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Speaker 1: I don't understand you never know stories of things. We
Speaker 1: simply don't know the answer too. Hey everybody, and welcome
Speaker 1: again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve,
Speaker 1: of course, joined by my lovely co host. That was good.
Speaker 1: Wow you doo, we're both were the lovely one all right. Well,
Speaker 1: if for anybody who couldn't understand them that that one's
Speaker 1: Joe and that one's Devin, you're pointing thrown people against Steve.
Speaker 1: I'm not anyway. Here. We as always have a mystery
Speaker 1: for you, and we actually have kind of a different
Speaker 1: mystery than we've ever looked into before. Different. It's the
Speaker 1: scariest one ever because it's a sports mystery. He was
Speaker 1: talking to somebody today and they said, oh, are you
Speaker 1: doing this because of the World series. Oh crap, we
Speaker 1: really should have done this a while ago. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: by the time this comes out, the series will be done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I guess for anybody who hadn't figed. We hadn't
Speaker 1: told anybody yet, so now they know we're doing a
Speaker 1: baseball mystery. Actually this is a good thing because you know,
Speaker 1: after after the World Series is over, baseball fans will
Speaker 1: be jonesing for a baseball fix. This will yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: give him there, a little bit of a fix. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I'm okay with that, but okay,
Speaker 1: as long as I can make money off. Well. Our
Speaker 1: mystery today is did Josh Gibson actually hit a home
Speaker 1: run out of not in, but out of Yankee Stadium,
Speaker 1: meaning that he was in Yankee Stadium, but he hit
Speaker 1: the ball out of Yankee Stadium and traveled outside of
Speaker 1: the stadium. That is correct, outside of the walls and
Speaker 1: the the original stadium, the new stadium, the original stadium.
Speaker 1: Our story takes place in the so definitely not the
Speaker 1: one that was built in. But the new one was
Speaker 1: two thousand nine was open, so yeah, definitely not one
Speaker 1: or else we have an even larger mystery, would Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reason that the story is really popular among baseball
Speaker 1: fans is because of the height and distances required to
Speaker 1: hit a baseball to actually get it literally out of
Speaker 1: the park. Very few people have done it. I mean
Speaker 1: in the Yankee Stadium, and the smaller park is not
Speaker 1: that hard, but yeah, yeah, and and Yankee Stadium. Our
Speaker 1: entire story is going to focus on that stadium. People
Speaker 1: have hitted out of the park in other stadiums, and
Speaker 1: Josh Gibson is known to have done that, but this
Speaker 1: is all going to focus mainly, and when we're talking
Speaker 1: about those home runs, it's going to be the stadium.
Speaker 1: But the reason is that it's that it's such an
Speaker 1: epic thing is in the old stadium, it was from
Speaker 1: home plate to the back wall five feet and the
Speaker 1: wall was a this is a round figure about fifty high,
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a that's a home run. No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And just so you know what I gotta tell people
Speaker 1: right now, I'm not a real baseball guy. I'm not
Speaker 1: a real sports fan, so some of this stuff I
Speaker 1: really had to figure out. And for people who don't
Speaker 1: know or don't have these things just automatically memorized like
Speaker 1: some of our friends do, here's some numbers for you
Speaker 1: to kind of put a perspective on it. For our
Speaker 1: for our foreign listeners who have never even heard of baseball,
Speaker 1: just like, I'm pretty sure they know from home plate
Speaker 1: to second base, so all the way across the diamond,
Speaker 1: you are are looking at a hundred seven ft that's
Speaker 1: a standard number to go from home plate to the
Speaker 1: end of the outfield. So of course there's going to
Speaker 1: be bleachers from there on out, but that's a kind
Speaker 1: of a variable number, but it's somewhere between two hundred
Speaker 1: feet feet difference. Yeah, and then after that in Yankee Stadium,
Speaker 1: it's an additional one hundred and eighty feet to then
Speaker 1: get outside of the park. So it's when you kind
Speaker 1: of hear those numbers because I think most of us
Speaker 1: kind of have an idea of the size of a
Speaker 1: baseball diamond, but then you don't really think about how
Speaker 1: many feet that is. And that's why this thing is
Speaker 1: kind of an epic thing. Yeah. Absolutely, Wait, we're like,
Speaker 1: what to three minutes into the story already, and I
Speaker 1: just realized that I screwed up, and I didn't think
Speaker 1: the person who suggested it I did. You just don't
Speaker 1: appreciate our listeners. Actually, I do want to say thank
Speaker 1: you to Jonathan who sent this in. You know this
Speaker 1: is I I think you both know this that I've
Speaker 1: been working on this for six months or something like that.
Speaker 1: I couldn't let it go. I'd always be doing a
Speaker 1: little bit of work, get sidetracked, but I could never
Speaker 1: let go. And I think it's just because of the
Speaker 1: fact that as an American or as an American male
Speaker 1: kind of hardwired to have a thing for baseball, even
Speaker 1: American in general. Yeah, I think even like I don't
Speaker 1: really I like soccer slash football and ending on where
Speaker 1: you are, but I don't really like sports. But I
Speaker 1: can sit down and watch a baseball game. I think
Speaker 1: you can enjoy baseball even if you have no idea
Speaker 1: what's going on. The basic premise of it is really simple.
Speaker 1: You can hit the ball and then you run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they tried they try to catch the ball,
Speaker 1: and then they try to tag you out. It's really simple.
Speaker 1: So I think it's just we're lazy with our sports
Speaker 1: and that's it's a really easy one that you can
Speaker 1: just sit down and go and you know, so I
Speaker 1: would say American romance general, Yeah, And I think, well,
Speaker 1: I think that's why I couldn't ever put this story down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little overboard, especially with the whole one to exhume
Speaker 1: the body of Josh Gibson, the building the scale replicas
Speaker 1: of old Yankee Stadium. Listen, I had to do something
Speaker 1: with all of the toothpicks, Okay, I mean and all
Speaker 1: that Elmer's glue had to do something. I was going
Speaker 1: to expire. Jeez, you too. Okay, let's let's actually get
Speaker 1: on with our story. Yeah, yeah, we probably should un
Speaker 1: So we'll start at the beginning. Josh Gibson was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven in Georgia, and then when he was twelve,
Speaker 1: his family moved to Pittsburgh and that's kind of where
Speaker 1: he gets his start in baseball. He was he was
Speaker 1: a big guy. He really was like six to hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty to two hundred pounds depending well, yeah, that
Speaker 1: it depends on where it is through his career. But
Speaker 1: he was a big guy, and he was an athlete.
Speaker 1: He was good at every sport, but he was good
Speaker 1: or at baseball. He was good at baseball or he
Speaker 1: preferred baseball. Yeah, well obviously we know which one he
Speaker 1: went after, um, But no, he he was. He was
Speaker 1: the guy who really was just good and everything he did.
