Best Baseball Player?

[Tyrus4189Cobb]

Josh Gibson was an extraordinary man. He could play ball. There is no question about it. Had he been white, then he might have been basebll's best playr. Unforunately, we will never know for sure. But we can infer so by the fact that:

-Gibson was compared to Babe Ruth by supporters/ teammates. He was said to equal or even dominate Ruth.
-Walter Johnson said he was a better catcher than Bill Dickey, with a cannon for an arm.
-Satchel Paige once listed the toughest batters he had ever faced, and guess who was the toughest?
-Gibson was said to have crushed baseballs over 600 feet. Some were said to have left Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds.
-It was reported that Gibson once hit 75 homers in one season and owned 962 homers in his career.
-Gibson amazed fans in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. He also showed these talents in offseason antics, amazing Negro and Major Leaguers.

What else? Gibson accomplished this all in 17 years of baseball.

[Mission27]

Not meaning to shortchange him or be that guy..... but he didn't do that against the quality of MLB players

[Westlake]

Many Feverites rank Gibson very high. He and Charleston are universally known as the two best negro leaguers ever. There's almost no doubt in my mind that he would be at least as good as Johnny Bench had he played in MLB.


P.S. Wasn't your sig something like "Ted Williams, what could have been"?... Change of philosophy?

[Mission27]

Referring to me^? I definitely never had anything of the sort in my sig lol

[Tyrus4189Cobb]

Many Feverites rank Gibson very high. He and Charleston are universally known as the two best negro leaguers ever. There's almost no doubt in my mind that he would be at least as good as Johnny Bench had he played in MLB.


P.S. Wasn't your sig something like "Ted Williams, what could have been"?... Change of philosophy?


Yes. Philosphy change.

[Westlake]

Referring to me^? I definitely never had anything of the sort in my sig lol

No, not referring to you lol

[Rain Man]

Josh Gibson was an extraordinary man. He could play ball. There is no question about it. Had he been white, then he might have been basebll's best playr. Unforunately, we will never know for sure. But we can infer so by the fact that:

-Gibson was compared to Babe Ruth by supporters/ teammates. He was said to equal or even dominate Ruth.
-Walter Johnson said he was a better catcher than Bill Dickey, with a cannon for an arm.
-Satchel Paige once listed the toughest batters he had ever faced, and guess who was the toughest?
-Gibson was said to have crushed baseballs over 600 feet. Some were said to have left Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds.
-It was reported that Gibson once hit 75 homers in one season and owned 962 homers in his career.
-Gibson amazed fans in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. He also showed these talents in offseason antics, amazing Negro and Major Leaguers.

What else? Gibson accomplished this all in 17 years of baseball.

Josh Gibson was one of two of the greatest sluggers out of the Negro Leagues. I don't recall the other guy but Buck O'Neil and many other Negro Leaguers attested to the same fact. Gibson never ever hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium. Thats just folklore, and it was finally put to rest by "Judy" Johnson. Johnson was another great Negro Leaguer who was nicknamed by none other than Buck O'Neil. The one home run Josh hit considered his longest at YS was grossly reported at 570 feet but was later corrected to circa 485 feet. Ironically, Ruth hit about half a dozen out of YS & even Mantle had a couple BUT they were in batting practice. Satch faced Gibson numerous times and often got the best of him but Josh still managed to hit .300 against Paige.
The great Satchel Paige finally got to face the Babe in the mid 1930's and what happened in their very first at bat? Ruth clocked Paige for a 475 foot
home run! Satch was a great showman and talked big, and almost always delivered but he never talked about his unsuccessful moments. It has been uncovered that Ruth may have played about a dozen games against Negro League clubs in his career and the Negro Leaguers have all said that the Babe was the toughest out. The white newspapers never reported any inter-racial ball games but that was then.
Its too bad Josh & Satch weren't given the chance to play MLB. I compare
Josh very much to Jimmy Foxx. They were built very similar with tremendous power at the plate. Paige I compare to Dizzy Dean or Koufax. Dean had great praise for Paige. Once they pitched complete games against each other and
Paige barely won a 2-1 ball game.

[Brian McKenna]

Baseball fans are sorely in need of a well-researched biography of Gibson; hopefully, one that plays down all the heresay and debunks all the myths that so extensively mark his career. He was indeed a top ballplayer but all the b.s. lessens his appeal IMO.

[SHOELESSJOE3]

Josh Gibson was an extraordinary man. He could play ball. There is no question about it. Had he been white, then he might have been basebll's best playr. Unforunately, we will never know for sure. But we can infer so by the fact that:

-Gibson was said to have crushed baseballs over 600 feet. Some were said to have left Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds.
-It was reported that Gibson once hit 75 homers in one season and owned 962 homers in his career.

What else? Gibson accomplished this all in 17 years of baseball.

Josh, too bad he was not allowed in MLB he would have left his mark.
But... those numbers and deeds have been stretched to say the least.
A hitter hitting 962 home runs, 200 more than Babe, Hank or Barry and he passed away at the age of 36.

As for that home run in 1934 that supposedly left Yankee Stadium, lets hear some words from the man himself Josh Gibson. This interview took place in 1938 four years after that Yankee Stadium home run.

[DaClyde]

Josh, too bad he was not allowed in MLB he would have left his mark.
But... those numbers and deeds have been stretched to say the least.
A hitter hitting 962 home runs, 200 more than Babe, Hank or Barry and he passed away at the age of 36.


Don't forget Sadaharu Oh, who hit over 800 in Japan. The main problem with any of the estimates of Josh Gibson's HR totals is which home runs are being counted? How many would Ruth, Aaron and Bonds have if you were counting all minor league, major league and exhibition games? Considering how short the actual negro league seasons were, MOST of Gibson's home runs would've been hit in exhibition games while traveling between official league games, during the off-season in barnstorming games or while playing in Mexico and Cuba.

Just counting MLB & MiLB totals puts Aaron at 786 and Bonds at 771. Oh hit 868 in his career in Japan, but was a dead pull hitter, so almost all of his were to the shortest parts of Japanese parks. And Ruth spent the first five years of his career as a pitcher and still ended up with 714.