'Burgh’s Best to Wear It, No. 20: No disputing Josh Gibson's greatness with Homestead Grays

The Tribune-Review sports staff is conducting a daily countdown of the best players in Pittsburgh pro and college sports history to wear each jersey number.

No. 20: Josh Gibson

To say Josh Gibson’s career was the stuff of legend is a nod to the tales about the power-hitting catcher hitting nearly 800 home runs and the absence of statistical evidence to back it up.

But there is no disputing Gibson’s greatness.

Not only did he star in the Negro Leagues for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, but Gibson showcased it by playing in the Cuban and Mexican winter leagues and on barnstorming tours.

Where Gibson has 173 documented home runs across those leagues, those numbers don’t do him justice. Gibson is credited with hitting 146 home runs in 501 games over 16 seasons in the Negro Leagues. At that pace, a rough equivalent to 3 ¼ seasons over a 154-game major-league schedule at the time, he would have averaged 45 home runs a season. He hit one over the third-deck left bullpen at Yankee Stadium, estimated at 580 feet, and is believed to have homered every 15.9 at bats.

I got my Josh Gibson Homestead Grays jersey this week.https://t.co/nk9iWbgYVn

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) August 1, 2020

No matter those numbers, Gibson is identifiable as the greatest athlete in Pittsburgh sports history to wear No. 20, as voted on by the Tribune-Review sports staff.

That’s no small feat, as Gibson has some select company.

• Pie Traynor had a career .320 batting average in recording 2,416 hits in 17 seasons with the Pirates (1920-37), and is regarded as one of the greatest third basemen in baseball history. He batted .346 in the 1925 World Series, when he homered off Walter Johnson and led the Pirates to the championship, and hit .342 with 106 RBIs in ’27, when they lost to the Yankees in the World Series. Traynor had seven seasons with 100 or more RBIs and batted .300 or better 10 times. The Pirates retired his jersey, and he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1948.

• Rocky Bleier is a four-time Super Bowl champion with the Steelers, going from 16th-round pick out of Notre Dame to being seriously injured in the Vietnam War to joining Franco Harris in a backfield with a pair of 1,000-yard rushers in 1976. Bleier rushed for 3,865 career yards — he had 208 in the ’74 playoffs – and caught the game-winning touchdown pass from Terry Bradshaw and recovered an onsides kick in Super Bowl XIII.

• Brandin Knight had his No. 20 retired by Pitt after scoring 1,440 points and setting the school records for assists (785) and steals (298). The 6-foot point guard was named the Big East’s co-Player of the Year in 2001-02, when he led the Panthers to the NCAA Sweet 16, and later served as an assistant coach on teams that earned a No. 1 national ranking and NCAA top seed.

• Darelle Porter also was a 1,000-point scorer at Pitt (1,007 points) and ranks fourth in career assists (617), despite playing on the same team as point guard Sean Miller. A Perry Traditional Academy graduate, Porter’s 229 assists in 1989-90 are the second-most in a season in Pitt history.

• Robert Lang was a 20-goal scorer for the Penguins in three consecutive seasons, including 32 goals and 80 points in 2000-01.

But Gibson was considered the greatest position player in Negro Leagues history by his peers, and called the “Black Babe Ruth” by those who saw him play. In his biography “Pride and Prejudice,” Larry Doby called it “disappointing and disheartening” that Jackie Robinson was the first to break the color barrier because “the best was Josh Gibson.”

Gibson was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1972, 25 years after his death from a stroke at age 35, and his plaque credits him with winning Negro League batting titles in 1936, ’38, ’42 and ’43.

“Josh’s legacy is what it is,” said Sean Gibson, his great-grandson and director of the Josh Gibson Foundation. “Josh played at a time when African-American players weren’t allowed to play in the majors, yet 100 years later we’re still talking about stats. That wasn’t Josh Gibson’s choice. That was society’s choice.

“Pittsburgh had two of the greatest teams in the Negro Leagues, and they were as dominant as any team, black or white. That’s why we have the foundation, to keep his legacy alive. The Pirates could have had a dynasty if they had signed those guys.

“For Josh to be recognized as the all-time great at that number is great.”

MLB will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues on Sunday by wearing a patch on team uniforms, and Pirates manager Derek Shelton is expected to wear a shirt honoring Josh Gibson.

What would be even greater, Sean Gibson believes, is if MLB were to rename its MVP trophy in honor of Josh Gibson instead of the commissioner who kept the sport segregated, Kennesaw Mountain Landis. Gibson is one of three names mentioned as a possible replacement, along with Branch Rickey and Frank Robinson.

“That’s our big push right now, to make people aware about Josh and this idea to replace Kennesaw Landis’ name on the MVP trophy,” Sean Gibson said. “It’s worth a shot. It would be poetic justice.”

Check out the entire ’Burgh’s Best to Wear It series here.