”
A number of things played a role in setting Josh Gibson
on the road to alcoholism. The tragic loss of his
wife so early was most certainly a factor. Baseball
and booze provided a ‘sanctuary’ from
the pain of an event that would have devastated anyone.
It doesn’t seem that Gibson ‘the man’
ever came to terms with that loss, the numbing nature
of heavy drinking and his lifelong estrangement from
his children being proof enough. It also seems evident
that Gibson drank to escape the public eye, an escape
for sake of an escape – ironic, in that stumbling
drunks are more often at the centre of the public
eye. Yet in this seems to reside the underlying factor
that drove him to drown his life, and immense talent,
in drink: genetic disposition. As mentioned his mother
Nancy was a chronic alcoholic. Tragedy and a reclusive
nature seemed enabling features in Josh Gibson’s
life, dual triggers of a loaded gun. Yet the number
one enabler seemed to be that which sent him over
the edge: his freewheeling, largely unsupervised stints
as a baseball king south-of-the-border. All accounts
of his and the majority of other Negro League players’
winterball days can be summed up as ‘playing
all day, partying all night, repeat.’ The number
one concern of the owners / businessmen / politicians
who enticed blackball’s greatest to come and
play, from the Dominican Republic to Mexico to Venezuela,
was the happiness of the players. Little expense was
spared, from women to liquor, even illicit drugs.
Curfews were common, but were openly flaunted, especially
amongst the top talent. And Gibson was certainly considered
tops.
During this time Gibson had begun to see another woman.
Hattie Jones would seem to be his first serious commitment
since Helen’s death. Josh and Hattie were together
from 1934 on, eventually moving as a couple into a
house Josh had bought. Hattie was said to be relatively
cold and controlling. It’s hard to see what
the relationship brought either of them, for it seemed
rarely affectionate (it was often hostile) and just
as rarely functional A reasonable explanation could
be that in the back of Gibson’s clouding mind,
he knew he needed a rudder – a tragic, yet common
trait amongst chronic alcoholics who are literally
powerless to their addiction. Still, it’s unclear
that Hattie was willing to serve this role. It’s
equally difficult to discern if Josh really did feel
this way about Hattie, considering his having gained
public recognition as a womanizer – a trait
that gained momentum in step with his alcoholism.
If Hattie was a stabilizing presence for Gibson that
role went unfulfilled during winterball, as Hattie
stayed put in Pittsburgh. Without anyone to steer
him straight, his fellow Negro Leaguers often complicit
in the non-stop partying, Gibson drank, played ball
and drank some more. It seems safe to say that Gibson’s
winterball stints in the Caribbean were quite often
blurry ones.
Cum Posey had again set Gibson in his sights. Since
Gibson had gone to the rival Crawfords, Posey’s
Homestead Grays had been a fairly mediocre presence
in the NNL. With Gibson they could regain their prominent
position. As mentioned most Negro League contracts
were year-to-year; and even then were quite reliant
on the fidelity of the player. In early 1937, Posey
made his move to lure Gibson. Despite the consistent
success of his team, Greenlee was always wracked by
debts. His underworld business enterprises seemed
always about to catch up to him. He was most certainly
involved in a thrown game the previous year against
a team from Brooklyn, which when the payoffs and returns-on-bets
were ‘outed’ became a big scandal (as
well as underlining the gambling style of many Negro
League owners, and players). It may have been those
hovering debts that forced Greenlee into what amounted
to a trade with Posey: two players and $2500.00 to
Greenlee, Gibson to Posey’s Grays, was the deal.
Posey, set to reclaim his title as owner of the Negro
League ‘team to beat,’ had to be on top
of the world. But Gibson had other plans. The autonomy
of the blackball stars is probably best illustrated
by the “raid” that led off the 1937 season.
Rafael Trujillo was the small-time dictator of the
Dominican Republic. That spring he subsidized creation
of a world-class baseball club to represent him against
all other Caribbean takers. Gibson was targeted, along
with Paige, by agents sent north intent on bringing
back Negro League talent for the dictator. No sooner
had Gibson signed with Posey, than he jumped at princely
7-week long contract offered him by Trujillo’s
agents. A number of NNL stars followed Gibson and
Paige to the island for two months of tightly controlled,
but highly lucrative play, leaving a string of red-faced
owners in their wake. There was talk of lifetime bans
and stiff fines and lawsuits amongst the NNL owners.
But in the end – perhaps realizing the shady
nature of their own dealings – there was little
that the owners could do. After proving the greatness
of Trujillo (via the greatness of his Negro League
imports), blackball’s most talented returned
stateside to join their former clubs. On the side,
Posey insured Gibson’s return by guaranteeing
no action would be taken against the slugger. And
living up to expectations, Gibson came back and helped
a solid Grays squad win the 1937 NNL pennant. He punctuated
all of this by crushing a legend-making homerun in
Baltimore’s “Oriole Park” that July.