Speaker 1: As we know, he liked baseball the most, so he
Speaker 1: was known to hang out at sand lawns and participate
Speaker 1: in just about any pickup game he could. He Uh,
Speaker 1: he was a catcher, which is not an easy position
Speaker 1: in my mind to play, because you know, you gotta squad,
Speaker 1: you gotta catch nine if you're bigger. Probably that is
Speaker 1: actually one of the things that worked in his favorites
Speaker 1: because he was such a big guy. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of abuse and he was good at taking it all.
Speaker 1: That squatt intrough the game. That would get old real fast,
Speaker 1: but that's why baseball players have such cute butts. That
Speaker 1: it is. But I think Gibson also played some outfield
Speaker 1: positions to on occasion he did. It was kind of
Speaker 1: a we're going to put you in a position so
Speaker 1: we can put you in the game kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Is only what it was. They would put him in,
Speaker 1: say left field for a game. He was not just
Speaker 1: a good hitter. He was a good thrower catcher. No,
Speaker 1: he was. He was definitely a fantastic hitter. I mean,
Speaker 1: the guy wailed on baseballs, as we're going to talk about. Uh.
Speaker 1: He is often referred to as the quote unquote black
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth, and he would make This is a term
Speaker 1: that was around in the thirties Ruthian hits, although I
Speaker 1: really like it better when you come across where people
Speaker 1: say that Babe Ruth was the white Josh Gibson, he
Speaker 1: made Gibson Gibsonian hits, which you actually do. See. This
Speaker 1: is probably the point where we should stop real fast
Speaker 1: and let everybody know. Story takes place in the thirties
Speaker 1: and the forties. There was language around race that was
Speaker 1: used at that time that it's not what I would use,
Speaker 1: but it is the name of things. We're just going
Speaker 1: to call things the things they were called. We're going
Speaker 1: to use the name of things. So be prepared if
Speaker 1: if that kind of stuff you or you you take
Speaker 1: offense to it, I apologize. Can't change history. Sadly, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna give it away. Here we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the Negro League, the National Negro League, Negro League,
Speaker 1: which was, by the way, not a racial epithet in
Speaker 1: those days. It still really isn't. It's just it was
Speaker 1: the league for black players. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: the word that preceded black. So yeah, so here we go,
Speaker 1: Here we go. As I said before, Josh played in
Speaker 1: a lot of sand lot games, and that got the
Speaker 1: his performance of those games got the attention of a
Speaker 1: guy by the name of Composey, who was the manager
Speaker 1: for a local team, which was the Homestead Grays in
Speaker 1: that's when they picked him up. At the time, the
Speaker 1: Grays were not part of the National Negro League. They
Speaker 1: were an independent team. Eventually they would join the league,
Speaker 1: but at that time they were and that it'll makes
Speaker 1: sense why later baseball was a less structured in those days.
Speaker 1: It was very little structure. It was kind of fly
Speaker 1: by the seat of your pants. Yeah, well, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: you know, let's just explain how this works. So we
Speaker 1: all know today there's the major leagues, there's the minor
Speaker 1: leagues and things like peewee in high school, and all
Speaker 1: the farm leagues. Yes, and there's some farm leagues. Well
Speaker 1: that all of that wasn't nearly as structured at the time.
Speaker 1: And so what happened is there was a lot of
Speaker 1: these local teams. There were just guys that like to
Speaker 1: play baseball and they would get together and they would
Speaker 1: be a team and they would travel to play a
Speaker 1: guys in another city who would like to play baseball.
Speaker 1: And there was no money in it. They were playing
Speaker 1: not in stadiums they were playing in the local ballpark
Speaker 1: or possibly the sand lot farm leagues. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: one in Portland growing up. I don't think they were
Speaker 1: quite farm league minor minor, way below minor guys who
Speaker 1: would actually legitimately fall running from base to base. But
Speaker 1: it was it was really fun to watch, so you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are just teeny little things and most
Speaker 1: of like I said, most of these guys didn't get paid. Luckily,
Speaker 1: for the Homestead Grays, they actually did get paid, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that was really attractive to
Speaker 1: Josh to join the team, especially in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: when there weren't any jobs. Yeah. Yeah, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna go into some of the money stuff in
Speaker 1: a bit as to you know, but it was just
Speaker 1: it was a much better career in terms of money
Speaker 1: than a regular job. Actually he made good money. Yeah
Speaker 1: he made Yeah, he really did for the time for
Speaker 1: the nineties. Yeah. But let's uh, I want to tell
Speaker 1: a story because I really really liked this story because
Speaker 1: I really find it funny. And that is the story
Speaker 1: of how Josh Gibson joined the Grays. So the story goes,
Speaker 1: the Grays were playing the Kansas City Monarchs, who at
Speaker 1: that time it's nineteen thirty, they were part they were
Speaker 1: in the National Negro League, and they were one of
Speaker 1: the top teams that year. I did. I had to
Speaker 1: look it up again earlier. So it's just making sure
Speaker 1: they later on they weren't. The teams would jump in
Speaker 1: and out of leagues or jump from one league to
Speaker 1: the next, so it gets a little confusing at times.
Speaker 1: So they're in the league, they're a top team, the Monarchs.
Speaker 1: The Monarchs, No, we're talking, Yes, this is the grades
Speaker 1: are not they're not in league. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: an exhibition game. Okay, look how good we are. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a night game, right. Well, that's the thing
Speaker 1: is that, according to the story, the Monarchs had a
Speaker 1: well to do sponsor who bought them their own mobile lights.
Speaker 1: So it was a night game. Okay, well but they're
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty lights. They run on generators. They're not all
Speaker 1: that great, but it allows a bunch of people to
Speaker 1: come in the evening and watch the game, which means
Speaker 1: that you can make some money. So that's why they
Speaker 1: did it. Problem was the lights were good enough that
Speaker 1: the picture and the catcher could see each other to
Speaker 1: read signals. If you don't know this, in baseball, the
Speaker 1: catcher does hand signals to the picture to tell him
Speaker 1: what kind of pitch to throw. Really simple process, except
Speaker 1: that if you can't see what he's doing, you have
Speaker 1: no idea what kind of ball to throw, or to catch,
Speaker 1: or what you're going to catch exactly. That's a very
Speaker 1: good point too, because that comes into play here. So
Speaker 1: we've got two guys who were said to have been
Speaker 1: playing we have I love the names that these guys get.
Speaker 1: The picture was Smokey Joe Williams and the catcher was
Speaker 1: Buck you Ing, and they evidently, according to the story,
Speaker 1: crossed up their signs. So it was to only do
Speaker 1: two signs or two pitches. Yes, it was a fastball
Speaker 1: and a curveball. That was all they were gonna do.
Speaker 1: A couple innings in somebody switches it up, wrong kind
Speaker 1: of ball gets thrown. Buck you Ing, who is the catcher,
Speaker 1: catches the ball bear and died, which you have done,
Speaker 1: so fun splits his hand open. Josh Gibson just happens
Speaker 1: to be in the stands by the by the dugout,
Speaker 1: eating a hot dog and watching the game and compose
Speaker 1: he sees him, recognizes him, pulls him out of the stands,
Speaker 1: and puts him into the game to relieve Youwing for
Speaker 1: the rest of the game, and then from there hires him.
