Considered one of the greatest home run hitters in Negro League and Major League Baseball, Josh Gibson was credited with 962 home runs in his seventeen year career from 1929 to 1946. He played with:

    - Homestead Grays from 1929 to 1931 and 1937 to 1940

    - Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1932 to 1936

    - Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican

    - Mexican League

    - Cuban Winter League

Gibson stood 6’ 1’’ and at the peak of his career weighed 210 pounds. He bat and threw right handed, played catcher and when needed first and third base.

Josh was a powerful hitter with strong forearms that smacked balls over the outfield walls. It was not uncommon for him to hit homeruns more than 500 feet. He is reported to have hit the longest homerun in Yankee Stadium, 580 feet, several feet more than the longest home hit by Babe Ruth. He lead the Negro League in home runs for ten consecutive years and in 1931 was reported to have hit 75 homeruns.

One of the folkloric stories told about Josh was that in a game in Pittsburgh he hit a homerun so far that it soared over the fence and out of site. The next day in Philadelphia, a ball fell from the sky into an outfielder’s glove at which time the umpire yelled out to Josh, “You’re out, yesterday in Pittsburgh!”

Josh completed five years of elementary school when his father found employment in North Pittsburgh as a laborer with Carnegie-Illinois Steel. The eldest of three children Josh and his family moved north.  Once in Pittsburgh, he enrolled in Allegheny Prevocational School to study being an electrician. In the ninth grade while learning to be an apprentice in an air brake factory, he dropped out of school.  In 1927, he began playing for a Pittsburgh minor team, the Pleasant Valley Red Sox.  He later joined the Pittsburgh Crawfords. 

Josh Gibson died of a stroke in 1947, just three months before Jackie Robinson became the first black to play in modern Major League Baseball. Some say that he died of a broken heart, having never had the opportunity to play in the major league. In 1972, Josh became the second player from Negro League Baseball to be inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame. The first was Satchel Paige.

Note:  In researching the history of Josh Gibson, I had the great fortune of  meeting and being assisted by Mark Davis, Family Service Counselor at Allegheny Cemetery, 4734 Butler Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201, (412)-622-2000 Ext.151.  Mark helped me locate Josh Gibson's grave and several others in a very large cemetery.  His help made my research that mush easier.  Percy White, Historian