The irony bears repeating: that blackball stars had
so much more freedom over where and when they played
than their white counterparts in the Majors. And yet,
it was the Majors where blackball’s best wanted
to be.
The late 1930s / early ‘40s were full of speculation
of an integrated Majors. True of Gibson’s entire
career, the prospect hung over each season. It was
especially close to the elite talent of the Negro
Leagues, who knew racial mores to be the main factor
keeping them from the big stage. In step, speculation
that this was the chief reason behind Gibson’s
alcoholism – which did seem worse with each
passing year – is standard (and not unjustified)
thinking amongst those who have written about Gibson.
It was certainly a piece to the complex puzzle that
worked inside his head. That the Majors seemed forever
beyond his reach had to weigh heavily. By that point
the Grays were actively splitting their time between
Steel Town’s Forbes Field and D.C.’s Griffith
Stadium, home to the Major League Washington Senators.
These grand stages, along with the Gray’s many
trips to and displays put on by Gibson at Yankee Stadium
and the Polo Grounds (one of his favorites due to
its “short porches”) in New York and other
Major League stadiums from Philadelphia to Cleveland
to Chicago, had to be equal parts thrill and let-down.
This in light of the increasing amount of favorable
press white Major Leaguers were providing blackball
stars. Starting with Dizzy Dean in the mid ‘30s,
many white players were coming to see social inequity
as hurting the game. In 1939, New York Giant great
Mel Ott was quoted as saying: “From what the
other big leaguers tell me, they [blackball stars]
must be good enough for the majors.” Tacit endorsement,
yes; but for the time that was a big statement. Ultimately
more deflating for Gibson was the quote of Senator’s
star pitcher Walter Johnson, who was getting ample
opportunity to watch “the black Ruth”
showcase his immense talent. Johnson said: “There
is a catcher that any big league club would like to
buy for $200,000 . . . Too bad this Gibson is a colored
fellow.” The 1939 season saw two Negro League
all-star games, the second of which was played at
Yankee Stadium. Gibson’s play was so impressive
both at and behind the plate – on this: the
grandest of baseball stages – that it drove
N.Y. Daily News reporter Jimmy Powers to write: “I
am positive that if Josh Gibson were white he’d
be a major league star.” Mark Ribowsky makes
the point that perhaps social standards weren’t
the only items at play in maintaining segregated pro
ball, that blackball owners – despite public
exhortations favoring integration – were “knee
deep in the business of baseball apartheid.”
It’s hard to argue. Without their
African
American /
Latino stars the owners would
have been forced to find other work. And so, it really
is to Gibson’s credit that with such routine
disappointment, he nonetheless put together a Hall-of-Fame
career. Indicative of his all-out effort was his continuing
to play through an infected “strawberry”
received from a slide in June of 1939. Baseball was
simply his world. He wanted to play every day whether
feeling sick, hungover, or great.
Each and every year, wherever he was, Gibson put up
mammoth stats. The 1939 season viewed the legendary
Monoseen blast, and saw the Gray’s just miss
their third-straight pennant, losing an end-of-season
championship series to Baltimore’s Elite Giants
in seven. It would have been the Gray’s third
straight pennant, and Gibson’s fifth (including
his years with the Craws). 1939 also saw the end of
the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Greenlee’s brother
having sold the team (which relocated to Toledo and
then Indianapolis before quietly folding in the ‘40s),
with the one-time jewel of the Negro Leagues: independently
owned / operated Greenlee Field, demolished before
the season had even begun. The way that teams appeared
and disappeared, and owners went from boom-to-bust
– alongside the shifting loyalties displayed
by many of the players – all seems indicative
of the constrained economic conditions within which
blackball was forced to operate. In this, one can
hardly fault Gibson for again deserting the Grays
– and perhaps his unrealized dreams of playing
in the Majors – to play the 1940 season in Venezuela.
The pay was lucrative and again he lived “high
on the hog.” Fed up with south-of-the-border
player raids, Posey and other owners had begun singling
out Latino scouts and booting them from the games,
often with a few other unpleasantries thrown in. But
it did little to slow the “defection”
of many blackball stars from the two functioning blackball
leagues: the NNL and NAL. When Gibson and his now
inseparable drinking partner Sammy Bankhead “jumped”
to play in Mexico in 1941, Posey had finally had enough
– threatening to sue and put a lien on Gibson
and Hattie’s house in Pittsburgh unless the
slugger came back. If the threat was ever more than
that, Posey eventually backed off. And perhaps his
Grays were better off that year without Gibson, for
he and Bankhead were reported to be drinking themselves
stupid down in Mexico.