Speaker 1: It is if that was really the way it went,
Speaker 1: it's actually not how it went. I love that story,
Speaker 1: and actually it's you see a bunch of things where
Speaker 1: Josh always laughed at this retelling of how he joined
Speaker 1: the team. Yeah, I think that it's partly true, though, right,
Speaker 1: a portion of it is. Yes, the first game that
Speaker 1: he played for the Grays, it wasn't actually an eating game.
Speaker 1: It was an afternoon game, and it wasn't against the Monarchs.
Speaker 1: It was against another team, which was a white semi
Speaker 1: pro team. Smokey Joe wasn't The picture was actually an
Speaker 1: the guy named again love this name, Charles Lefty Williams. Well,
Speaker 1: they got the last name right, they did. Um Ewing
Speaker 1: did actually split a finger open, and they did need
Speaker 1: somebody to relieve him. But the deal was Posey had
Speaker 1: already told Josh he was going to bring him on
Speaker 1: the team and that he should be ready whenever he
Speaker 1: needed him to come play. So what happens is Ewing
Speaker 1: splits his finger, Josh is not in the stands. He's
Speaker 1: at another game that day. He's playing for the Crawford Giants.
Speaker 1: They put one of the Grays, put one of their
Speaker 1: players at a cab, send him over to the Giants game.
Speaker 1: He gets Josh, Josh and he get back in the
Speaker 1: cab and go back to the Grays game, where he
Speaker 1: then relieves you Ing and then is on the team.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't immediately take the position. He slowly works
Speaker 1: into the position as youwing slowly works towards retirement. But
Speaker 1: they said they didn't stop the whole game while the
Speaker 1: guy went got Josh. No. I think they had a
Speaker 1: relief catcher hopeless, or it was the end of the
Speaker 1: inning and they were at bat. Maybe that they put
Speaker 1: that's a great point, because you know, depending on the
Speaker 1: game and inning can take time, and who knows how
Speaker 1: far a part those ball fields were. I didn't actually
Speaker 1: think to look, and I don't know that I can
Speaker 1: find that anymore. You know, maybe it was the seventh
Speaker 1: inning stretch, could be, you ever know, it's a good point.
Speaker 1: I didn't thought about that. It turns out I know
Speaker 1: some things about baseball. I guess you do. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: few things more than I do. What's that thing that
Speaker 1: they hold in their hands, the bat or the ball,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's it. Okay, they hold the narrow end right, Okay, good, good,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm glad I got that right. Um okay?
Speaker 1: Um So, as So, that's like I said, that's the
Speaker 1: real story of how Josh got on the team. And
Speaker 1: before this, we were talking about the money part. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the money a little bit because it
Speaker 1: is kind of important. Black players didn't really make anywhere
Speaker 1: near what the white players made in the majors. No
Speaker 1: black people, anyone that wasn't white, didn't make but a
Speaker 1: fraction of what their white counterparts made in any field.
Speaker 1: Even some white people didn't. That's true. There's a brigging
Speaker 1: discrimination in this era. Um So, I kind of suspect
Speaker 1: that probably white people want to watch the white people games,
Speaker 1: and they probably were able to charge white people more
Speaker 1: for tickets. You probably have a part of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are things, and there's um and I know
Speaker 1: this will come up later on, so we'll just talk
Speaker 1: about it now. At Yankee Stadium, there's a section of
Speaker 1: the stadium that actually used to be called the black
Speaker 1: seats because they were the cheap seats because they didn't
Speaker 1: make as much money. So those were the people who
Speaker 1: would go to those seats because it couldn't afford anything
Speaker 1: better for the cheap seats. Yeah, so, I mean it
Speaker 1: gives you kind of an idea. Um, here's here's some
Speaker 1: ideas of money in the era. So we've got in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, two big names, Babe Ruth and Lou Garrett.
Speaker 1: They were making between thirty to eighty grand a year
Speaker 1: playing pro ball. It is in grand was huge money.
Speaker 1: I'd still be happy to be making thirty grand. That's
Speaker 1: saying something grand would be awesome. Yeah. Now you know,
Speaker 1: these guys were the big power hitters, the top dogs.
Speaker 1: Even regular white players that we're making good money, I
Speaker 1: mean they were making a better living than a guy
Speaker 1: who worked in a factory, easy hands down math. Okay,
Speaker 1: if we cross the color line, then a guy who
Speaker 1: was doing a regular job would be making exponentially more
Speaker 1: than anyone who's not white. And the same thing applied
Speaker 1: for baseball. The League, the American League, the nationally the
Speaker 1: Pro League, whatever you want to call it. It paid well.
Speaker 1: But the thing it didn't do was allowed black players
Speaker 1: on the field, so these guys had to play for
Speaker 1: less money. Josh did really well. I think Joe was
Speaker 1: mentioning that earlier. He I think he started out right
Speaker 1: around three grandy year. He worked his way up to
Speaker 1: about five a year at the end of his career. Again,
Speaker 1: a lot of money in those days, A lot of
Speaker 1: money in those days, but that was only what that
Speaker 1: was kind of what he got from basically his normal season.
Speaker 1: He did a lot of stuff on the side and
Speaker 1: after the season to make money. Oh yeah, those guys
Speaker 1: are playing all over the place, like Mexico, South America.
Speaker 1: Yeahs by the way, were by the way they were,
Speaker 1: they were actually treated better than they were in America.
Speaker 1: They were stars. Yeah, there's um. I really regret that.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the guy's name. There was a guy
Speaker 1: who played with Give said, I don't think he was
Speaker 1: on the same team, but he played against him before
Speaker 1: and it was in the same era, and he actually
Speaker 1: left the United States for three years to play in
Speaker 1: I think it was Venezuela. For three years. He played
Speaker 1: in Venezuela because it was just the money was so
Speaker 1: much better, the conditions were horrible, and in the end,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what drove him back up to the States.
Speaker 1: But you know, he was like, to hell with it.
Speaker 1: I can play ball, I'm a hero, and I made
Speaker 1: great cash. Why wouldn't I go? Yeah, they don't. They
Speaker 1: don't want to make me play over there in the
Speaker 1: Black People Stadium, you know. Yeah, in case anybody was wondering,
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars in nineties equivalent to UH sixty eight thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty that's not bad. No, that's not
Speaker 1: a year. It's a very comfortable living. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: we know he was supplementing his income and also everybody
Speaker 1: else was unemployed. Yes he was, so he was doing great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really was. Oh but I guess okay, so in
Speaker 1: fairness that that means that Babe Ruth was Was he
Speaker 1: the one that was making eighty thousand dollars a year
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty I think it was. He was got
Speaker 1: about eighty grand grand is um one million, ninety two
Speaker 1: thousand and forty eight dollars, and compared to what the
Speaker 1: salary said players are getting these days, it's you know,
Speaker 1: that's not even that sific. I mean, there's some of
Speaker 1: the contracts of some of those this is this is
Speaker 1: in the beginning of baseball when it was you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of coalesced into the sport that it is.
