Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1626: The All-Time-Great-Grandfather

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB’s long-shot attempt to recoup COVID-related losses from its insurance providers, Tomoyuki Sugano getting posted, and why the Phillies’ rebuild has stalled, then (36:45) talk to Sean Gibson, the great-grandson of Hall of Famer and Negro Leagues great Josh Gibson and the executive director of the Josh Gibson […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1626 of Effectively Wild, But I can't recommend insurance fraud Hello and welcome to episode 1626 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Not too bad. How are you? Not too bad. So a couple of newsy things I wanted to touch on before we get to our guest today, who is Sean Gibson, the great grandson of Josh Gibson, the legendary Hall of Famer and Negro Leagues great. He's also the executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, and we'll be talking to him about Gibson and his legacy and the Negro Leagues and the campaign to get Gibson's name on the MVP award in the majors. But before we get to that, some of you may have seen a report that MLB is trying to recoup some of its losses or claimed losses from the 2020 season by suing its insurers. And there's kind

of a almost amusing item here that I just wanted to mention. So this is not unique to MLB. Lots of people are trying to get money back that they lost or lost revenue from the strange circumstances of the pandemic. And it seems like based on the consensus of people who are much more expert in this sort of thing than I am, that this is a long shot that MLB may not even think they have a great shot here, that it's just kind of, well, they might as well try, and maybe they'll have a sympathetic judge, or maybe they'll end up with a settlement or something. Seems to be worth trying, evidently, but not likely because most insurance policies

have some sort of pandemic or virus exception. Those insurance providers, they're not dumb. They plan for these things and anticipate these things. And so that's one of the conditions that is often in these all-risk policies, that it's just sort of an exception is made. Well, if there's a virus or if there's a pandemic, we're not liable. And some minor league teams tried to do this too. They tried to sue their insurance providers over the summer and that was tossed out.

It was dismissed. And I think they tried to claim that it wasn't the pandemic or the viruses directly. Like that's the thing. Because of these exceptions, you can't just say well we didn't get to play our games because there was a virus because the providers have already provided for that so to speak and so you have to come up with an alternate way to make the claim and so i think the minor league teams tried to say well it wasn't actually the virus that prevented us from playing it was mlb mlb canceled the season they didn't provide their players to their affiliates, so we couldn't play.

And the judge said, no, nice try. Nice way to get around this, but that didn't work. And so what MLB is trying to do here is not to say that it was a pandemic and a virus and they couldn't play, but that there was like physical damage caused by the coronavirus. So I'm reading from Rob Mainz's breakdown at Baseball Perspectives, and this was reported by the AP on Friday. And according to that article, MLB teams are claiming billions of dollars on unsold tickets, millions of lost stadium revenues, concessions, parking suite, and luxury seat licenses, in-park merchandise, and corporate sponsorships, over a billion dollars of lost local and national media, and tens of millions of lost MLB advanced media revenues. And the key claim in here seems to be

this, and I'm quoting, the presence of the coronavirus and COVID-19, including but not limited to coronavirus droplets or nuclei on solid surfaces and in the air at insured property, has caused and will continue to cause direct physical damage to physical property and ambient air at the premises. Coronavirus, a physical substance, has attached and adhered to plaintiff's property, and by doing so altered that property, such presence has also directly resulted in loss of use of those facilities. What? Yeah.

So they're trying to say that the coronavirus has caused physical damage to the air or the property at the places where you would play games. And so therefore they're saying it's akin to a tornado or something. It's like, you know, it's like if the stadium were knocked down or the stands fell or something. It's the coronavirus is attaching itself to the ballpark and making it dangerous to play there. That's basically how they're trying to get around the exception here, it seems like. We haven't seen the lawsuit itself and we haven't seen the insurance policies, but it seems like because they are making the claim in this way

that they are hoping to kind of do an end around the exception here and doesn't seem likely to work. the exception here and doesn't seem likely to work. Well, Ben, I have a couple of things. The first of which is my very favorite kind of litigation is the, hey, maybe this will work. That seems like a really good use of our judicial resources apart from anything else in this moment. Are they claiming because the surfaces then had to be sanitized more than they typically would, that that caused some sort of physical damage and thus increased depreciation of the...