The following year brought the U.S. into World War
II. South-of-the-border ball was suddenly less appealing
in a more hostile world and illegal if one was eligible
for the draft. Gibson, on account of knees hobbled
from catching for so many years, was labeled 4-F:
not fit for military service. His return to the Grays
in 1942 revealed the first signs of a rapid physical
deterioration brought on by his alcoholism. (Rumors,
which would prove true, also included increased drug
use.) Nonetheless, 1942 proved an exciting year for
both Gibson and the Negro Leagues. The higher wages
to be had working in defense industries were open
to
African Americans; and the increase in
disposable income became prevalent with record crowds
turning out for big blackball events. Crowds in excess
of 30,000 were tallied on a regular basis for the
first time in the Negro Leagues’ existence,
with over 40,000 attending that year’s East
vs. West All-Star game. In step with the Leagues’
newfound popularity, the first Negro League World
Series since the 1920s was held that year. The Grays,
behind Gibson’s slower but still hearty enough
swing, represented the NNL. They would go down to
Satchel Paige’s upstart Kansas City Monarchs
of the NAL, but not before massive crowds got to enjoy
the renewed rivalry of Satch vs. Josh (Satch coming
out on top in this round). It was a resurgent year
for the black game. But there was a flip side: 1942
showcased the beginning of a slow decline that would
end in Gibson’s untimely death.
The final piece to Gibson’s undoing was his
involvement with Grace Fournier. By 1943, he was basically
avoiding Hattie Jones, his kids, and all his ties
in Pittsburgh – the Grays playing most all of
their “home” schedule in D.C.’s
Griffith Stadium. And that’s where Gibson met
Fournier, the night-clubbing wife of a serviceman
then overseas. Josh was instantly taken. He was most
likely more seduced by the vices she brought with
her. Mainly clandestine, the relationship was just
what Josh Gibson did not need. It further enabled
a licentious destructive lifestyle bent on addiction.
Worse, it’s said that Grace brought heroin into
the mix. To what extent the star went with heroin
is unclear; but it takes very little to get hooked,
and once hooked the drug destroys from the inside
out. If Gibson’s return to the Negro Leagues
in 1942 had showed the first signs of his lifestyle
rendering a physical toll, 1943 only helped to increase
the pace. Early that year, Gibson landed in the hospital
with what was called exhaustion, most likely the results
of alcohol. During evaluations of his condition, it
was rumored they had found a brain tumor. This was
kept silent. Aside from (possibly) the doctors, Josh
was said to have shared this deflating news with only
his sister; which does seems strange, considering
how aloof he was with his biological family, and kids.
As with many facets of Gibson’s life, this whole
event is not entirely clear. But being enigmatic,
if not reclusive, was a natural trait. Such mystery
often allows for legend. But that would come later.
The mid ‘40s were, sadly, all about the self-destruction
of ‘the man.’
Teammates, rival players and all those close to Gibson
openly remarked about the star’s bloated weight
gain, how drained he always looked and how he just
seemed to have ‘aged overnight.’ It was
common knowledge that the standard team rules about
drinking did not apply to Josh. He drank on the bus
rides, was often hungover, was said to be a regular
at ‘the sanitarium’ and was even caught
drinking in the bullpen during a game in 1942. With
the addition of Grace Fournier to his life, his erratic
behavior became more pronounced. She would prove a
lethal presence. And yet despite all of this, he hit
over .400 during the 1943 season and continued depositing
monster shots into outfield bleachers. 1943 also provided
Gibson with a June “peppering” of Satchel
Paige – in which the Grays knocked Paige out
after only three innings – the Posey-inspired
Josh Gibson Appreciation Night, held September
9th at Griffith Stadium, and even a marquee Time magazine
article about the black star titled, “Josh the
Basher.” By all other standards it would have
been a banner year. And from the plate it certainly
was. But perhaps the first area of his game where
poor physical condition had begun to inhibit his play
was behind-the-plate. For the remainder of his career
he would go into more of a standing crouch when receiving
than assuming the standard, physically demanding bent-knee
position. Not much has been written of Gibson’s
fielding late in his career. One has to figure it
suffered mightily. But his fielding was of little
concern as long as he could hit; and it is commonly
written that “if he could stand he could hit.”
Josh Gibson’s story is a depressing one to conclude.
He went downhill steadily through the mid ‘40s,
but amazingly continued to put up big numbers at-the-plate.
