Lingq Baseball Podcast for May 19 2009 Chris's baseball podcast for May 20th 2009. I've decided that just doing the news and what's happening around the league isn't the best for this type of series, especially on lingq, if I'm doing current events it doesn't make the podcasts very useful later on so instead I've decided I would do something topical about baseball an issue or something about the history or something general that's happening now in the league. I'm going to do my best to not talk about steroids ‘cause I'm getting pretty sick of hearing about it, but I can't make any promises. Today as a test I've decided to do something really interesting but really historical too, to start. We're going to get into the old Negro Leagues. How must it have been for these guys huh? To have such a measure of skill but to be told that no one wants to see you play ‘cause you're black. It wasn't so long ago in this country, but it feels like something a million years away. Whenever people go on and whine about the steroid era and the golden age of Babe Ruth or what not, I don't think they always realize that Babe Ruth never batted against an African American, he never even played on the same field I don't think. I don't think there really needs to be one but a quick background, after the American Civil War African Americans were set free, but set free doesn't necessarily mean liked. So of course for the next hundred or more years they would be fighting for their rights and here and there wouldn't be allowed to do things with white people. One of those things was to play baseball. So what did they do? The built their own leagues of course. Contrary to popular belief there wasn't just one Negro League, there were a handful. We'll focus today on the last one, it was one that had a number of World Series' played and broke up only a few years after the color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson. Now rather than make this a sad story, I'd prefer tell some great Negro League stories that have fallen off the radar due to their league not being the Major Leagues. So will start with one guy, a guy named Josh Gibson, otherwise known as the Black Babe. It's hard to say just how good he was, in his 17 year career in the Negro Leagues he hit 900 homers and 84 in just one year. Of course it's easy to say that he was playing mostly amateurs right? Well that's true and not only that, stat keeping was sketchy at best in those old leagues. But there are still people who have played against Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and say that Josh Gibson was the best. Now because of politics and racism we won't ever know for sure. When you have a character like Josh Gibson you get a certain amount of legend that goes behind him. They didn't live in the information like we do now so there are Josh Gibson legends, things passed down but stories that can't always be verified. It was said that in one game he hit a ball completely out of Yankee stadium… true? Who knows… ?
Another one, definitely a legend was that he hit the ball so hard one day that it never came down. The next day the were playing a new game and the ball landed in a fielder's glove. The umpire yelled “You're out…yesterday!” He was the first to inspire people to come and just watch his batting practice, which is common to do for sluggers today…. He was a fun guy and loved the game until his wife his died giving birth to his twins, after that he never recovered. He left the twins with a family member and lost himself in baseball and alcohol and maybe other substances… So we hear all about Ruth and Maris and Bonds and Sosa ect, but somewhere in all that talk there should be a spot for Josh Gibson, but there isn't.
