Josh the Basher

Though U.S. newspapers probably give more space to baseball than to any other sport, little of it goes to Josh Gibson, the Homestead Grays or Negro baseball in general. Yet colored ball could have been good copy at any time since 1885, when the first professional Negro nine was made up of waiters from Long Island's tony Argyle Hotel. To be acceptable as opponents for local semi-pros, they posed as Cubans, babbled gibberish on the field, called themselves the Cuban Giants.

Today Negro baseball has two major leagues: National and American. Each club plays 50 league games, 100 or more exhibition games with white semi-pros. The Negro teams rent white clubs' ball parks, have a large following of white fans who like their fancy windups, their swift and daring base running, their flashy one-handed catches.

Effa's Eagles. Best-heeled of the Negro majors are the Newark Eagles, owned by a hula-hipped Harlem beauty named Effa Manley. Effa received the club as a present from her husband, a onetime Jersey big shot. She appointed herself field manager, until recently directed her players from the dugout in a manner that would have tickled the late great John McGraw.

But the rich Eagles, like the rich Red Sox, have discovered that it takes more than a bank roll to win a pennant. The club that dominates Negro baseball is not Effa's Eagles but the Homestead (Pa.) Grays, originally founded for the diversion of Carnegie Steel employes and now owned by two Homestead Negroes: Cum (for Cumberland) Posey, a member of the Board of Education, and Sonnyman (for Rufus) Jackson, a juke-box impresario. So far this season, the Grays have won 18 league games, lost only four.

The Grays have adopted boomtown Washington as their second home town, play in Washington's Griffith Stadium every available Sunday, in Pittsburgh's Forbes Field every available Saturday. In Washington they often draw larger crowds than Clark Griffith's Senators. Few weeks ago a capacity crowd of 32,000 saw the Grays play the Cuban Stars.

Idol of these happy fans is Catcher Josh (for Joshua) Gibson, a hulking 215-pounder with features vaguely suggestive of a very dark Babe Ruth. Sportswriters like Shirley Povich of the Washington Post maintain that Josh Gibson would be worth his weight in gold to any white ball club. The immortal Walter Johnson once valued Gibson at $200,000.

Tongue Sandwich. At bat, Josh Gibson has a peculiar habit: he rolls up his tongue and sandwiches it, like a hot dog, between his lips. Thus fortified, he can swat a ball a country mile. In 1938, playing against the Memphis Red Sox, he connected for four home runs in a single game. In 1930, in Monessen, Pa., he smashed a homer officially measured at 513 ft.* In a recent doubleheader at Griffith Stadium, he hit three home runs, one for a distance of 485 ft. Last week Gibson led both Negro leagues with a batting average of .541--a little less than super because he had been at bat only 39 times.

Unlike famed but fading Pitcher Satchel Paige, Negro baseball's No. 1 attraction, Josh Gibson is no gaudy eccentric. He drives no cerise roadster, makes no startling statements about a strict diet of fried foods--and, accordingly, receives no $40,000 a year. Josh's salary is $750 a month, plus bonuses that are paid on a hit-or-miss basis. But Josh Gibson has come close to causing an international incident.

Two years ago, a Mexican ball club lured Gibson away from the Grays. The Grays threatened to drag him to court if he did not return. Cum Posey finally appealed to Sumner Welles. ". . . However," moaned the Pittsburgh Courier, "when the big fuss started, this Government launched a gigantic 'good will' program in Latin America. ... It's doubtful that Mr. Welles or anyone else in the Government will become involved in the situation now, because we aren't going to do anything in Mexico but spread good will."

Joshua eventually came back. But only a few weeks ago, the Mexicans were after him again.

*A guesstimate of Babe Ruth's longest hit 550-ft.

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