They played a baseball game in Seattle in the middle of a forest fire. Yeah. What? They're making it seem like some sort of noxious ooze that just attaches to the ballpark as it tries to bring down 30 major league stadiums in a cascade of broken steel. Like, what on earth? Yeah, it's some sort of like black mold or something,

some nefarious substance. And according to Rob in his piece at BP, evidently there is some precedent for this. Over the summer, there was one ruling where a federal judge in Missouri ruled that COVID-19 constitutes a physical substance that attached to and damaged the properties. In that case, it was a group of hair salons and restaurants making them unusable. But in most cases since then, that claim has been dismissed, basically. And so it worked once, but it hasn't usually worked. And also, I think since that ruling, it's become more clear that the coronavirus isn't really spread so much by people picking it up by

touching things and physical substances. It's not impossible that that could happen. You should still wash your hands, but mostly it's airborne. And so this seems like really a long shot, a stretch. And the ambient air thing, it's like- It's great that the air isn't there anymore. It's different air now. I know. The air is circulating.

It's like, I guess, unless it's like an indoor park and you're counting the air as part of the property. It just seems pretty convoluted. I also just find there to be something remarkably silly and just deeply dumb about simultaneously claiming that you have done a more than sufficient job protecting your players and other ballpark employees such that they can play games while also claiming that the damage that the virus does is both physical and lasting enough to justify an insurance payout. Isn't the more probable answer

here? I actually don't have a hard time believing that there was probably less than usual upkeep at most major league parks just because you don't have the typical staff there to clean things and do all the stuff on the concourse that they would do under normal circumstances. But that's an argument for continuing to employ your game day staff through a pandemic, not making an insurance claim. Right. Yeah. So I'm reading from Craig Calcaterra's coverage of this in his newsletter, and Craig is a lawyer, although non-practicing these days, and he wrote, that's right. They're trying to argue that virus carrying droplets are like hail or tornado damage, physical damage leading to a loss, which would always trigger coverage as opposed to all of this being a function of a disease affecting humans, which led to both government-imposed and self-imposed shutdowns.

And he continues, like, even if they get past a dismissal, there are two problems he sees here. First, quote, if MLB contends that this is all about physical damage to physical property and ambient air at the premises of the stadiums as you just said meg they're going to have to explain why they constantly allowed their players coaches and personnel into those stadiums both before and after the season began in july can a player under mlb's theory successfully file a grievance against their club for making them work in unsafe conditions and damage property. I'm guessing MLB would say no. Second, if this suit were to proceed, MLB would have to provide evidence of its damages.

It would have to provide actual documentation of their losses and allow opposing counsel, sharp, high-priced lawyers hired by insurance companies to pick their claimed losses apart. That's not a thing Major League Baseball is generally too keen on doing, mostly because they lie pretty constantly about their financial status for strategic reasons. So he concludes that MLB probably does not have a case here, and it's just a matter of, well, it'll cost us a few hours of lawyer fees to file this thing, and we're asking for billions of dollars in damages here, so if we get something, even if there's a settlement or something, even if we have a sympathetic judge, might as well try it. What's the downside? People will joke about us on a baseball podcast, but it's bold. It's audacious. Yeah. I think that it's an interesting strategy to flirt with discovery of financial documents.

I think that that feels like playing with fire. I mean, when I went to T-Mobile, the very nice woman who checked me in and asked me questions and made sure that I was not going to be a known pandemic risk did not say, and also this place is like Fern Gully, so watch out for that.

We are a litigious society and it has all sorts of odd effects on the way that we legislate things and think about public policy. But also this is just so obviously silly that I really struggle to wrap my head around it. So for anyone who is wondering about the legitimacy of that claim, I'll link to Craig's coverage and Rob's coverage and you can read about it further. In other news, as was projected by our guest last week, Jason Koskari, the Yomiuri Giants ace Tomoyuki Sugano has been posted now officially. That has happened. It was still in progress when we talked to Jason last week. So his posting period begins on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern, I think,

and then will continue through January 7th. And teams have those 30 days to bid for Sugano's services. So we talked to Jason about how great a pitcher he is and his record in NPB. And I guess you can also find some coverage of that at Fangraphs, I presume. Yes, I will remind everyone that the board now has a tab called International Players, which combines international amateurs that typically would be eligible to sign a contract with a big league club on July 2nd. But now we're going to be signing

in January because of the pandemic. Although based on Eric's conversations with league sources, I think the general consensus is that that shift in the calendar is likely to be permanent or at least proceed for the foreseeable future. So given the timing of that, we now have the international amateurs and also international pro players who would be eligible to be posted in one consolidated board. So you can see it as sort of a rolling prep list on Eric's part for the international market. So there are scouting reports for all of those guys and all the typical goodies that you've come to expect from the board. So go check it out. Cool. So teams will be bidding on Sugano, and then there's a fee that the Giants get for posting him,