Speaker 1: That was the beginning of it, and Babe Ruth is
Speaker 1: the one who started. He's the way he was for
Speaker 1: many minutes. I think nineteen thirty to nineteen. I know,
Speaker 1: some sports fanatic is going to tell me I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but I swear it was like nineteen thirty to nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, even though his wages steadily went down because
Speaker 1: the economy was just going down the tank he was.
Speaker 1: He was the top earner for that time. And then
Speaker 1: I think after that that was when Lou Garrett came
Speaker 1: in and and superseded him as the top earner because
Speaker 1: he shortly thereafter retired. I don't remember exactly when Ruth
Speaker 1: retired at the moment, but you know, that's why Garrett
Speaker 1: was on his way up and started earning a bunch
Speaker 1: of money. And then, as you know, he's followed by
Speaker 1: guys like Mickey Mantle and all these well known power hitters,
Speaker 1: and those were the guys that kind of led the way,
Speaker 1: and each one was just getting a little bit more.
Speaker 1: And that's how we have the situation of several million dollars.
Speaker 1: MLB on average pays four million dollars. Take it, I say, no.
Speaker 1: Another thing we have today is we have TV, which
Speaker 1: brings a whole new element of money into Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really does. So nothing to sniff at for anybody. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean John, like I said, Josh Gibson making good money.
Speaker 1: Um now we uh, we've got a little off track
Speaker 1: history though, Yeah, informs what's about to happen, really does.
Speaker 1: It really kind of informs a lot of it. Because
Speaker 1: the mystery or the legend is that either in nine
Speaker 1: thirty or in nineteen thirty four, Josh Gibson hits the
Speaker 1: ball during a game out of Yankee Stadium. That is
Speaker 1: that that right there. It's either he did or he didn't.
Speaker 1: So our theories are pretty easy to keep straight, by
Speaker 1: the way. That's uh so, So Josh, apparently they did
Speaker 1: allow the black teams to use the Yankee stadiums to play,
Speaker 1: and but they were playing each other, right they were, Yes,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. There was a lot of segregation happening
Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah, we have things like Jim Crow
Speaker 1: stuff like that, a lot of segregation. So we have
Speaker 1: we have the Yankees, the New York Yankees, and they
Speaker 1: were the white team. Then we had the New York
Speaker 1: Black Yankees. Literally that was anybody that wasn't white that
Speaker 1: was good enough to play for that team, that's the
Speaker 1: team they were playing on. So that's who like the
Speaker 1: Homestead Grays would have played. So I wonder what the
Speaker 1: turnout for that. I mean, because I know that black
Speaker 1: people could go to white games, I wonder how many
Speaker 1: white people went to black games. You know, I actually
Speaker 1: get the feeling that there was a fair number people
Speaker 1: who liked baseball would go and because it's a National
Speaker 1: Negro League game, or you know, maybe it's just a
Speaker 1: couple of black teams, it's cheaper to go. Just gonna
Speaker 1: say about it's way cheaper to go, cheaper to go
Speaker 1: to Probably the quality of baseball is not really less
Speaker 1: at all. No, No, these guys were better. They were prose.
Speaker 1: They were absolutely prose. And that was the That's the one,
Speaker 1: the one thing for baseball that I really it's to
Speaker 1: me it's the biggest smear. And I know that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of bad things that happened in baseball, but
Speaker 1: to me, that's one of the big smears is that
Speaker 1: baseball could have been probably so much better if it
Speaker 1: had just crossed the race line about a decade before
Speaker 1: it actually did. Let's be fair not to politicize the issue,
Speaker 1: but a lot lot of things could have been way
Speaker 1: better cross the race barriers. Well, see what that's the
Speaker 1: problem is that there's as I did the reading, I
Speaker 1: actually read not only the Internet, but I got into
Speaker 1: a number of books. And a lot of these guys
Speaker 1: would get approached by the owners and managers of white
Speaker 1: teams and they would say, would you come play with us?
Speaker 1: And this is you know, would you accept what? Would
Speaker 1: you accept? And pay? And they'd have these conversations, but
Speaker 1: they were such a regular thing. The black players just
Speaker 1: didn't care anymore because everybody would make these offers and
Speaker 1: say we're gonna do it and then walk up to
Speaker 1: the line and chicken out. I never do it, And
Speaker 1: so these guys just, you know, they just didn't care. Listen,
Speaker 1: stub bothered me. I gotta go play ball is what
Speaker 1: I want to do. But here's here's a daily enough.
Speaker 1: If you if you say the New York Yankees and
Speaker 1: you're an all white team, and you and you do
Speaker 1: pull the trigger and you get Josh Gibson in a
Speaker 1: few are good black players on your team and your
Speaker 1: team is kicking, But how can how can a Yankees
Speaker 1: fan not like that? You know, really, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: were some people who say, this is still the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: there's still some massive segregation. Jim Crow was in effect. Well,
Speaker 1: Jim Crow was not in effect in New York though. No,
Speaker 1: that's true, but it it it precluded a certain behavior
Speaker 1: and view. You know that. It's kind of like cutting up.
Speaker 1: We don't have time to get into all. I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: If you're a Yankees fan and you and you don't
Speaker 1: want your team winning all the time and you'd rather
Speaker 1: have an all white team, well, okay, we're cutting off
Speaker 1: your nose to spite your own face, I guess. But well, okay,
Speaker 1: that's their business. It is so for all of our
Speaker 1: listeners that aren't American and don't understand the weird history
Speaker 1: that we have with race. You do, Yeah, let's see
Speaker 1: we go through to the theories. Yeah's theories theories here.
Speaker 1: I know I've said this a couple of times, but
Speaker 1: I'll say it again. Josh Gibson was a phenomenal baseball player,
Speaker 1: and no, I actually I'm really impressed, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was some pretty impressive stats. So we're we're in
Speaker 1: doing now. We're totally in the he did it theory.
Speaker 1: So we're on theory number one. Josh Gibson totally did it.
Speaker 1: He knocked it out of the park. He played professional
Speaker 1: ball between nineteen thirty to ninety six, and he actually
Speaker 1: all but five of those years he played for the
Speaker 1: Homestead Grays, so he was at one team. He played
Speaker 1: for two teams. Um, this is not counting the games
Speaker 1: that he played out of the country or any kind
Speaker 1: of exhibition games that he might have done. You know,
Speaker 1: but some of those little rickey ink places out of
Speaker 1: the country, I'm sure he knocked out of the park
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, he really did. We got some
Speaker 1: We got some of those stories too. This is the thing.
Speaker 1: He started playing in nineteen thirty. He was eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: so he was at that almost that peak of physical development,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean guys between eighteen to twenty two,
Speaker 1: that's kind of when they hit their strongest physically, and
Speaker 1: so he was. He was there at the right time.
