Thinking Sideways: Josh Gibson's Yankee Stadium Home Run

Wow you doo, we're both were the lovely one all right. Well, if for anybody who couldn't understand them that that one's Joe and that one's Devin, you're pointing thrown people against Steve. I'm not anyway. Here. We as always have a mystery for you, and we actually have kind of a different mystery than we've ever looked into before. Different. It's the scariest one ever because it's a sports mystery. He was talking to somebody today and they said, oh, are you

doing this because of the World series. Oh crap, we really should have done this a while ago. Yeah, because by the time this comes out, the series will be done. Yeah, But I guess for anybody who hadn't figed. We hadn't told anybody yet, so now they know we're doing a baseball mystery. Actually this is a good thing because you know, after after the World Series is over, baseball fans will be jonesing for a baseball fix. This will yeah, they'll give him there, a little bit of a fix. Yeah.

I'm not sure if I'm okay with that, but okay, as long as I can make money off. Well. Our mystery today is did Josh Gibson actually hit a home run out of not in, but out of Yankee Stadium, meaning that he was in Yankee Stadium, but he hit the ball out of Yankee Stadium and traveled outside of the stadium. That is correct, outside of the walls and the the original stadium, the new stadium, the original stadium. Our story takes place in the so definitely not the

one that was built in. But the new one was two thousand nine was open, so yeah, definitely not one or else we have an even larger mystery, would Yeah. The reason that the story is really popular among baseball fans is because of the height and distances required to hit a baseball to actually get it literally out of the park. Very few people have done it. I mean in the Yankee Stadium, and the smaller park is not that hard, but yeah, yeah, and and Yankee Stadium. Our

entire story is going to focus on that stadium. People have hitted out of the park in other stadiums, and Josh Gibson is known to have done that, but this is all going to focus mainly, and when we're talking about those home runs, it's going to be the stadium. But the reason is that it's that it's such an epic thing is in the old stadium, it was from home plate to the back wall five feet and the wall was a this is a round figure about fifty high,

So that's a that's a that's a home run. No, absolutely, And just so you know what I gotta tell people right now, I'm not a real baseball guy. I'm not a real sports fan, so some of this stuff I really had to figure out. And for people who don't know or don't have these things just automatically memorized like some of our friends do, here's some numbers for you

to kind of put a perspective on it. For our for our foreign listeners who have never even heard of baseball, just like, I'm pretty sure they know from home plate to second base, so all the way across the diamond, you are are looking at a hundred seven ft that's a standard number to go from home plate to the end of the outfield. So of course there's going to be bleachers from there on out, but that's a kind of a variable number, but it's somewhere between two hundred

feet feet difference. Yeah, and then after that in Yankee Stadium, it's an additional one hundred and eighty feet to then get outside of the park. So it's when you kind of hear those numbers because I think most of us kind of have an idea of the size of a baseball diamond, but then you don't really think about how many feet that is. And that's why this thing is

kind of an epic thing. Yeah. Absolutely, Wait, we're like, what to three minutes into the story already, and I just realized that I screwed up, and I didn't think the person who suggested it I did. You just don't appreciate our listeners. Actually, I do want to say thank you to Jonathan who sent this in. You know this is I I think you both know this that I've been working on this for six months or something like that.

I couldn't let it go. I'd always be doing a little bit of work, get sidetracked, but I could never let go. And I think it's just because of the fact that as an American or as an American male kind of hardwired to have a thing for baseball, even American in general. Yeah, I think even like I don't really I like soccer slash football and ending on where you are, but I don't really like sports. But I can sit down and watch a baseball game. I think you can enjoy baseball even if you have no idea

what's going on. The basic premise of it is really simple. You can hit the ball and then you run. Yeah, and then they tried they try to catch the ball, and then they try to tag you out. It's really simple. So I think it's just we're lazy with our sports and that's it's a really easy one that you can just sit down and go and you know, so I would say American romance general, Yeah, And I think, well,

I think that's why I couldn't ever put this story down. Yeah, a little overboard, especially with the whole one to exhume the body of Josh Gibson, the building the scale replicas of old Yankee Stadium. Listen, I had to do something with all of the toothpicks, Okay, I mean and all that Elmer's glue had to do something. I was going to expire. Jeez, you too. Okay, let's let's actually get on with our story. Yeah, yeah, we probably should un

So we'll start at the beginning. Josh Gibson was born in nineteen eleven in Georgia, and then when he was twelve, his family moved to Pittsburgh and that's kind of where he gets his start in baseball. He was he was a big guy. He really was like six to hundred and eighty to two hundred pounds depending well, yeah, that it depends on where it is through his career. But he was a big guy, and he was an athlete. He was good at every sport, but he was good or at baseball. He was good at baseball or he

preferred baseball. Yeah, well obviously we know which one he went after, um, But no, he he was. He was the guy who really was just good and everything he did. As we know, he liked baseball the most, so he was known to hang out at sand lawns and participate in just about any pickup game he could. He Uh, he was a catcher, which is not an easy position in my mind to play, because you know, you gotta squad,