which I think is 20% of the contract's first $25 million plus 17.5% of the contract's next $25 million in value plus an additional 15% of any money guaranteed thereafter. I'm cribbing from MLB trade rumors. So we will discuss the Sugano sweepstakes as it proceeds and as he ends up somewhere. And I think the last thing I wanted to bring up was the Phillies. There were some rumors over the weekend that the Phillies were open to trading Zach Wheeler or were letting teams know that they were open to trading Zach Wheeler. And that was reported first by ESPN's Buster Olney and then was very vehemently denied

by the Phillies themselves by owner John Middleton and team president Andy McPhail. And Middleton said that he would not trade Wheeler for Babe Ruth. He did not specify whether he meant a living Babe Ruth or the current Babe Ruth. Or is that a Babe Ruth that you just plop down from the 1920s into 2021? Or is that a Babe Ruth who is developed in these circumstances and is able to take advantage of all of the modern training techniques? I don't think he went into detail about that. Certainly Babe Ruth probably worth more as a player than Zach Wheeler in his prime if you just compare it to his peers, but that's always a difficult conversation.

Anyway, the point is he's denying it. Jeff Passan of ESPN then backed up Olney's report and said that according to multiple executives from other teams, Olney's report was accurate, that the Phillies have let other teams know that they're open to or receptive to trading Wheeler. And this might just be the standard sort of, well, we'll listen to trades for anyone because why wouldn't we if you want to make us some incredible offer? But I thought of this in the context of Sam Miller's last article for ESPN, which was published last week. Yes, sad. And Sam wrote about the Phillies' rebuild and how it sort of stalled.

The headline, which I'm sure Sam didn't write, is how the Philadelphia Phillies botched their rebuild and what it tells us about tanking. And this is a topic I've kind of been interested in too, because the Phillies just have not come through their teardown and rebuild the way that a lot of other teams have. And as Sam mentioned here, there's a long track record now of teams rebuilding in more or less the same way, and it's worked out for a lot of them so he wrote the teardown and rebuild strategy worked for newly hired gms in houston in chicago in atlanta and to a lesser but still consequential extent in milwaukee and it appears to have worked in san diego and the south side of chicago all those teams made the playoffs on schedule and most ended up with their best teams in decades so what happened to the phillies and what does it tell us about rebuilding? And,

you know, there's still hope for the Phillies. They could still put good teams together and make the playoffs, but they're at the point now where, as Sam points out, they're not a young team. They're older than average this past year, and they're even losing some of the players they signed, like Real Muto and David Robertson's contract is up. And some of the guys they brought in are now departing or potentially departing. And so it's not really clear what the future is there. Of course, you know, Bryce Harper will be there for another decade as of now. And there's a lot of other talent there.

But it is kind of perplexing. Why did the Phillies fail or why have they failed thus far when before that it seemed like, well, all right, you just have to decide we're going to be bad for a while and it'll be an ugly few years, but we'll trade all our veterans and we'll build up our farm system and then those guys will develop and get good. And then we'll turn into a perennial contender on the other side of that and in the phillies case it just hasn't happened i mean they haven't even had a winning team they've come close but they were 80 and 82 and then 81 and 81 and then 28 and 32 in the shortened season so

they have not made the playoffs they have not not exceeded 500. So what happened here and what will happen next? But I think that one of the things that struck me toward the end of this piece was when Sam says, and crucially, the way that having four managers and five hitting instructors and so on might have contributed to those good prospects failing to sputtered to this point. And the first is that the prospects they developed haven't developed all the way, right? That they made them prospects but couldn't make them major leaguers. And that there's also this part that is just kind of the fickle nature of the schedule fluctuating, right? That the Phillies have in aggregate been spot on

when it comes to their Zips projections for how many wins they've had, but they haven't gotten them all in the years that zips anticipated. And so it's sort of this combination of things. And I think that, you know, this is like the most obvious point I could possibly make, but the strategy of tearing down, getting cheap, and building back depends on the prospects you develop being really good, viable major leaguers. And the Phillies have examples of that, some of whom are still in their organization, some of whom have been traded away to bring in really good players like Real Muto. But there has also been operating in the background some inconsistency