Speaker 1: If you go to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which
Speaker 1: I did their website anyway, Uh, he was inducted into
Speaker 1: the Fame and Baseball Hall of Fame of nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: You're gonna see that he's really good with the bat,
Speaker 1: as we talked about. So we're gonna give some baseball
Speaker 1: stats and I will explain them, I promise, because they
Speaker 1: if you don't understand them, they are very confusing. We have,
Speaker 1: according to the Baseball Hall of Fame, UH, the number
Speaker 1: of one thousand, eight hundred and twenty five. That is
Speaker 1: the number of times that Josh Gibson was at bat.
Speaker 1: He had six hundred and thirty eight hits out of that,
Speaker 1: which means that he had a batting average of three fifty.
Speaker 1: And the batting average is the number of hits divided
Speaker 1: by the number of times that he was at bat,
Speaker 1: so of the time he hit u There is another
Speaker 1: number called a slugging percentage. Josh's slugging percentage was I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into the actual math of that,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a calculation of number of hits
Speaker 1: and how many of them were a single, a double,
Speaker 1: a triple, and homer's and it it actually it's it
Speaker 1: gives a better determination of how good a player is
Speaker 1: when they're in the hot seat, because if nobody's on
Speaker 1: the basis doesn't really matter, but if the bases are loaded,
Speaker 1: that's really important. So there's there's a lot of value
Speaker 1: in that kind of stat and baseball, I gotta say
Speaker 1: is is one of the most statistically and heavy every
Speaker 1: Trust me, there is a whole bunch of stats we
Speaker 1: could go through and we're not really into this stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I tried. Actually as a kid, I try. I played
Speaker 1: t ball. I tried to play ball. I was the
Speaker 1: kids spacing off in the outfield because I was just
Speaker 1: kind of bored. I tried collecting baseball cards, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't ever figure the stats out and keep them all
Speaker 1: in my head, so I couldn't talk to jargon with kids.
Speaker 1: But you're right, there are people who just dig in
Speaker 1: and they just know all these numbers and they make
Speaker 1: total sense. One of one of my closest oldest friends
Speaker 1: is that way. She's a die hard Boston Red Sox fan,
Speaker 1: and during all baseball season, pre and postseason, anytime anybody's
Speaker 1: playing baseball, her Instagram feed is literally just pictures of
Speaker 1: her keeping score and stats. I don't understand any of it.
Speaker 1: I've never been into baseball that much. Back when we
Speaker 1: had a team here in town. I used to enjoy
Speaker 1: going out of the beer garden and watching the Beavers play,
Speaker 1: and you know, drinking beer with the Rockies. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Myra Newdeleman. If anybody listening remembers Myra Newdleman, please let
Speaker 1: me know, because like I need to know, I'm not
Speaker 1: the only one. You had, no God, No, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so can you what a yeah? His batting average means
Speaker 1: really okay, Josh batted a three really good, and I
Speaker 1: mean that's a really good batting average. Babe Ruth who
Speaker 1: you know, he's the guy that is kind of that
Speaker 1: that's that golden standard because he always hit Homer's though
Speaker 1: he actually wasn't that good of a batter he hit.
Speaker 1: His lifetime average was a three forty two. If we
Speaker 1: look at the highest ranked player of his name is Jose.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do my best on it. I listened
Speaker 1: to it, but I just don't know quite it's Altuve.
Speaker 1: I want to say, is how you pronounce his name?
Speaker 1: That maybe it? Anyway, he was the top rank hitter
Speaker 1: and he hit a three one Okay, I'm sorry. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me? Do you want to be higher? Or lower,
Speaker 1: higher the better. So if you if you're so three
Speaker 1: fifties better than three two. The higher the number, the
Speaker 1: more times you're hitting the ball. So I mean, if
Speaker 1: you bat at a five hundred, that means you hit
Speaker 1: one of every two balls that was thrown at you. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. Which is are you hit a ball,
Speaker 1: not one out, but you hit a ball every time
Speaker 1: you're at half the time you were bad? Yes? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then if you're batting at thousand you've probably heard
Speaker 1: that term before, that means you know, you're hitting the
Speaker 1: ball every every time. You're a bad every single time,
Speaker 1: every single time. So he was better than he's better
Speaker 1: than almost he's better than anybody, right, Well, I mean
Speaker 1: there's people that have better records, but that was really good.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a couple of things you need to know.
Speaker 1: First of which, the records aren't complete. And these numbers
Speaker 1: that his his record or his batting averages based on
Speaker 1: those are based on regulation games only, and I'll explain
Speaker 1: that a little bit here. So for the first part
Speaker 1: of the records, the the New Yor leagues were really
Speaker 1: bad about keeping records. I don't know why or what
Speaker 1: caused that. But their records were really spotty and shoddy,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's because nobody you know, wanted to keep
Speaker 1: them because they didn't. I don't know. It might be
Speaker 1: that people just didn't feel like it was all that important, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they weren't going to move up to the majors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the records aren't kept. The second part of
Speaker 1: what I talked about there, which is the regulation games,
Speaker 1: that's actually really important. We've talked about the fact that
Speaker 1: players went south of the border to play games in
Speaker 1: the off season too. They continued to train, and like
Speaker 1: we talked about, they got paid really well. Those games
Speaker 1: are going to be counted. Teams would also go, uh,
Speaker 1: they would do exhibition games. They would do what was
Speaker 1: called Barnes storming, which is just basically driving around in
Speaker 1: finding baseball fields and playing games. And they're completely off
Speaker 1: the books. What kind of a bus you know, It's
Speaker 1: funny they didn't have a bus at first. They eventually
Speaker 1: did get a bus, but there's stories about the fact
Speaker 1: that they had two cars that all of the guys
Speaker 1: were crammed in and all of their gear was tied
Speaker 1: to the outside of it. So the entire team is
Speaker 1: in two cars and there they would literally race from
Speaker 1: place to place. This is a great story. So it's
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. They're dirt roads, and of course they're rutted
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't believe, two giant ruts. And these guys
Speaker 1: are going so fast that the guy in the front
Speaker 1: has thrown so much dust that the guy in the
Speaker 1: rear can't see, and he drives off the road. They
Speaker 1: get the car upright because of course it tips over,
Speaker 1: but they're packed in like sardines, so nobody gets hurt.
Speaker 1: They pick up the car, they get it back on
Speaker 1: the road. They're going down the road. About two miles later,
Speaker 1: they find a car in the ditch and they think
Speaker 1: that poor sod, And then they get out and they
Speaker 1: realize it's the other car that they were following, which
Speaker 1: had blown a tire, and of course then did the
Speaker 1: same thing, hit the groove, you know, flipped it off
Speaker 1: and dropped it onto the side of the road. Luckily,
Speaker 1: got a big, a bunch of big strong guys there
Speaker 1: to pick the car up and put it back home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course all their crap, all their gears strapped
Speaker 1: to the outside of the car, so they had to
Speaker 1: go around and pick up all their stuff and put
Speaker 1: it back together. But I think, indeed, I think it was.
