Stats inclusion shines light on Josh Gibson, Pittsburgh's rich Negro Leagues history

Josh Gibson’s great-grandson is thrilled over MLB’s incorporation of Negro Leagues statistics following an extensive research project of more than three years.

Gibson, a Negro Leagues legend who lived most of his life in Pittsburgh and played for the Homestead Grays (1930-31, 1937-40, 1942-46) and Pittsburgh Crawfords (1932-36), is the most notable beneficiary of the stats inclusion.

With it, he becomes MLB’s leader in career batting average (.372), supplanting Ty Cobb (.367), as well as lifetime slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177), overtaking Babe Ruth (.690, 1.164) in both departments.

For Sean Gibson, executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, seeing recognition come to more obscure Negro Leagues players has been the most rewarding part of the process.

“We’re very excited for all the players that people have maybe never even heard of,” Gibson told TribLive. “You hear of the Josh Gibsons and the Satchel Paiges and the Buck Leonards, but Chino Smith — nobody ever heard of Chino Smith. The lesser-known guys — Bullet Rogan, Dave Brown and names like that that’s now going to be mentioned in MLB stats — that’s what I’m most proud of.”

Josh Gibson’s baseball prowess earned him the nickname of the “Black Babe Ruth.”

A 1972 inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he was a three-time Negro Leagues batting champion (1936, 1937, 1939), 12-time All-Star and won back-to-back Negro World Series with the Grays in 1943 and 1944.

His .466 batting average in 1943 became MLB’s new single-season record, as did his .974 slugging percentage in 1937, which bumped off Barry Bonds’ .863 mark from 2001.

Gibson’s career stats and his moonshot home runs are well-known parts of his legacy.

But outside of baseball, less is known about Gibson, who died at the age of 35 after a stroke.

Sean Gibson hopes the elevation of Negro Leagues statistics can illuminate the man his great-grandfather was away from the game of baseball.

“He was a man that was very well-dressed, he believed in etiquette and he loved to dance,” Gibson said. “He was a big dancer and always danced with the younger relatives in the family. His character was more of a laid-back, a happy-go-lucky type guy (who) liked to joke around and have fun.

“He also was a great athlete outside of baseball. He was a great swimmer. There’s a lot of great stories about Josh Gibson outside of the baseball diamond that people don’t know about.”

The inclusion of Negro Leagues statistics is sure to inspire debates among fans of baseball.

For Rob Ruck, a historian at Pitt, the stats aren’t the story.

“It’s not just a question of whose batting average was higher,” Ruck said. “But what role and meaning did the Negro Leagues and Black baseball have for a century?”

Pittsburgh occupies a special place in Negro Leagues history.

Its two ball clubs, the Grays and Crawfords, were powerhouses in the 1930s and 1940s, led by owners Cumberland Posey and Gus Greenlee.

During the Negro Leagues era, African Americans undoubtedly shared universal experiences, particularly when it came to discrimination.

But in Pittsburgh during the first half of the 20th century, Ruck identified divisions within the community, many stemming from the mixing of new arrivals because of the Great Migration around the time of World War I with so-called “OPs,” or Original Pittsburghers, who had called the city home for some time previously.

With differences in place of origin, education and employment opportunities, Pittsburgh’s Negro Leagues teams offered the city’s Black community something around which to rally.

“To me, the role that these teams played pre-integration in a city like Pittsburgh was that they brought together the Black community and gave it a degree of cohesion it did not have,” Ruck said.

“… The Black community was not particularly unified, and I think that teams like the Grays and Crawfords, owners like Cum Posey Jr. and Gus Greenlee and an array of amazing ballplayers gave the Black community something to get behind as a whole.”

When Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, in a speech lasting roughly three minutes, he took the time to praise Gibson and Paige, expressing hope that both players and more standouts from the Negro Leagues eventually would join him in being enshrined.

Williams got his wish, with Paige and Gibson being inducted in 1971 and 1972.

More have followed, with 37 Negro Leagues alums now in the Hall of Fame.

Moving forward, as Negro Leagues players now occupy prominent places on MLB stats leaderboards, their trials and tribulations may become more commonly appreciated by a wider audience.

“While people who played with or against Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Buck Leonard had no doubt as to how good they were,” Ruck said, “… the recognition — long overdue by MLB — to both recognize these men as major-leaguers and bring their stats into the game record is going to bring more awareness to a younger generation.”