you gotta catch nine if you're bigger. Probably that is actually one of the things that worked in his favorites because he was such a big guy. There's a lot of abuse and he was good at taking it all. That squatt intrough the game. That would get old real fast, but that's why baseball players have such cute butts. That it is. But I think Gibson also played some outfield

positions to on occasion he did. It was kind of a we're going to put you in a position so we can put you in the game kind of thing. Is only what it was. They would put him in, say left field for a game. He was not just a good hitter. He was a good thrower catcher. No, he was. He was definitely a fantastic hitter. I mean,

the guy wailed on baseballs, as we're going to talk about. Uh. He is often referred to as the quote unquote black Babe Ruth, and he would make This is a term that was around in the thirties Ruthian hits, although I really like it better when you come across where people say that Babe Ruth was the white Josh Gibson, he made Gibson Gibsonian hits, which you actually do. See. This is probably the point where we should stop real fast and let everybody know. Story takes place in the thirties

and the forties. There was language around race that was used at that time that it's not what I would use, but it is the name of things. We're just going to call things the things they were called. We're going to use the name of things. So be prepared if if that kind of stuff you or you you take offense to it, I apologize. Can't change history. Sadly, I'm

gonna I'm gonna give it away. Here we're gonna talk about the Negro League, the National Negro League, Negro League, which was, by the way, not a racial epithet in those days. It still really isn't. It's just it was the league for black players. Yeah, it was. It was the word that preceded black. So yeah, so here we go,

Here we go. As I said before, Josh played in a lot of sand lot games, and that got the his performance of those games got the attention of a guy by the name of Composey, who was the manager for a local team, which was the Homestead Grays in that's when they picked him up. At the time, the Grays were not part of the National Negro League. They

were an independent team. Eventually they would join the league, but at that time they were and that it'll makes sense why later baseball was a less structured in those days. It was very little structure. It was kind of fly by the seat of your pants. Yeah, well, yeah, let's you know, let's just explain how this works. So we all know today there's the major leagues, there's the minor leagues and things like peewee in high school, and all

the farm leagues. Yes, and there's some farm leagues. Well that all of that wasn't nearly as structured at the time. And so what happened is there was a lot of these local teams. There were just guys that like to play baseball and they would get together and they would be a team and they would travel to play a guys in another city who would like to play baseball. And there was no money in it. They were playing not in stadiums they were playing in the local ballpark

or possibly the sand lot farm leagues. Yeah, we had one in Portland growing up. I don't think they were quite farm league minor minor, way below minor guys who would actually legitimately fall running from base to base. But it was it was really fun to watch, so you know. Yeah, I mean, these are just teeny little things and most

of like I said, most of these guys didn't get paid. Luckily, for the Homestead Grays, they actually did get paid, and that's one of the things that was really attractive to Josh to join the team, especially in the nineteen thirties when there weren't any jobs. Yeah. Yeah, and we're gonna we're gonna go into some of the money stuff in a bit as to you know, but it was just it was a much better career in terms of money

than a regular job. Actually he made good money. Yeah he made Yeah, he really did for the time for the nineties. Yeah. But let's uh, I want to tell a story because I really really liked this story because I really find it funny. And that is the story of how Josh Gibson joined the Grays. So the story goes, the Grays were playing the Kansas City Monarchs, who at that time it's nineteen thirty, they were part they were in the National Negro League, and they were one of

the top teams that year. I did. I had to look it up again earlier. So it's just making sure they later on they weren't. The teams would jump in and out of leagues or jump from one league to the next, so it gets a little confusing at times. So they're in the league, they're a top team, the Monarchs. The Monarchs, No, we're talking, Yes, this is the grades are not they're not in league. So it's kind of an exhibition game. Okay, look how good we are. Yes,

this is a night game, right. Well, that's the thing is that, according to the story, the Monarchs had a well to do sponsor who bought them their own mobile lights. So it was a night game. Okay, well but they're nineteen thirty lights. They run on generators. They're not all that great, but it allows a bunch of people to come in the evening and watch the game, which means that you can make some money. So that's why they

did it. Problem was the lights were good enough that the picture and the catcher could see each other to read signals. If you don't know this, in baseball, the catcher does hand signals to the picture to tell him what kind of pitch to throw. Really simple process, except that if you can't see what he's doing, you have no idea what kind of ball to throw, or to catch, or what you're going to catch exactly. That's a very

good point too, because that comes into play here. So we've got two guys who were said to have been playing we have I love the names that these guys get. The picture was Smokey Joe Williams and the catcher was Buck you Ing, and they evidently, according to the story, crossed up their signs. So it was to only do two signs or two pitches. Yes, it was a fastball and a curveball. That was all they were gonna do. A couple innings in somebody switches it up, wrong kind

of ball gets thrown. Buck you Ing, who is the catcher, catches the ball bear and died, which you have done, so fun splits his hand open. Josh Gibson just happens to be in the stands by the by the dugout, eating a hot dog and watching the game and compose he sees him, recognizes him, pulls him out of the stands, and puts him into the game to relieve Youwing for the rest of the game, and then from there hires him. It is if that was really the way it went,

it's actually not how it went. I love that story, and actually it's you see a bunch of things where Josh always laughed at this retelling of how he joined the team. Yeah, I think that it's partly true, though, right, a portion of it is. Yes, the first game that he played for the Grays, it wasn't actually an eating game. It was an afternoon game, and it wasn't against the Monarchs. It was against another team, which was a white semi pro team. Smokey Joe wasn't The picture was actually an

the guy named again love this name, Charles Lefty Williams. Well, they got the last name right, they did. Um Ewing did actually split a finger open, and they did need somebody to relieve him. But the deal was Posey had already told Josh he was going to bring him on the team and that he should be ready whenever he needed him to come play. So what happens is Ewing splits his finger, Josh is not in the stands. He's at another game that day. He's playing for the Crawford Giants.