from an organizational perspective when it comes to on-field management and instruction. And I think that there are documented instances of pitching coaches who didn't quite gel with pitchers and sort of insisted on a uniform approach to pitching that looked a lot like what we've seen in Houston with a lot of like high rising fastballs and that hasn't always worked and you know then you you know you watched them play this year and some of those hitters just had been tweaked to within an inch of their lives and you could tell that their swings were not where they were supposed to be so I think that the strategy is smart in conception but like anything else depends a great deal on the execution. And there's

always going to be variability and sort of unpredictability that as Sam notes, you hope like a five-year time span allows you to tame, but it's not always guaranteed to work, right? And it's not guaranteed even when it works to the point of you getting to the postseason or having a winning season isn't necessarily going to result in you winning a World Series. So I think that there is a lot about that strategy that sort of makes sense, and it certainly dovetails nicely with the prevailing economic wisdom within the game. But I think that the extent to which that economic wisdom has perhaps made it a more attractive option than you necessarily have like the players or personnel to execute probably shouldn't be underestimated here but it's so weird philly such a strange they're so strange

because it's hard to fault them in the way that we normally fault rebuilds, right? Because they have brought in exciting, dynamic players, right? They signed Bryce Harper. They signed Bryce Harper to a contract that will take me like into my almost 50s, which we really just have to think about every day and stare in the face when we get out of bed and then decide to carry on anyhow, right? And so they've done that part and they have spent money and they have had some big misses when it comes to prospects, but they've also had big hits.

So it's hard to know exactly where to fault them except when it comes to sort of the crossroads they find themselves at now, which is I think that because we haven't seen a lot of rebuilds sort of sputtered in this particular way, we haven't had an instance where we've needed a GM to be able to convince the ownership group, like, five years wasn't enough. We need seven. You got to keep spending now. We still have some work to do. We're only going to be able to make this work if we retain real Muto and go get a good free agent starter. We're only going to be able to make this work if we retool our entire bullpen. Right. I think that we haven't had a lot of instances where five isn't enough. And so it's like, you know, we need two more.

five isn't enough. And so it's like, and now we need two more. Right. Yeah. And it doesn't seem like they're cleaning house exactly. Like they got rid of Matt Klintak, who was their GM, but at least on an interim basis, they just elevated his assistant GM, Ned Rice. You know, McPhail is still there. So it's not like they completely slashed and burned that front office. So they are in the process of hiring another executive, of course. And they did replace their director of player development a couple of years ago. But they must be content with some of what they've done there. And it is hard to pinpoint one thing, which I guess is why Sam wrote about it, to try

to figure out what exactly went wrong. And I picked them as my flop team for 2020 coming into the year in our preseason staff predictions at the ringer. And that wasn't because I thought they would be a truly terrible team or anything. It's just because at this point, they were almost a flop already because they weren't really favored to be a playoff team, at least in the pre-16 team playoff format. And at this point in their cycle, they should be at that point where they're a favorite. They're a playoff lock or at least a team that you expect to be there. And the Phillies had a chance, of course, and they came pretty close. They were in

it in the shortened season right up until the last few days. But the fact that it was so tenuous already represented a failure of sorts. And as Sam mentioned, like there are more obvious ways that it could go wrong and it didn't really go wrong. Like, you know, he notes that, well, you could start your rebuild so late that you have no really valuable players

left to deal at that point. And maybe they waited too long. I think people were saying, well, Ruben Amaro should start the rebuild before he actually started it and he has acknowledged that he should have started it sooner but they still had some pretty valuable trade chips and i don't know that that was it and as sam mentioned like you can fail to improve the farm system but they didn't do that they really improved their farm system rankings dramatically and had one of the best systems in baseball. But you could also just have some truly terrible free agent deals. Like once you start spending money, you could go after underperforming

players, guys who don't deliver. And that hasn't really been the case for them so much either. Like Harper's been good for them. Wheeler's been good for them. Gregorius was good for them. Others, you know, Gene Segura and Arrieta and Andrew McCutcheon, you know, some of them got hurt and weren't great,

but they were fine. They were okay. Carlos Santana and Real Mudo's been good for them. He's been fine. You know, it hurts that they gave up Sanchez to get him, but he did what he was supposed to do, basically. So it's not like every high-priced or high-profile player

they've imported has underperformed. So it's not any of that, really. It's just, as you noted and as Sam noted, a lot of their prospects in that first wave just didn't really pan out or haven't panned out yet and haven't done so with the Phillies. So, you know, the J.P. Crawfords and Nick Williamses and others who were in that crop just haven't really delivered. And some have, you know, they obviously have some quite good players on that team who are homegrown and home developed, but it's just not enough. And you have high profile flops, I suppose it's fair to say at this point, like Mickey Moniak, their number one pick. But you do have Aaron Nola and Reese Hoskins and others, but it's just not enough.