Speaker 1: I want to say thirty four is when the Gray's
Speaker 1: got a bus and there, and that's when you know,
Speaker 1: there's all all kinds of hijinks in stories from any
Speaker 1: team of what happens on the bus. And I read
Speaker 1: a lot of great stories that I will I will
Speaker 1: go into because they really don't count into what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. It's really interesting and really really fun to read.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so yeah, movie, a movie must be made, Hollywood,
Speaker 1: get on that. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, I want you in
Speaker 1: that movie. And I don't so Okay, So they a
Speaker 1: lot of the stats weren't counted for his batting average,
Speaker 1: So he's the general feeling that he was. He was
Speaker 1: ch he was better than he was better than what
Speaker 1: was recorded. Then what was it recorded in official games,
Speaker 1: in the records that were left over. Well, it's hard
Speaker 1: to say though, because I mean, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: he might have done more poorly, you know, South of
Speaker 1: the Border and stuff like that. Since all this stuff
Speaker 1: is that, it's really hard to say precisely what his
Speaker 1: stats are. Yeah, well, I do know that he was
Speaker 1: a higher paid player because he was better at that
Speaker 1: and he was more of a consistent player, because like,
Speaker 1: let's we're going to talk about what is considered the
Speaker 1: quote unquote great of the time, which is Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: Bruce struck out so much and he was so notorious
Speaker 1: for his strikeouts. It's that swing and a miss. We've
Speaker 1: all done this when we were kids. You know that
Speaker 1: that giant arcing swing and you totally miss. Gibson wasn't
Speaker 1: like that. He didn't have this crazy wild swing. Baseball
Speaker 1: players when they swing, it's from their arms and their
Speaker 1: shoulders through their torso and then they rotate their hips
Speaker 1: and they use their legs and that's how they get
Speaker 1: that giant, wide swing which gets all the power. Gibson
Speaker 1: didn't move his legs, which meant that he had all
Speaker 1: of it was from his arms and his shoulders and
Speaker 1: partially his torso. So he had a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot more control in where he put the bat. That's
Speaker 1: why I think that his numbers are better than what
Speaker 1: we have recorded at the Hall of Fame. At the
Speaker 1: very least, they're not worse, the very least about the same,
Speaker 1: much better. Yes, he was a good player. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: So okay, get off soapbox. Here's here's a great example
Speaker 1: for he was better than what the official records have.
Speaker 1: He played in ninety three. He played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Somehow,
Speaker 1: somebody at the Pittsburgh Crawfords did an amazing job of
Speaker 1: record keeping. So we have the nineteen thirty three season records,
Speaker 1: even though they don't count towards the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: I think they do. But this is a solid year's
Speaker 1: worth of numbers rather than everything else, which is kind
Speaker 1: of hit and miss, you know, part seasons here, and
Speaker 1: they're not all the James. In thirty three with the Crawfords,
Speaker 1: Josh played a hundred thirty seven games and had five
Speaker 1: hundred batted five twelve times. He hit two hundred thirty
Speaker 1: nine times. Fifty five of those were home runs, so
Speaker 1: that gives him a botting average of four hundred sixty seven.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's an amazing number. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the home runs, beca is that's what the story is about.
Speaker 1: We've got a number of home run stories. So in Monison, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: Hope I pronounced that right, he hit a home run
Speaker 1: that was measured at five twelve ft in Kamenski Park,
Speaker 1: which is in Chicago. He hit a ball hard enough
Speaker 1: that it hit a loudspeaker that was at the edge
Speaker 1: of the field. That loudspeaker, by the way, was eight
Speaker 1: feet up and he hit it so hard that the
Speaker 1: ball lodged in the loudspeaker um, which is really hard
Speaker 1: hit and it was it was how far was it
Speaker 1: from home plate? That was fo that was still going strong? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: left and it really did. Uh. It is first season
Speaker 1: at Yankee Stadium against the Black Yankees. He hit a
Speaker 1: ball which went into the bullpen, which is over five
Speaker 1: feet from the home plate because the bullpen is at
Speaker 1: was at the at that stage atam was at the
Speaker 1: back of the stadium and he was playing. This is
Speaker 1: one of his off season games. He was playing in
Speaker 1: uh San Juan and Puerto Rico. He hit a home
Speaker 1: run that cleared not only the fence of the ballpark
Speaker 1: that he was in, but it also cleared the fence
Speaker 1: of the prison that was next door to the ballpark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the prisoners got a free base, but which was
Speaker 1: five So that's still you know, this doesn't this doesn't
Speaker 1: really established that he knocked it out of the park
Speaker 1: at Yankee because that was five ft, right, it was
Speaker 1: five feet, and then it would have had to actually
Speaker 1: have been more than that because it would have had
Speaker 1: to go up in an arc clear the wall. It
Speaker 1: would beyond the least at the top of its arc
Speaker 1: by the ftmark. Yes, if not higher, had to have
Speaker 1: been far far, which means it would have gone much
Speaker 1: much farther than that five feet had it cleared the wall.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right. So he did hit a lot really hard,
Speaker 1: long far, but nowhere near the what seven hundred feet
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. Well, there are some hits that
Speaker 1: potentially could have, but again it's the records. He did this.
Speaker 1: A lot of this stuff was in ball fields, literally
Speaker 1: a ball field and they couldn't find the ball, or
Speaker 1: it hit a building that was across the street, or
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And while people who will sit down
Speaker 1: and do the math have been able to do that
Speaker 1: math on some great hits, Josh Gibson's hits weren't recorded,
Speaker 1: so we don't know if it hits such and such
Speaker 1: hotel across the street on the third floor or anything
Speaker 1: like that. We don't have that. Then make the calculation
Speaker 1: of how far his he could have gone. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: but I know and Yankee, I know he did hit
Speaker 1: the far wall. He did hit that a considerable distance. Yeah, that'stmark.
Speaker 1: But Joe is already very happily, almost gleefully by the
Speaker 1: look in his eye, drawing us into the second theory,
Speaker 1: which is that he didn't do it. The aunecdotal evidence
Speaker 1: points out, as Joe said that he might not have
Speaker 1: been able to do it. Um, I did some back
Speaker 1: of the envelope math, which is where I got the
Speaker 1: five eighty foot number, because I literally I found old
Speaker 1: plans for the Yankee Stadium in that era, because the
Speaker 1: stadium kept getting changed over time, did add more and
Speaker 1: more to it, but it was foot based on that,
Speaker 1: and again, like we talked about in the beginning, I
Speaker 1: believe the wall was about fifty ft high. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of the accounts of Josh's hits that say that
Speaker 1: he wasn't the kind of player that would hit a
Speaker 1: high arching ball. He actually hit him low and hard.