They put one of the Grays, put one of their players at a cab, send him over to the Giants game. He gets Josh, Josh and he get back in the cab and go back to the Grays game, where he then relieves you Ing and then is on the team. But he doesn't immediately take the position. He slowly works into the position as youwing slowly works towards retirement. But they said they didn't stop the whole game while the guy went got Josh. No. I think they had a relief catcher hopeless, or it was the end of the

inning and they were at bat. Maybe that they put that's a great point, because you know, depending on the game and inning can take time, and who knows how far a part those ball fields were. I didn't actually think to look, and I don't know that I can find that anymore. You know, maybe it was the seventh inning stretch, could be, you ever know, it's a good point. I didn't thought about that. It turns out I know some things about baseball. I guess you do. Yeah, a

few things more than I do. What's that thing that they hold in their hands, the bat or the ball, that's it. That's it. Okay, they hold the narrow end right, Okay, good, good, I'm good. I'm glad I got that right. Um okay? Um So, as So, that's like I said, that's the real story of how Josh got on the team. And before this, we were talking about the money part. So let's talk about the money a little bit because it is kind of important. Black players didn't really make anywhere

near what the white players made in the majors. No black people, anyone that wasn't white, didn't make but a fraction of what their white counterparts made in any field. Even some white people didn't. That's true. There's a brigging discrimination in this era. Um So, I kind of suspect that probably white people want to watch the white people games, and they probably were able to charge white people more

for tickets. You probably have a part of it. But yeah, there there are things, and there's um and I know this will come up later on, so we'll just talk about it now. At Yankee Stadium, there's a section of the stadium that actually used to be called the black seats because they were the cheap seats because they didn't make as much money. So those were the people who would go to those seats because it couldn't afford anything better for the cheap seats. Yeah, so, I mean it

gives you kind of an idea. Um, here's here's some ideas of money in the era. So we've got in the nineteen thirties, two big names, Babe Ruth and Lou Garrett. They were making between thirty to eighty grand a year playing pro ball. It is in grand was huge money. I'd still be happy to be making thirty grand. That's saying something grand would be awesome. Yeah. Now you know, these guys were the big power hitters, the top dogs.

Even regular white players that we're making good money, I mean they were making a better living than a guy who worked in a factory, easy hands down math. Okay, if we cross the color line, then a guy who was doing a regular job would be making exponentially more than anyone who's not white. And the same thing applied for baseball. The League, the American League, the nationally the Pro League, whatever you want to call it. It paid well.

But the thing it didn't do was allowed black players on the field, so these guys had to play for less money. Josh did really well. I think Joe was mentioning that earlier. He I think he started out right around three grandy year. He worked his way up to about five a year at the end of his career. Again, a lot of money in those days, A lot of money in those days, but that was only what that was kind of what he got from basically his normal season. He did a lot of stuff on the side and

after the season to make money. Oh yeah, those guys are playing all over the place, like Mexico, South America. Yeahs by the way, were by the way they were, they were actually treated better than they were in America. They were stars. Yeah, there's um. I really regret that.

I can't remember the guy's name. There was a guy who played with Give said, I don't think he was on the same team, but he played against him before and it was in the same era, and he actually left the United States for three years to play in I think it was Venezuela. For three years. He played in Venezuela because it was just the money was so much better, the conditions were horrible, and in the end, that's kind of what drove him back up to the States. But you know, he was like, to hell with it.

I can play ball, I'm a hero, and I made great cash. Why wouldn't I go? Yeah, they don't. They don't want to make me play over there in the Black People Stadium, you know. Yeah, in case anybody was wondering, five thousand dollars in nineties equivalent to UH sixty eight thousand, two hundred and fifty that's not bad. No, that's not a year. It's a very comfortable living. Yeah, and and we know he was supplementing his income and also everybody

else was unemployed. Yes he was, so he was doing great. Yeah, he really was. Oh but I guess okay, so in fairness that that means that Babe Ruth was Was he the one that was making eighty thousand dollars a year in nineteen thirty I think it was. He was got about eighty grand grand is um one million, ninety two thousand and forty eight dollars, and compared to what the salary said players are getting these days, it's you know,

that's not even that sific. I mean, there's some of the contracts of some of those this is this is in the beginning of baseball when it was you know, it's kind of coalesced into the sport that it is. That was the beginning of it, and Babe Ruth is the one who started. He's the way he was for

many minutes. I think nineteen thirty to nineteen. I know, some sports fanatic is going to tell me I'm wrong, but I swear it was like nineteen thirty to nineteen thirty six, even though his wages steadily went down because the economy was just going down the tank he was. He was the top earner for that time. And then I think after that that was when Lou Garrett came in and and superseded him as the top earner because

he shortly thereafter retired. I don't remember exactly when Ruth retired at the moment, but you know, that's why Garrett was on his way up and started earning a bunch of money. And then, as you know, he's followed by guys like Mickey Mantle and all these well known power hitters, and those were the guys that kind of led the way, and each one was just getting a little bit more. And that's how we have the situation of several million dollars.

