The issue is black and white. It’s time for Josh Gibson to be forever recognized. Sign the petition.
The Case for the Josh Gibson Memorial MVP Award
The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) is annually given to one outstanding player in the American League and one in the National League. The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) has issued the award since 1931 and from 1944 until this year, the award was named in honor of the late Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis who passed away in 1944, having served continuously as Commissioner of the Major Leagues since 1920. Landis’s name has been removed from the award in acknowledgement of his role in maintaining MLB’s color line.
"We will no longer be associated with the Landis name, and the MVP plaques will be nameless in 2020," BBWAA president Paul Sullivan wrote.
One of several names that has surfaced to replace Landis on the trophy is Josh Gibson. Gibson never played in the Majors, but has been widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Sean Gibson, great grandson of Josh Gibson notes that “Josh was inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1972, despite never wearing a Major League uniform. However, renaming the MVP in memory of Josh Gibson is not just about him. It speaks to the redemption of the Negro Leagues and the salvation of its stars who were denied their dream of playing ball at the highest level. All they wanted to do was compete against their peers. For those from 1947 onward, this was their legacy. For those who came before, the Josh Gibson MVP Award would be an act of redemption. And poetic justice.”
The Negro Leagues, A League Apart
The Negro Leagues existed for one reason and one reason only. Black ballplayers were not permitted to play in the Majors. Racial tensions in the 1880s thwarted the emergence of an integrated game that had begun taking shape in the post-Civil War period. Most well known is Cap Anson’s refusal to play for his Chicago team against the Toledo Blue Sox in an 1883 exhibition game because the Blue Sox had a Black player on their team by the name of Moses Fleetwood Walker. By 1887, a so-called gentlemen’s agreement took shape that banned Blacks from organized baseball. Jim Crow won and by the end of the 19th century, the ban was uniformly in place. As a response, both white and black entrepreneurs began fielding black baseball teams, initially to barnstorm and play exhibitions and then, via the formation of the first organized Negro League, the Negro National League in 1920 spearheaded by Rube Foster.
Fast forward to the 1930s when Josh debuted and played; segregation was alive and well. Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Commissioner from 1920 until his death in 1944 thwarted all efforts to permit Blacks to play in the Major Leagues. A glimmer of hope from Pittsburgh Pirates CEO William Benswanger regarding the potential tryout and signing of worthy Negro League players was never to be realized for Josh to play in the Majors.
Power at the Plate
Josh is best known for his sheer power. His Hall of Fame plaque draws attention to the nearly 800 home runs he hit in his career in Negro League and independent ball. But the story does not stop there. Josh could hit for contact as well as power. A right-handed batter with a short, compact swing, he had full command of the strike zone and patiently drew a lot of walks when his opponents pitched around him. Seamheads.com, the recognized statistical source for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) provides Josh’s career Negro League statistics. Unfortunately, they are incomplete due to the challenge of assembling a full picture of Negro League games from verifiable sources. Nonetheless, three of Josh’s career stats stand out: a batting average of .365, a slugging percentage of .690, and an on base plus slugging percentage of 1.139. And yes, there were the tape measure homers; no park could contain his blasts.
Power Behind the Plate
Testimonials from three Major League Hall of Famers who played at the same time, but were separated by the color barrier, remind us that Josh Gibson was not simply a power hitter. He was a force behind the plate.
- "There is a catcher that any big-league club would like to buy for $200,000. His name is Gibson. He can do everything. He hits the ball a mile. He catches so easy he might as well be in a rocking chair. Throws like a rifle." – Walter Johnson
- “Gibson is one of the best catchers that ever caught a ball. Watch him work this pitcher. He’s tops at that. " – Dizzy Dean
- "Yes sir, I've seen a lot of colored boys who should have been playing in the majors. First of all, I'd name this guy Josh Gibson for a place. He's one of the greatest backstops in history, I think. Any team in the big leagues could use him." – Carl Hubbell
Josh: In Demand and Appreciated Internationally
Josh Gibson, like many Negro League players, “never dropped the ball”. Josh played year-round, both for his love of the game, but also for the financial and intangible satisfaction gained from playing in settings that appreciated his talent and was color blind to his race. His journey took him to Santurce, Puerto Rico; Santa Clara, Cuba; Maracaibo, Venezuela and the Concordia Eagles; San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic and Ciudad Trujillo; and Club Azules des Veracruz in Veracruz, Mexico where he was so well appreciated, he spent part of one regular season and all of another, leading his team to the championship and garnering the league’s MVP award. His 1941 stats in Veracruz: In 94 games he hit 33 homers, drove in 124 runs, hit .374 and had an OPS of 1.238.
Josh Gibson: Champion
Josh played for only two Negro League teams during his all too short career: the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. In 1931 at the age of nineteen, he starred along with Oscar Charleston and Jud Wilson, Willie Foster, and Smokey Joe Williams on a Grays team lauded as the greatest team in Negro League history. Four years later, he anchored a Pittsburgh Crawfords squad that was equally extolled as one of the greatest teams ever, defeating the New York Cubans in an end of season Negro National League Championship. In the 1940s, when the Negro League World Series resumed for the years 1942 to 1948 with play between the Negro American and National League winners, Josh led his team to the Series for four straight years from 1942 to 1945, winning the middle two.
Josh Gibson: Hall of Famer
At his Hall of Fame induction in 1966, Ted Williams said, “I hope that someday, the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson can be added as a symbol of the great Negro League players that are not here only because they were not given a chance.” Six years later, in 1972, Josh Gibson became the second Negro League player to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, second only to Satchel Paige who was inducted the year before. Josh’s HOF plaque read:
Considered greatest slugger in Negro Baseball Leagues, power hitting catcher who hit almost 800 homeruns in league and independent baseball during his 17-year career. Credited with having been Negro National League batting champion in 1936, 38, 42, and 45.
Since his 1972 induction, further research into his career easily places him in the top ten all-time list of all baseball players, joined only by Oscar Charleston, his fellow Negro Leaguer, in a list otherwise of Major League greats. Despite incomplete statistics for his career, Gibson’s batting and fielding acumen were the stuff of legend.
