Earlier this week, the Major League Baseball officially took the Negro Legions as a “Major League” status during 1920-88. It’s a move that has been properly appreciated and it was a long overdue one. Some of the greatest baseball players in history in the league saw their trades, such as Scar Charleston and Saschel Page – and other players we will cover extensively below.
Soon after the announcement, at the end, there was little discussion on the possibility of the great Josh Gibson becoming the new, officially recognized home run king of the baseball.
Finally, Gibson has been told that, in some corners, he has scored about 900 home runs. That clearly exceeds MLB record 762 of Barry Bonds. So will Gibson become the new leader in the official record book of Major League Baseball?
Not so fast, research says.
Seamheads.com is doing an excellent job of finding and finding official facial score scores from Negro League games, and although work is ongoing and they may not be able to find everything, Gibson currently has an official total of 238. It sounds low, but it’s the highest total there, with Charleston (211) comfortably second. Only nine Negro leagues are in triple digits.
This is the very crying sound of the near-900 that we have heard for many years. What does it offer?
For the first time, it looks like there are a lot of unofficial (or “performance”) games going on. Scott Simcox, a researcher at Seamheads, was looking for a lot of statistics on his Twitter thread, and these helpful nuggets include:
As such, it is entirely possible that Gibson actually flew around 900 times, but that does not mean that each one will count towards its official total – even if it is legally against strong competition. Ronald Akuna Jr. Went deep in Venezuela For example, this is not a se fison ason, but it does not count towards its MLB total.
It is strongly believed that a lot of lore comes through so-called “barnstorming” games, the only show where Gibson will play and display his immense power. They don’t count either. MLB’s official historian John Throne weighs in:
None of this, of course, makes Gibbs believe anything he did in his life. It is a shame that the league was not unified, as we will never be able to determine with certainty how impressive it will be, although it is conceivable that Gibson was one of the best players in the history of baseball.
In his Historical Baseball Abstract (during the 2000 season), Bill James wrote, “I have little doubt that Josh Gibson was the greatest catch in the history of baseball. Campanella and Gabby Harnett – except that, as a hitter, they were more preferred [Jimmie] Fox or [Babe] Ruth than Bench or Carter. “(P. 192)
James (again, only in 2000) ranked Gibbs as the ninth best player in history, along with Ruth, Honus Wagner, Willie May, Charleston, Tie Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Walter Johnson. (Page 358)
Statistics Seamheads have been able to coordinate with official Negro League games, Gibson was ridiculous. He hit .365 / .449 / .690 with OPS + of 202. For comparison, in the non-integrated MLB, Bebe Ruth hit .342 / .474 / .690 with 206 OPS +. It was widely accepted that Gibson sat at home at the same rate as Ruth, James wrote. Gibson has a rate of 13.9 batsmen in the official figures at Seamheads. Ruth comes on the clock every 11.7 o’clock.
But this is not responsible for all of Gibson’s work. He excelled in the Cuban League, the Mexican League and played in other venues not officially recognized as the Negro Leagues, in Puerto Rico. We really have no way of knowing what he hit or how many homers he broke. Scott Simkas has written a chapter in his book Utsider Basbein trying to estimate the total of Gibson’s actual home and the land at 643 (p. 84).
Not a record, but it’s pretty impressive.
The secret to Gibson’s domestic total is best summed up with this line from his SABR profile, discussing the early part of his career when he could hit home૨ homero in a year: In the vast field of pitching talent, numbers are less important than the reality that Gibson was already a select hitter. ”
Gibson’s back has probably been the strongest in the raw power division. Some of the legends are a tall story. Stories of him hitting a 700-foot tetro are highly unlikely, but that doesn’t mean he was a run-of-the-mill slugger. From his SABR profile:
In 1937 he hit the second legendary house race, later credited with 580 feet. Sports News. In a report filed three decades after the fact, the paper notes that “Gibbs hit one in a National Negro League game about 580 feet from the home plate, hitting the escorts in front of the 161st Street Elevated Railway. He can walk about 700 feet out of the park. ”
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Maybe Gibbs didn’t hit 600 or 700-foot baseballs. Perhaps his longest blows were only 450 or 500 feet. Maybe they were even less than that. It is undeniable that Gibson was hitting the ball in the Negro Leagues more than any of his contemporaries, and it is very plausible that he was hitting them even to his white contemporaries.
In a 2010 newsletter written by Simcos (special thanks to him for sending it with a moment’s notice), he collected 31 home roads totaling 13,766 feet, which is about 2/2 miles. The shots were 50,550 feet in Cuba, er1 in Puerto Rico, a 31-foot blast in Pennsylvania, a -00-foot shot in the polo grounds and a 5,485-foot shot at Griffith Stadium in DC. (Simcus notes that there are “probably ag exaggerations”, but the point is that Gibson was a prodigy among men.)
Testimonials from Gibson’s contemporaries also back up his reputation as one of the greatest ever. By Hall Hall of Famer Monte Irwin (via Gibson’s SABR profile): “I played with Willie Maze and Hancock Aaron. They were great players but they weren’t Josh Gibson.” Gibson said, “Not only is he a great catcher, but he’s not the greatest bowler I’ve ever seen.”
Gibson’s Hall of Fame plaque reads, “Negro baseball is considered to be the biggest slugger in the league, a power-hitting catcher who has scored nearly 800 home runs in the league and independent baseball during his 17-year career. 38, -42, -45. ”
As far as about 800 or more homes run, Kanto says, “It’s in the area of Paul Buenion and his blue ox.”
True enough, the official score in real league play is nowhere near us to make Josh Gibson the M Fical MLB Home Run King. But we shouldn’t see him as less than a true giant of the game.
Gibson isn’t statistically a home run king and that’s okay. It is unnecessary to define its greatness with numbers.