MLB on average pays four million dollars. Take it, I say, no. Another thing we have today is we have TV, which brings a whole new element of money into Yeah, it really does. So nothing to sniff at for anybody. No, No, I mean John, like I said, Josh Gibson making good money. Um now we uh, we've got a little off track history though, Yeah, informs what's about to happen, really does.

It really kind of informs a lot of it. Because the mystery or the legend is that either in nine thirty or in nineteen thirty four, Josh Gibson hits the ball during a game out of Yankee Stadium. That is that that right there. It's either he did or he didn't. So our theories are pretty easy to keep straight, by the way. That's uh so, So Josh, apparently they did allow the black teams to use the Yankee stadiums to play, and but they were playing each other, right they were, Yes,

yeah it was. There was a lot of segregation happening at that point. Yeah, we have things like Jim Crow stuff like that, a lot of segregation. So we have we have the Yankees, the New York Yankees, and they were the white team. Then we had the New York Black Yankees. Literally that was anybody that wasn't white that was good enough to play for that team, that's the team they were playing on. So that's who like the Homestead Grays would have played. So I wonder what the

turnout for that. I mean, because I know that black people could go to white games, I wonder how many white people went to black games. You know, I actually get the feeling that there was a fair number people who liked baseball would go and because it's a National Negro League game, or you know, maybe it's just a couple of black teams, it's cheaper to go. Just gonna say about it's way cheaper to go, cheaper to go to Probably the quality of baseball is not really less

at all. No, No, these guys were better. They were prose. They were absolutely prose. And that was the That's the one, the one thing for baseball that I really it's to me it's the biggest smear. And I know that there's a lot of bad things that happened in baseball, but to me, that's one of the big smears is that baseball could have been probably so much better if it had just crossed the race line about a decade before

it actually did. Let's be fair not to politicize the issue, but a lot lot of things could have been way better cross the race barriers. Well, see what that's the problem is that there's as I did the reading, I actually read not only the Internet, but I got into a number of books. And a lot of these guys would get approached by the owners and managers of white teams and they would say, would you come play with us? And this is you know, would you accept what? Would

you accept? And pay? And they'd have these conversations, but they were such a regular thing. The black players just didn't care anymore because everybody would make these offers and say we're gonna do it and then walk up to the line and chicken out. I never do it, And so these guys just, you know, they just didn't care. Listen, stub bothered me. I gotta go play ball is what I want to do. But here's here's a daily enough.

If you if you say the New York Yankees and you're an all white team, and you and you do pull the trigger and you get Josh Gibson in a few are good black players on your team and your team is kicking, But how can how can a Yankees fan not like that? You know, really, I'm sure there were some people who say, this is still the nineteen thirties, there's still some massive segregation. Jim Crow was in effect. Well,

Jim Crow was not in effect in New York though. No, that's true, but it it it precluded a certain behavior and view. You know that. It's kind of like cutting up. We don't have time to get into all. I'm just saying. If you're a Yankees fan and you and you don't want your team winning all the time and you'd rather have an all white team, well, okay, we're cutting off your nose to spite your own face, I guess. But well, okay,

that's their business. It is so for all of our listeners that aren't American and don't understand the weird history that we have with race. You do, Yeah, let's see we go through to the theories. Yeah's theories theories here. I know I've said this a couple of times, but I'll say it again. Josh Gibson was a phenomenal baseball player, and no, I actually I'm really impressed, but it was. It was some pretty impressive stats. So we're we're in doing now. We're totally in the he did it theory.

So we're on theory number one. Josh Gibson totally did it. He knocked it out of the park. He played professional ball between nineteen thirty to ninety six, and he actually all but five of those years he played for the Homestead Grays, so he was at one team. He played for two teams. Um, this is not counting the games that he played out of the country or any kind

of exhibition games that he might have done. You know, but some of those little rickey ink places out of the country, I'm sure he knocked out of the park all the time. Yeah, he really did. We got some We got some of those stories too. This is the thing. He started playing in nineteen thirty. He was eighteen years old, so he was at that almost that peak of physical development, you know, I mean guys between eighteen to twenty two, that's kind of when they hit their strongest physically, and

so he was. He was there at the right time. If you go to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which I did their website anyway, Uh, he was inducted into the Fame and Baseball Hall of Fame of nineteen seventy two. You're gonna see that he's really good with the bat, as we talked about. So we're gonna give some baseball stats and I will explain them, I promise, because they if you don't understand them, they are very confusing. We have, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame, UH, the number

