Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

The commissioner had made the pronouncement in reply to the troublesome Leo Durocher, outspoken manager of the Dodgers, who had stated during an interview published in the Communist Daily Worker that he felt it was Landis who was really the one keeping blacks out of the majors. The Old Fox may have come across as somewhat evasive to Wendell Smith. His idea, Griffith told Smith, was that the Negro Leagues needed to continue to develop so that someday, when they were good enough, the best black players might play for a world championship against the best the big leagues could offer.

Once, Clark Griffith had reportedly called Josh Gibson and the Homestead Grays' other great hitter, Buck Leonard into his office to tell them the only reason he wasn't signing them to big-league contracts was because of the hardships they would encounter due to racial tensions. Of Gibson, the great Walter Johnson once said, "There is a catcher that any big-league club would like to buy for $200,000. I've heard of him before. His name is Josh Gibson. He can do everything. He hits that ball a mile. And he catches so easy he might as well be in a rocking chair. Throws like a rifle. Bill Dickey isn't as good a catcher. Too bad this Gibson is a colored fellow." (Washington Post, April 7, 1939.)

Clark Griffith did predict that the player who would eventually break baseball's unwritten color ban would have to be a martyr, impervious to the taunts and insults contrived to show the black man unworthy of playing with whites. In this Griffith was right, but by the time that chosen man, Jackie Robinson, came along, Josh Gibson was dead. He was just past his 35th birthday when he died of a stroke on January 20, 1947, just 85 days before Jackie Robinson graced the field among white players -- one of the greatest moments in the history of baseball and because of what it symbolized for so many, one of the greatest moments in the history of America. (The Washington Senators by Tom Deveaux.)