One claim for Josh's power, however, outdoes them all. Yankee Stadium is so massive, with its outfield bleachers built so far and high from home plate, that no man, including Babe Ruth, ever hit one completely out of the stadium. Yet Josh walloped one there that came close, so close that through the years legend has put it completely out of the park. It just wasn't so, however.

In the years since their demise, because of the lack of data and official information recorded during the era, the Negro leagues and the feats of individual players have been nurtured and expanded by those articulate enough to do so. Josh's Yankee Stadium blast is the perfect example. Jack Marshall of the Chicago American Giants has been quoted over and over again (most notably and, unfortunately, most authoritatively, in Robert Peterson's Only the Ball Was White) to the extent that he was in Yankee Stadium in July 1934, and saw Josh hit one out of the park. Marshall said he and the Giants had played the first game of a four-team doubleheader one Sunday and were standing in the aisles about to leave for a game in Hightstown, New Jersey. He watched as the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Josh played the Philadelphia Stars. "Josh hit one out in left center, by the bullpen out there and over the triple deck. I saw it," Marshall was quoted. And so it was written, and so it has been passed along from fan to fan, and even among Josh's former teammates.

Judy Johnson phrases it delicately by saying Josh hit the only ball "I ever read of" which went out of Yankee Stadium. Judy was playing third base for the Crawfords in that 1934 game, and he would have seen and no doubt remembered such a Gibson homer. Cool Papa Bell was the Crawford center fielder and he doesn't remember such a clout. Bell says also that he only "heard" of Josh doing it but that it happened when Bell wasn't playing with him, a point which would rule out the 1934 game. In fact, the four teams mentioned by Marshall played a Yankee Stadium doubleheader only twice in the 1934 season. In one, the American Giants and the Black Yankees played the second game and would not have been standing in aisles watching the Crawfords and Stars finish out the day. In the Crawford game of that doubleheader, Slim Jones pitched for the Stars and was beaten, 3-1. No home runs were hit; Josh got a single in four at bats.

In the doubleheader Marshall was probably referring to, the Stars and the Crawfords did play the second game and Slim Jones again pitched. But the game was called after nine innings because of darkness, with the score tied at 1-1. Again, no home runs were hit. Josh went 0-4.

With all due respect to Jack Marshall and his memory, there exists no record and no written account of an out-of-the-park homer in Yankee Stadium. Through the years nobody but Marshall claimed to have seen such a Gibson hit. That covers a period when sportswriters, including the punctilious Cum Posey, lingered for paragraphs over specific base hits and home runs. Josh himself never spoke of such a hit. In 1943, when he wrote of his career highlights in the Pittsburgh Courier, he mentioned the 1930 home run against the Lincoln Giants, and he cited the blast that stopped the game in Monessen, Pennsyl- vania. The latter was the longest of his career, he added.

But no Yankee Stadium clout. In a day when he was constantly being compared to Babe Ruth, it seems improbable that he would not have capitalized on a feat that would have put him in at least one category directly superior to Ruth.

He never did because it never happened.

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