of one thousand, eight hundred and twenty five. That is the number of times that Josh Gibson was at bat. He had six hundred and thirty eight hits out of that, which means that he had a batting average of three fifty. And the batting average is the number of hits divided by the number of times that he was at bat, so of the time he hit u There is another

number called a slugging percentage. Josh's slugging percentage was I'm not going to go into the actual math of that, but it's a it's a calculation of number of hits and how many of them were a single, a double, a triple, and homer's and it it actually it's it gives a better determination of how good a player is when they're in the hot seat, because if nobody's on the basis doesn't really matter, but if the bases are loaded,

that's really important. So there's there's a lot of value in that kind of stat and baseball, I gotta say is is one of the most statistically and heavy every Trust me, there is a whole bunch of stats we could go through and we're not really into this stuff. Yeah. I tried. Actually as a kid, I try. I played t ball. I tried to play ball. I was the kids spacing off in the outfield because I was just

kind of bored. I tried collecting baseball cards, but I couldn't ever figure the stats out and keep them all in my head, so I couldn't talk to jargon with kids. But you're right, there are people who just dig in and they just know all these numbers and they make total sense. One of one of my closest oldest friends

is that way. She's a die hard Boston Red Sox fan, and during all baseball season, pre and postseason, anytime anybody's playing baseball, her Instagram feed is literally just pictures of her keeping score and stats. I don't understand any of it. I've never been into baseball that much. Back when we had a team here in town. I used to enjoy going out of the beer garden and watching the Beavers play, and you know, drinking beer with the Rockies. I'm saying,

Myra Newdeleman. If anybody listening remembers Myra Newdleman, please let me know, because like I need to know, I'm not the only one. You had, no God, No, okay, okay, so can you what a yeah? His batting average means really okay, Josh batted a three really good, and I mean that's a really good batting average. Babe Ruth who you know, he's the guy that is kind of that that's that golden standard because he always hit Homer's though he actually wasn't that good of a batter he hit.

His lifetime average was a three forty two. If we look at the highest ranked player of his name is Jose. I'm going to do my best on it. I listened to it, but I just don't know quite it's Altuve. I want to say, is how you pronounce his name? That maybe it? Anyway, he was the top rank hitter and he hit a three one Okay, I'm sorry. Can you tell me? Do you want to be higher? Or lower, higher the better. So if you if you're so three fifties better than three two. The higher the number, the

more times you're hitting the ball. So I mean, if you bat at a five hundred, that means you hit one of every two balls that was thrown at you. Okay, yeah, that's pretty good. Which is are you hit a ball, not one out, but you hit a ball every time you're at half the time you were bad? Yes? Yeah. And then if you're batting at thousand you've probably heard that term before, that means you know, you're hitting the ball every every time. You're a bad every single time,

every single time. So he was better than he's better than almost he's better than anybody, right, Well, I mean there's people that have better records, but that was really good. But there's there's a couple of things you need to know. First of which, the records aren't complete. And these numbers that his his record or his batting averages based on those are based on regulation games only, and I'll explain

that a little bit here. So for the first part of the records, the the New Yor leagues were really bad about keeping records. I don't know why or what caused that. But their records were really spotty and shoddy, and maybe it's because nobody you know, wanted to keep them because they didn't. I don't know. It might be that people just didn't feel like it was all that important, Yeah, because they weren't going to move up to the majors. Yeah,

and so the records aren't kept. The second part of what I talked about there, which is the regulation games, that's actually really important. We've talked about the fact that players went south of the border to play games in the off season too. They continued to train, and like we talked about, they got paid really well. Those games are going to be counted. Teams would also go, uh,

they would do exhibition games. They would do what was called Barnes storming, which is just basically driving around in finding baseball fields and playing games. And they're completely off the books. What kind of a bus you know, It's funny they didn't have a bus at first. They eventually did get a bus, but there's stories about the fact that they had two cars that all of the guys were crammed in and all of their gear was tied

to the outside of it. So the entire team is in two cars and there they would literally race from place to place. This is a great story. So it's nineteen thirties. They're dirt roads, and of course they're rutted like you wouldn't believe, two giant ruts. And these guys are going so fast that the guy in the front has thrown so much dust that the guy in the

rear can't see, and he drives off the road. They get the car upright because of course it tips over, but they're packed in like sardines, so nobody gets hurt. They pick up the car, they get it back on

the road. They're going down the road. About two miles later, they find a car in the ditch and they think that poor sod, And then they get out and they realize it's the other car that they were following, which had blown a tire, and of course then did the same thing, hit the groove, you know, flipped it off and dropped it onto the side of the road. Luckily, got a big, a bunch of big strong guys there

to pick the car up and put it back home. Yeah, and of course all their crap, all their gears strapped to the outside of the car, so they had to go around and pick up all their stuff and put it back together. But I think, indeed, I think it was. I want to say thirty four is when the Gray's got a bus and there, and that's when you know, there's all all kinds of hijinks in stories from any

team of what happens on the bus. And I read a lot of great stories that I will I will go into because they really don't count into what we're talking about. It's really interesting and really really fun to read. Oh yeah, so yeah, movie, a movie must be made, Hollywood, get on that. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, I want you in that movie. And I don't so Okay, So they a lot of the stats weren't counted for his batting average,