Speaker 1: So like that one where he hit the loudspeaker, it
Speaker 1: was only eight foot up, so theoretically maybe it was
Speaker 1: still climbing, but at four dred some odd feet it
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna go much higher. Now I think it was
Speaker 1: probably already the down on the downward side of the ark.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing yeah, it's quite possible, you know. And the
Speaker 1: thing about Yankee Stadium, which is referred to it's called
Speaker 1: the House that Ruth built after Babe Ruth um he
Speaker 1: tried to hit it out of the park. He never
Speaker 1: actually did. Uh. There is a game in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: where Babe Ruth himself hit a five and thirty five
Speaker 1: footer and it went into the stands, into the right
Speaker 1: center field bleachers is where it landed the black seats. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is exactly where it hit. We have records of
Speaker 1: because these are when the records are really good. We
Speaker 1: are in our our white pro league, and actually this
Speaker 1: is in the fifties, so it wasn't as bad but
Speaker 1: the segregation. But Mickey Mantle, he was one that everybody
Speaker 1: expected to take it out of Yankee Stadium. And there
Speaker 1: were three games where they thought he was going to
Speaker 1: do it. There's nineteen fifty five, nineteen fifty six, and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. And by the way, the one in
Speaker 1: sixty three would have made it out of the park.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it would have. Yeah, I just I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm we're out of the part of where I know things. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me uh, let me give you a kind of
Speaker 1: a description of what's going on here with this. So
Speaker 1: the nineteen hit Winn in the bleachers in center field.
Speaker 1: So that's easy enough to understand. Yankee Stadium had a
Speaker 1: brass facade around the top of the bleachers. The bleachers
Speaker 1: are several stories, you know, several rows high. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that at the very top of that, there's a roof
Speaker 1: that covers the top row of the bleachers, and then
Speaker 1: on front of that, which is kind of some arcs
Speaker 1: with fake pillar looking things on him. His fifty six
Speaker 1: and his sixty three hits hit the facade the top
Speaker 1: it would have gone over. Had it not hit the
Speaker 1: facade inches to the left of the or even feet
Speaker 1: to the other direction, it would have gone past over
Speaker 1: center field and they would have gone out of the park.
Speaker 1: Ye sixty three one actually like there was a huge
Speaker 1: gap in center field and then on the on the
Speaker 1: right hand side, if you know, hit that facade, If
Speaker 1: if it had just been i don't know, five ft
Speaker 1: to the left just a little bit, it would have
Speaker 1: totally cleared the wall it would have been, and you
Speaker 1: know that. What's What's so the thing that I bring
Speaker 1: this one up for is that when we talk about
Speaker 1: him hitting the facade, the distance from home plate, it's
Speaker 1: only four feet, So it's not nearly as far as
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about, which is an additional hundred naighty.
Speaker 1: But that facade was where the ball hit. It was
Speaker 1: a hundred eighteen feet above the plane of the ball field.
Speaker 1: That's not nothing. According to according to witnesses, the ball
Speaker 1: was still an upper dark. Yes, it's still rising, which
Speaker 1: means that that ball had the potential to go six
Speaker 1: and a half to seven hundred feet. And there's all
Speaker 1: these these stories and all these places where these people
Speaker 1: have figured out using the math based on where they
Speaker 1: can tell that these greats, some of these greats Mantle
Speaker 1: and Ruth and other end garret, where they've hit these
Speaker 1: six seven, almost eight hundred foot home runs had it
Speaker 1: not hit something on its way based on his trajectory.
Speaker 1: So the point is there's a lot of majorly huge
Speaker 1: hits in that stadium, and none of them seem to
Speaker 1: have actually made it out. Very few, I think just
Speaker 1: a female it out during batting practice that was about it.
Speaker 1: It was Ruth and Mantle are both known to have
Speaker 1: actually got it out of the park in batting practice,
Speaker 1: and it's it's potential, it's possible that maybe Josh Gibson
Speaker 1: did the same thing that people saw him do it
Speaker 1: in batting practice, and then the story evolved to he
Speaker 1: did it during a game. By the way, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you if you do it in batting practice, it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, as far as I'm concerned, just as awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Here's uh, here's something that people might remember. I've said
Speaker 1: once or twice, is that the story is that Josh
Speaker 1: did this either in nineteen thirty or nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1: Turns out we can verify that it didn't happen in
Speaker 1: ninety four. Uh. The version of nineteen thirty four, Josh
Speaker 1: Gibson gets it out of Yankee Stadium. It was avigated
Speaker 1: by a guy named Jack Marshall who was with the
Speaker 1: Chicago Giants, and he says that they were playing at
Speaker 1: the same time as Josh Gibson's team was, and they
Speaker 1: were in a four team doubleheader, and that the Giants
Speaker 1: were in the stands because they had played the first game,
Speaker 1: so then they could go on the stands and hang out,
Speaker 1: and Gibson's team was then in the second game, and
Speaker 1: that's when it happened. Well, there's only two times where
Speaker 1: the Giants and the Grays were on the field in
Speaker 1: a double header together. The first time that happened, the
Speaker 1: Giants were in the second game, so there's no way
Speaker 1: that they would have been. They could have been in
Speaker 1: the stands, and in that game the Grays one three
Speaker 1: to one, but Josh was at bad only four times
Speaker 1: and he only got a single, so evidently the records
Speaker 1: were kept for that game. The second time that they
Speaker 1: were together, the Giants did indeed play first, but the
Speaker 1: Grays only got to play for nine innings before the
Speaker 1: game was called because of darkness, and Josh was at bad.
Speaker 1: Gosh how many times he went to bad four times
Speaker 1: and no hits, so we can confirm pretty conclusively that
Speaker 1: it wasn't four that happened. Seems that this version of
Speaker 1: the story got out because of a book that was
Speaker 1: written in nine seventy by a guy named Robert Peterson
Speaker 1: with a fantastic title which is only the ball was white,
Speaker 1: and he wrote about the black players, and it seems
Speaker 1: that this is where that accounting has came from and
Speaker 1: has gotten so much traction from. Yeah. Um oh. And
Speaker 1: the other thing too, is that Josh Gibson always said
Speaker 1: that he did not knock it out of the park
Speaker 1: that day. That's the biggest piece of evidence, sadly that
Speaker 1: we have to say that he didn't actually do it.
Speaker 1: He was not this guy. He wasn't afraid to talk
Speaker 1: about his accomplishments at Oh, he wasn't. He didn't have
Speaker 1: false modesty. No, he he definitely wasn't a braggard. He
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna, you know, run his mouth like Satchel Page.
Speaker 1: Sachiel Page is a pitcher in the same league who
Speaker 1: was no torious for running his mouth and talking all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. But that wasn't Josh. He he didn't
Speaker 1: play that way, he didn't act that way. It was
Speaker 1: it was a better sportsman and he kind of he
Speaker 1: always just put it down when people said, what about
Speaker 1: when you knocked it out of Yankee Stadium and he
Speaker 1: just kind of said, no, I didn't do that, didn't
Speaker 1: actually happened. I hit the wall and it was it
Speaker 1: was still an impressive hit based on what I can
Speaker 1: tell he did hit the back wall two ft from
Speaker 1: the top of the wall. Yeah, that's what I've heard too,
Speaker 1: And still an amazing hit, absolutely, absolutely an amazing hit.
Speaker 1: The lower that wall they did, along with the rest
Speaker 1: of the stadium, lowered the entire thing. Yeah, geez, Joe.