Gibson and fellow bomber, Buck Leonard (they were
called the “Thunder Twins” and eventually
given the more prestigious stamp: the Babe Ruth and
Lou Gehrig of the Negro Leagues) were integral to
the Grays winning NNL pennants from 1942-1945. They
also defeated the Birmingham Black Barons for the
whole deal in ’43 and ’44 (Gibson putting
up a .400 average in the ‘44 series). Gibson,
who had begun to sit out games more regularly, still
got up for the big ones. In 1944’s East / West
game he hit a monster shot off Satchel Paige that
struck a clocktower at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.
His swing had slowed noticeably, but he still managed
to lead the league in homers in 1945. The Cleveland
Buckeyes surprised the Grays by sweeping that year’s
N.L. World Series. But there was a bigger surprise
on the horizon. In October 1945, it was announced
that the young Kansas City Monarch star, Jackie Robinson,
would step into the Brooklyn Dodger’s farm system
in 1946 and into the white world of Major League baseball.
He would be the first
African American or
Latino to play in the Majors since the 1880s.
The news meant different things to different black
players. To the younger players, such as Robinson
and Baltimore Giant’s star catcher Roy Campanella,
it was a new world of opportunity. To the older players,
such as the fading Gibson (who was only 34), it meant
integration about a decade too late. Whether the news
of Robinson’s signing produced a significant
change in Gibson’s attitude is debatable. Regardless,
his physical decline was evident during the following
season. The 1946 Negro League season was played in
a kind of suspended animation. Players knew its days
were likely numbered. Owners were left with the hope
that, at best, they could transition into an independent
farm system. It was reported that Clark Griffith,
owner of the Washington Senators, had once approached
the enthusiastic Gibson and Leonard about playing
in the Majors; but nothing even came of it. It is
quite likely that Griffith sought an inside track
to the talented Homestead Grays, given the regular
talk of integration. However, a pioneer Griffith was
not and the two blackball sluggers never did make
the Majors. 1946 would in fact prove the final tour
for Josh Gibson. And despite looking like “death
walking,” he made the most of it, leading the
league with a .360+ average. Yet his vices –
including Grace Fournier (who had unceremoniously
dumped Gibson with the return of her husband at war’s
end) – had destroyed his body and his mind.
He was often incoherent and many began having trouble
telling whether he was drunk or sober. Worse still,
he had developed a kidney condition. He got worse
during the off-season. Too sick to consider winterball,
Gibson was forced to move back in with Hattie Jones.
This would prove the only extended period of time
(only a few months) that he ever spent with his children.
But his deteriorating physical ailments, and the fact
that his lifestyle had left him all but broke, forced
him into even more desperate straits. He was forced
to move back in with his mother. The next January
a very drunk Gibson stumbled into an afternoon matinee
at a local theatre. He was later found unconscious
and taken to the hospital. Josh Gibson died quietly
of a brain hemorrhage the next morning: January 20,
1947. He was only 35.
Josh Gibson is credited with around 900 + / - homeruns
in both league and non-league play. He compiled a
lifetime Negro League batting average over .350, with
averages south-of-the-border considerably higher.
He was a giant of the game. And yet he was sequestered
to obscurity. As if symbolic Gibson was buried in
a cemetery near the Pittsburgh neighborhood where
he had lived most of his life, with only a numbered
metal plaque supplied by the county to mark his grave.
Though most often warm and personable, well-liked
by his teammates, Gibson’s inner demons were
plentiful and still are not entirely understood. Perhaps
William Brashler put it best when he wrote: “[Gibson’s]
death, though tragic, was not that of a fighter but
of a victim.” . . . . In 1971, Major League
Baseball began the process of reconciling its past.
That year Satchel Paige became the first Negro Leaguer
to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In
1972 Josh Gibson became the second, going into the
hall with Yogi Berra and Sandy Koufax. Soon after
a drive was organized to provide Gibson a proper headstone.
The MLB commissioner’s office paid the bill.
Though failing to honor his talents in life, the game
did so in death. Alongside the cultural futility of
one of the game’s legendary hitters, it almost
seems fitting. But then allowing Josh Gibson his rightful
stage would have been the only true justice.
Bibliography:
Brashler, William.
Josh Gibson, A Life in the Negro Leagues. Chicago, Ivan R. Dee: 1978.
Holway, John B.
Blackball Stars, Negro League Pioneers. New York, Caroll & Graf Publishers: 1988.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, NY:
http://www.baseballhalloffame.com/
The Negro Baseball Leagues Museum, Kansas City, MO:
http://www.nlbm.com/
Ribowsky, Mark.
The Power and the Darkness. New York, Simon & Schuster: 1996.
Riley, James A.
The Biographcial Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues. New York, Carroll & Graf Publishers: 1994
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