So he's the general feeling that he was. He was ch he was better than he was better than what was recorded. Then what was it recorded in official games, in the records that were left over. Well, it's hard to say though, because I mean, you know, I mean he might have done more poorly, you know, South of the Border and stuff like that. Since all this stuff is that, it's really hard to say precisely what his

stats are. Yeah, well, I do know that he was a higher paid player because he was better at that and he was more of a consistent player, because like, let's we're going to talk about what is considered the quote unquote great of the time, which is Babe Ruth Bruce struck out so much and he was so notorious for his strikeouts. It's that swing and a miss. We've all done this when we were kids. You know that that giant arcing swing and you totally miss. Gibson wasn't

like that. He didn't have this crazy wild swing. Baseball players when they swing, it's from their arms and their shoulders through their torso and then they rotate their hips and they use their legs and that's how they get that giant, wide swing which gets all the power. Gibson didn't move his legs, which meant that he had all of it was from his arms and his shoulders and partially his torso. So he had a hell of a

lot more control in where he put the bat. That's why I think that his numbers are better than what we have recorded at the Hall of Fame. At the very least, they're not worse, the very least about the same, much better. Yes, he was a good player. Yeah, no, So okay, get off soapbox. Here's here's a great example for he was better than what the official records have.

He played in ninety three. He played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Somehow, somebody at the Pittsburgh Crawfords did an amazing job of record keeping. So we have the nineteen thirty three season records, even though they don't count towards the Hall of Fame. I think they do. But this is a solid year's worth of numbers rather than everything else, which is kind of hit and miss, you know, part seasons here, and

they're not all the James. In thirty three with the Crawfords, Josh played a hundred thirty seven games and had five hundred batted five twelve times. He hit two hundred thirty nine times. Fifty five of those were home runs, so that gives him a botting average of four hundred sixty seven. That's yeah, that's an amazing number. And we'll talk about the home runs, beca is that's what the story is about.

We've got a number of home run stories. So in Monison, Pennsylvania, Hope I pronounced that right, he hit a home run that was measured at five twelve ft in Kamenski Park, which is in Chicago. He hit a ball hard enough that it hit a loudspeaker that was at the edge of the field. That loudspeaker, by the way, was eight feet up and he hit it so hard that the ball lodged in the loudspeaker um, which is really hard hit and it was it was how far was it

from home plate? That was fo that was still going strong? Yeah, yeah, left and it really did. Uh. It is first season at Yankee Stadium against the Black Yankees. He hit a ball which went into the bullpen, which is over five feet from the home plate because the bullpen is at was at the at that stage atam was at the back of the stadium and he was playing. This is one of his off season games. He was playing in

uh San Juan and Puerto Rico. He hit a home run that cleared not only the fence of the ballpark that he was in, but it also cleared the fence

of the prison that was next door to the ballpark. Yeah, so the prisoners got a free base, but which was five So that's still you know, this doesn't this doesn't really established that he knocked it out of the park at Yankee because that was five ft, right, it was five feet, and then it would have had to actually have been more than that because it would have had to go up in an arc clear the wall. It would beyond the least at the top of its arc

by the ftmark. Yes, if not higher, had to have been far far, which means it would have gone much much farther than that five feet had it cleared the wall. You're absolutely right. So he did hit a lot really hard, long far, but nowhere near the what seven hundred feet we're talking about here. Well, there are some hits that potentially could have, but again it's the records. He did this.

A lot of this stuff was in ball fields, literally a ball field and they couldn't find the ball, or it hit a building that was across the street, or stuff like that. And while people who will sit down and do the math have been able to do that math on some great hits, Josh Gibson's hits weren't recorded, so we don't know if it hits such and such hotel across the street on the third floor or anything like that. We don't have that. Then make the calculation

of how far his he could have gone. Yeah, no, but I know and Yankee, I know he did hit the far wall. He did hit that a considerable distance. Yeah, that'stmark. But Joe is already very happily, almost gleefully by the look in his eye, drawing us into the second theory, which is that he didn't do it. The aunecdotal evidence points out, as Joe said that he might not have

been able to do it. Um, I did some back of the envelope math, which is where I got the five eighty foot number, because I literally I found old plans for the Yankee Stadium in that era, because the stadium kept getting changed over time, did add more and more to it, but it was foot based on that, and again, like we talked about in the beginning, I believe the wall was about fifty ft high. There's a lot of the accounts of Josh's hits that say that he wasn't the kind of player that would hit a

high arching ball. He actually hit him low and hard. So like that one where he hit the loudspeaker, it was only eight foot up, so theoretically maybe it was still climbing, but at four dred some odd feet it wasn't gonna go much higher. Now I think it was probably already the down on the downward side of the ark. I'm guessing yeah, it's quite possible, you know. And the thing about Yankee Stadium, which is referred to it's called the House that Ruth built after Babe Ruth um he

tried to hit it out of the park. He never actually did. Uh. There is a game in nineteen thirty where Babe Ruth himself hit a five and thirty five footer and it went into the stands, into the right center field bleachers is where it landed the black seats. Yes, that is exactly where it hit. We have records of because these are when the records are really good. We are in our our white pro league, and actually this is in the fifties, so it wasn't as bad but