Speaker 1: I mean, I presumably they made at high so like
Speaker 1: nearby cars and buildings and people wouldn't be getting whacked
Speaker 1: with baseballs. I'm guessing that. And you know, and eventually
Speaker 1: they started, you know, they put billboards on it, and
Speaker 1: the scoreboard was on it, and those things are all
Speaker 1: really big, and those walls continue to climb and those
Speaker 1: things get bigger and bigger. But that's that's why I
Speaker 1: don't know the exact number of how high that wall is,
Speaker 1: because I can't find a blueprint that's readable. That was
Speaker 1: of the hype. I found some like I said, I
Speaker 1: found schematics of the field, so I could get distances,
Speaker 1: but I could never get actual heights. So it's a
Speaker 1: lot of guestimates on my park about that fifty footmark.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it looks like we are kind of
Speaker 1: at the end. I mean, we've talked about I think
Speaker 1: that Josh probably would have been one of the baseball graades.
Speaker 1: Had he been in a league that was really good
Speaker 1: at keeping stats, and that means that he would have
Speaker 1: been in the league with all the other guys that
Speaker 1: we know about. I think I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say he really was one of the great one of
Speaker 1: the greats. He's just unfortunately history doesn't know how good
Speaker 1: he was now he doesn't. Yeah, but yeah, very very true.
Speaker 1: But he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I mean,
Speaker 1: actually he was. His talent was recogn after he had
Speaker 1: been dead for Yeah, he died tragically, very very thirty
Speaker 1: four or thirty five years old. He died, had a stroke.
Speaker 1: They say it was a stroke. He he was. He
Speaker 1: had this problem. So he's a catcher, and when somebody
Speaker 1: would hit a pop foul, of course the guy that's
Speaker 1: got to go after that ball is the catcher. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen a ball game and you see
Speaker 1: this happen, the catcher yanks off his mask and he
Speaker 1: is running around looking straight up trying to catch the ball.
Speaker 1: Johush always got dizzy and wasn't that good at catching
Speaker 1: those balls. So that to the to the point that
Speaker 1: other players on his team who were on the field
Speaker 1: would run to try to help. That was kind of
Speaker 1: the indicator that something was wrong. And it turns out
Speaker 1: he had a brain tumor, a big brain tumor, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't let them operate because he was pretty sure
Speaker 1: he was going to be lobotomized by the surgery, and
Speaker 1: so he said no, and eventually, you know, he had
Speaker 1: a stroke and then he died. But he was thirty
Speaker 1: four years old. Died six So yeah, thirty five years old.
Speaker 1: Thirty five years old. Very good. Absolutely, you know, it's
Speaker 1: tragic to see his career cut that short. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he couldn't have played on the on a white team,
Speaker 1: and you know, would have been I will tell everybody
Speaker 1: if you are interested in a good book about Josh Gibson.
Speaker 1: I found when I got a lot of good information
Speaker 1: from uh, there's a guy by the name of William Brashler.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called Josh Gibson, A Life in
Speaker 1: the Negro Leagues. He wrote it in the early to
Speaker 1: mid seventies. And the reason I recommended is that the
Speaker 1: guys that Gibson played with were still alive, so he
Speaker 1: actually got to talk to all of these guys's stories
Speaker 1: directly from them. So That's what made it such a
Speaker 1: good book. It's such a good resource for this. Is
Speaker 1: that where you got the story about the car running
Speaker 1: off the car running off the road. That's absolutely right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I didn't share is that the steering wheels made
Speaker 1: of wood, and for the second car, the guy was
Speaker 1: holding onto it so so hard and the wheels jerked
Speaker 1: so strong against it that when they hit, the steering
Speaker 1: wheel shattered and put slivers in the guy's scalp. To
Speaker 1: wait for three days to fight a town with the
Speaker 1: doctor good enough to get him out. Yes, it's a
Speaker 1: different time, yeah, um in those days. But that's all
Speaker 1: I've got unless you guys have anything else. But I
Speaker 1: think we solved the mystery. I think he didn't knock
Speaker 1: it out of the Yankee Stadium. He was Nonetheless, personally,
Speaker 1: I think that we need to not broadcast this episode.
Speaker 1: I think that we need to change the end and
Speaker 1: just say that he did. He did. We need to
Speaker 1: make this our lie answer episode that we've always joked
Speaker 1: about doing, just continue the legend. Yeah, I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say. I looked up, um with Google's great little
Speaker 1: with the Google Google, what the the Guinness Book of
Speaker 1: World Records has on record for the longest home run.
Speaker 1: Uh and it turns out it's a bit of a
Speaker 1: contentious issue, definitely. Mickey Mantle was officially credited with nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six hundred and thirty four ft hit, but apparently
Speaker 1: there's been some research that says, no, that didn't happen,
Speaker 1: So then it'd be Babe Ruth in at five hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy ft. Which is funny because the Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: fans have gone to their websites and they are claiming
Speaker 1: that Ruth hit a six hundred seventy some odd footer.
Speaker 1: It's all based on their math, so they know where
Speaker 1: a building was, they know where the ballpark is, and
Speaker 1: they've done their math to you know, trigonometry, geometry. I
Speaker 1: don't know what what math thing it is, but that's
Speaker 1: how they figured it out. Well. I say, for example,
Speaker 1: if it's if you hit it, if you hit if
Speaker 1: you hit one and it goes up about forty degrees
Speaker 1: and then and it comes back down hits the wall
Speaker 1: it's five feet away, two ft from the top of
Speaker 1: that wall, then you know that it would have if
Speaker 1: that we hadn't been there, have gone a certain amount further.
Speaker 1: I assumed. I'm assuming that's how they calculated that, Um,
Speaker 1: for Josh apher, baby Ruth. For baby Ruth, they calculated
Speaker 1: based on knowing where it hits something and where home
Speaker 1: plate was. Yeah, but when you think about it, I mean, no,
Speaker 1: they knew it was on the downward trend for him.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so you know, like like for example, Josh's
Speaker 1: Josh's hit that hit, the hit the back wall actually
Speaker 1: would have gone further. It was more than five It
Speaker 1: was well over that. It would have been a six
Speaker 1: hundred foot easy. Oh no, it would have been like,
Speaker 1: you know, six fifty something like that. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: saying six hundred plus feet. Yes, absolutely, Well kept going. Yeah, um, well,
Speaker 1: we are suddenly turning into baseball stat dorks, and because
Speaker 1: I saw an I don't actually needed I don't really
Speaker 1: think about baseball that much, and yet we know more
Speaker 1: about it than we realize. Yeah, okay, well, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and give everybody the information ation that they love
Speaker 1: for us to share, because I know this is their
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show, which is the how to
Speaker 1: get a hold of a section. You can of course
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Speaker 1: hitting the PayPal account, So thank you very much every guys.
Speaker 1: And the different expenses was we do have a few
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Speaker 1: bill that we've got to pay in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and it's really gonna help he out. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So either if you would like contribute or if you
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Speaker 1: all right, Well, that having been said, I think that
Speaker 1: we're going to get out of here and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you guys next week. We knocked this one
Speaker 1: out of the park, Guy