Joshua Gibson was an American Negro league baseball catcher.
Background
Gibson was born on December 21, 1911 in Buena Vista, Georgia, the first of three children (two sons and a daughter) of Mark Gibson and Nancey (Woodlock) Gibson. His father scratched out a bare living by farming a small patch of ground. Hoping to provide a better life for his young family, he moved north in 1923 to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he took a job as a laborer for the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company. The following year he sent for his family and they settled in Pleasant Valley, a Negro enclave in Pittsburgh's North Side.
Education
Joshua was introduced to sports and developed a strong interest in baseball and swimming in early age. His natural talent as a hitter made him first choice of the captains in neighborhood pickup baseball games. He had attended a segregated elementary school in Georgia through the first five grades, and he continued his education in Pittsburgh's schools. He dropped out of school after completing the ninth grade in Allegheny Pre-Vocational School, where he had begun to learn the rudiments of the electrician's trade.
Career
At sixteen Gibson joined his first organized baseball team, the Gimbels A. C. , an all-Negro amateur club which played in and around Pittsburgh. It was becoming evident, however, that baseball would be his real vocation. Since the major leagues held to an unwritten rule that excluded black players, he was confined to the segregated world of black sports. In 1929 and 1930, while in his late teens, Gibson played with the semiprofessional Crawford Colored Giants of Pittsburgh, his growing reputation as a slugger drawing crowds as large as 5, 000. He also attracted the attention of the Homestead (Pennsylvania) Grays, one of the most powerful all-Negro professional clubs. On July 25, 1930, when their regular catcher was injured during a game against the all-black Kansas City Monarchs at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, the Grays called Gibson out of the stands to fill in as catcher. This marked the start of Gibson's career in the Negro "big leagues. " Although he was not a polished catcher, his powerful hitting quickly made him a regular on the team. In 1931, as the Homestead Grays barnstormed through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York, meeting black teams and white semipro teams, Josh Gibson was credited with seventy-five home runs. From then until his death he was the black Babe Ruth, the most famous black ballplayer next to the legendary Satchel Paige. Because Negro clubs and leagues did not keep complete records, his home run total and batting averages are not known. His highest reported number of home runs for a single season was eighty-nine. The few statistics available and the recollections of men who played on Negro teams indicate that during his seventeen years in professional baseball Gibson hit more than 800 homers in regular season play. His longest measured home run traveled 512 feet, but others were without doubt considerably longer. During his career Gibson played not only for the Grays but for the Pittsburgh Crawfords (named for the earlier Crawford Giants), an outstanding all-black club that boasted Satchel Paige and several other of the greatest stars of Negro baseball. From 1933 through 1945 he also played each winter with teams in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela. His highest salary in the United States was about $6, 000 a season, and he earned an additional $3, 000 in winter baseball during his peak years. As early as 1942 Gibson began to experience severe, recurrent headaches. He was hospitalized in January 1943 after suffering a blackout and was found to have a brain tumor. He refused, however, to permit an operation, fearing that he would become "a vegetable, " and during the last four years of his life he continued to play ball despite the persistent headaches. He died at the age of thirty-five of a cerebral hemorrhage at his widowed mother's Pittsburgh home, just three months before Jackie Robinson finally broke the major league color bar.
Achievements
Gibson was one of the greatest stars of Negro baseball and a rival of Babe Ruth as the pre-eminent slugger in baseball history. There is virtual unanimity among white players who saw him perform that in the major leagues he would have been an outstanding star.
Personality
Gibson, a right-handed batter and thrower, stood six feet one inch tall and weighed 215 pounds in his prime. He had a moon-round face and a heavily muscled body in the athlete's classic mold. His amiable disposition won him the affection of both teammates and opponents, and his power earned their awe.
Connections
While in his late teens Gibson married Helen Mason. She died in August 1930, at the age of eighteen, while giving birth to Gibson's only children, the twins Helen and Joshua. In 1940 he married a second wife, Hattie, from whom he was later separated.