the segregation. But Mickey Mantle, he was one that everybody expected to take it out of Yankee Stadium. And there were three games where they thought he was going to do it. There's nineteen fifty five, nineteen fifty six, and nineteen sixty three. And by the way, the one in sixty three would have made it out of the park. I'm pretty sure it would have. Yeah, I just I don't. I'm we're out of the part of where I know things. Okay, let me uh, let me give you a kind of

a description of what's going on here with this. So the nineteen hit Winn in the bleachers in center field. So that's easy enough to understand. Yankee Stadium had a brass facade around the top of the bleachers. The bleachers are several stories, you know, several rows high. Yeah, and that at the very top of that, there's a roof that covers the top row of the bleachers, and then on front of that, which is kind of some arcs

with fake pillar looking things on him. His fifty six and his sixty three hits hit the facade the top it would have gone over. Had it not hit the facade inches to the left of the or even feet to the other direction, it would have gone past over center field and they would have gone out of the park.

Ye sixty three one actually like there was a huge gap in center field and then on the on the right hand side, if you know, hit that facade, If if it had just been i don't know, five ft to the left just a little bit, it would have totally cleared the wall it would have been, and you

know that. What's What's so the thing that I bring this one up for is that when we talk about him hitting the facade, the distance from home plate, it's only four feet, So it's not nearly as far as what we've been talking about, which is an additional hundred naighty. But that facade was where the ball hit. It was a hundred eighteen feet above the plane of the ball field. That's not nothing. According to according to witnesses, the ball

was still an upper dark. Yes, it's still rising, which means that that ball had the potential to go six and a half to seven hundred feet. And there's all these these stories and all these places where these people have figured out using the math based on where they can tell that these greats, some of these greats Mantle and Ruth and other end garret, where they've hit these six seven, almost eight hundred foot home runs had it not hit something on its way based on his trajectory.

So the point is there's a lot of majorly huge hits in that stadium, and none of them seem to have actually made it out. Very few, I think just a female it out during batting practice that was about it. It was Ruth and Mantle are both known to have actually got it out of the park in batting practice, and it's it's potential, it's possible that maybe Josh Gibson did the same thing that people saw him do it in batting practice, and then the story evolved to he

did it during a game. By the way, by the way, if you if you do it in batting practice, it's it's you know, as far as I'm concerned, just as awesome. Yeah. Here's uh, here's something that people might remember. I've said once or twice, is that the story is that Josh did this either in nineteen thirty or nineteen thirty four. Turns out we can verify that it didn't happen in ninety four. Uh. The version of nineteen thirty four, Josh

Gibson gets it out of Yankee Stadium. It was avigated by a guy named Jack Marshall who was with the Chicago Giants, and he says that they were playing at the same time as Josh Gibson's team was, and they were in a four team doubleheader, and that the Giants were in the stands because they had played the first game, so then they could go on the stands and hang out, and Gibson's team was then in the second game, and

that's when it happened. Well, there's only two times where the Giants and the Grays were on the field in a double header together. The first time that happened, the Giants were in the second game, so there's no way that they would have been. They could have been in the stands, and in that game the Grays one three to one, but Josh was at bad only four times and he only got a single, so evidently the records

were kept for that game. The second time that they were together, the Giants did indeed play first, but the Grays only got to play for nine innings before the game was called because of darkness, and Josh was at bad. Gosh how many times he went to bad four times and no hits, so we can confirm pretty conclusively that

it wasn't four that happened. Seems that this version of the story got out because of a book that was written in nine seventy by a guy named Robert Peterson with a fantastic title which is only the ball was white, and he wrote about the black players, and it seems that this is where that accounting has came from and has gotten so much traction from. Yeah. Um oh. And the other thing too, is that Josh Gibson always said that he did not knock it out of the park

that day. That's the biggest piece of evidence, sadly that we have to say that he didn't actually do it. He was not this guy. He wasn't afraid to talk about his accomplishments at Oh, he wasn't. He didn't have false modesty. No, he he definitely wasn't a braggard. He wasn't gonna, you know, run his mouth like Satchel Page. Sachiel Page is a pitcher in the same league who was no torious for running his mouth and talking all kinds of stuff. But that wasn't Josh. He he didn't

play that way, he didn't act that way. It was it was a better sportsman and he kind of he always just put it down when people said, what about when you knocked it out of Yankee Stadium and he just kind of said, no, I didn't do that, didn't actually happened. I hit the wall and it was it was still an impressive hit based on what I can tell he did hit the back wall two ft from the top of the wall. Yeah, that's what I've heard too, And still an amazing hit, absolutely, absolutely an amazing hit.

The lower that wall they did, along with the rest of the stadium, lowered the entire thing. Yeah, geez, Joe. I mean, I presumably they made at high so like nearby cars and buildings and people wouldn't be getting whacked with baseballs. I'm guessing that. And you know, and eventually they started, you know, they put billboards on it, and the scoreboard was on it, and those things are all really big, and those walls continue to climb and those

things get bigger and bigger. But that's that's why I don't know the exact number of how high that wall is, because I can't find a blueprint that's readable. That was of the hype. I found some like I said, I found schematics of the field, so I could get distances, but I could never get actual heights. So it's a lot of guestimates on my park about that fifty footmark. All right, Well, it looks like we are kind of

at the end. I mean, we've talked about I think that Josh probably would have been one of the baseball graades. Had he been in a league that was really good at keeping stats, and that means that he would have been in the league with all the other guys that we know about. I think I think it's fair to say he really was one of the great one of the greats. He's just unfortunately history doesn't know how good he was now he doesn't. Yeah, but yeah, very very true.

But he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I mean, actually he was. His talent was recogn after he had been dead for Yeah, he died tragically, very very thirty four or thirty five years old. He died, had a stroke. They say it was a stroke. He he was. He had this problem. So he's a catcher, and when somebody would hit a pop foul, of course the guy that's

got to go after that ball is the catcher. So if you've ever seen a ball game and you see this happen, the catcher yanks off his mask and he is running around looking straight up trying to catch the ball. Johush always got dizzy and wasn't that good at catching those balls. So that to the to the point that other players on his team who were on the field would run to try to help. That was kind of

the indicator that something was wrong. And it turns out he had a brain tumor, a big brain tumor, and he wouldn't let them operate because he was pretty sure he was going to be lobotomized by the surgery, and so he said no, and eventually, you know, he had a stroke and then he died. But he was thirty four years old. Died six So yeah, thirty five years old. Thirty five years old. Very good. Absolutely, you know, it's

tragic to see his career cut that short. But yeah, he couldn't have played on the on a white team, and you know, would have been I will tell everybody if you are interested in a good book about Josh Gibson. I found when I got a lot of good information from uh, there's a guy by the name of William Brashler. He wrote a book called Josh Gibson, A Life in the Negro Leagues. He wrote it in the early to

mid seventies. And the reason I recommended is that the guys that Gibson played with were still alive, so he actually got to talk to all of these guys's stories directly from them. So That's what made it such a good book. It's such a good resource for this. Is that where you got the story about the car running off the car running off the road. That's absolutely right. Yeah.

What I didn't share is that the steering wheels made of wood, and for the second car, the guy was holding onto it so so hard and the wheels jerked so strong against it that when they hit, the steering wheel shattered and put slivers in the guy's scalp. To wait for three days to fight a town with the doctor good enough to get him out. Yes, it's a different time, yeah, um in those days. But that's all I've got unless you guys have anything else. But I

think we solved the mystery. I think he didn't knock it out of the Yankee Stadium. He was Nonetheless, personally, I think that we need to not broadcast this episode. I think that we need to change the end and just say that he did. He did. We need to make this our lie answer episode that we've always joked about doing, just continue the legend. Yeah, I was just

gonna say. I looked up, um with Google's great little with the Google Google, what the the Guinness Book of World Records has on record for the longest home run. Uh and it turns out it's a bit of a contentious issue, definitely. Mickey Mantle was officially credited with nineteen sixty six hundred and thirty four ft hit, but apparently there's been some research that says, no, that didn't happen, So then it'd be Babe Ruth in at five hundred

and seventy ft. Which is funny because the Babe Ruth fans have gone to their websites and they are claiming that Ruth hit a six hundred seventy some odd footer. It's all based on their math, so they know where a building was, they know where the ballpark is, and they've done their math to you know, trigonometry, geometry. I don't know what what math thing it is, but that's

how they figured it out. Well. I say, for example, if it's if you hit it, if you hit if you hit one and it goes up about forty degrees and then and it comes back down hits the wall it's five feet away, two ft from the top of that wall, then you know that it would have if that we hadn't been there, have gone a certain amount further. I assumed. I'm assuming that's how they calculated that, Um,

for Josh apher, baby Ruth. For baby Ruth, they calculated based on knowing where it hits something and where home plate was. Yeah, but when you think about it, I mean, no, they knew it was on the downward trend for him. But yeah, so you know, like like for example, Josh's Josh's hit that hit, the hit the back wall actually would have gone further. It was more than five It was well over that. It would have been a six hundred foot easy. Oh no, it would have been like,

you know, six fifty something like that. That's why I'm saying six hundred plus feet. Yes, absolutely, Well kept going. Yeah, um, well, we are suddenly turning into baseball stat dorks, and because I saw an I don't actually needed I don't really think about baseball that much, and yet we know more

about it than we realize. Yeah, okay, well, let's go ahead and give everybody the information ation that they love for us to share, because I know this is their favorite part of the show, which is the how to get a hold of a section. You can of course go to our website which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com and there. You can find this in any other episode, along with links to our research. UM. You can download or stream from the website. A lot of folks who

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And the different expenses was we do have a few of those. Yeah, yeah, I know, we have the big bill that we've got to pay in a couple of weeks and it's really gonna help he out. So yeah, So either if you would like contribute or if you guys would like stop downloading our show, two options really all right, Well, that having been said, I think that we're going to get out of here and we will talk to you guys next week. We knocked this one out of the park, Guy