and others, but it's just not enough. They haven't hit on as many of those guys as, say, the Astros or Atlanta or other teams did or the White Sox after their rebuilds. And something Sam didn't really get into, but I think is worth noting, is that it's a little easier to do the tear down and rebuild and have it work when you are one of the only teams doing that or you're the first team doing that. And the Phillies have been doing that at a time when other teams have been doing that. And so it can't work for everyone as well. And one of the other examples of a team that did it pretty successfully, Atlanta, they're the direct competition for the Phillies. They're in the Phillies division. They're beating out the Phillies for division titles. So if Atlanta had not done what they did and had it work so well, then you can add some wins onto the Phillies tally and maybe a couple division titles. You

never know. So they're going head to head against a team or multiple teams that were trying to do the same thing. And it's just not going to work as well for everyone. So as Sam mentioned, maybe it's a good thing that this has proven to be not a foolproof strategy, because if you're against it, if you think it's bad for baseball, and I'm kind of on the fence about whether I think the teardown and rebuild is bad. You know, I don't know. It has worked in many cases. And I think maybe the few down years were worth it, given what came next. And maybe it's preferable to just kind of being in limbo, being in mediocrity for year after year.

But if you are against this strategy, then it's not so bad that it has proven to be less than 100% effective, because maybe fewer teams will want to adopt it in the future. Yeah, I think that my take on teardowns tends to live kind of where yours does. I think that my tolerance is only for one at a time, though. And so I think your point about there being sort of multiple clips like this, executing a similar strategy is a good one. I think that it takes a lot of money and talent to be like it takes a lot of money and talent to be the dodgers but it doesn't

necessarily take a lot of money to be perennially like pretty good and so you know in order to execute that strategy like the rays do you embrace your own set of sort of icky stuff. But I think that I am generally pretty sympathetic to the idea that baseball is incredibly hard, that even over the course of 162 game season, you can just have down years from key contributors. And being bad kind of happens. And that's a bummer for fans. But it's a very different experience to go into a season thinking, my team might be good at baseball and we have a shot than going and being like, we have to care about process. And I think that like, there are definitely going to be fans and analysts who regardless of the state of the roster or how much money is committed to payroll or where a team is expected to fall in terms of its competitive cycle, they're always going to be fans and analysts who are like process is fun. Like I, we all enjoy that part. Part of why we write about baseball and write about it the way we do is that the machinations of putting it

together are interesting to us. That's a cool puzzle that we like to unpack, but I don't think it's great for the sport if we're like puzzling all the time and then there are 10 good teams. That's a problem. It's not good for baseball. And so I think that I agree with Sam that it is good that this is not the only way that one can successfully build a baseball team because I want clubs that look around and say, we're just going to develop well and hire smart baseball folks who can help us get the most out of our players. And then we're going to pay those players or pay other players when they become available on the free agent market and have sort of a perpetual contention machine. I want them to be incentivized to do that.

And I think that their presence in baseball is important. So I don't want this to be the only avenue that teams have to eventually find success. Yeah. I just like who amongst us hasn't failed accidentally. I have a lot of sympathy for that. That's very human. Failing on purpose for eventual success really can only be tolerated in very small doses. It's like Thanksgiving food. It's good to eat it once a year because then you don't get sick of it. You don't want your whole year of Thanksgiving food.

You don't want to eat stuffing in August. That sounds terrible, Ben. Thanksgiving food has become such a divisive subject. Yeah. And I hesitate to bring it up because I think I've told this to you, Ben. Food Twitter is exhausting to me in a uniquely irritating way. So I don't want to. You should eat whatever you like as long as it's not like dolphins yes don't do that that it's all so subjective it's a matter of taste literally so it's not all that much fun to argue about i find yeah eat what you like except for dolphins and some other stuff and like people don't eat people. No. No. Anyway. All right. I wonder what the fanatic tastes like. Not like the-

Oh, jeez. Yeah. I'm envisioning, I should make this very clear. I am not envisioning the human person inside the fanatic costume, nor am I asking the question, what does the fanatic costume taste like? I am imagining the fanatic is like a mythical creature that exists in the wild, and I am wondering what one of those tastes like. Yes.

Or a gritty. Does it taste gritty? You can never catch a gritty, though. We'll never know. You can't ever catch gritty. I think gritty is savvy. He's got... Is gritty a he?

Does gritty have a gender? I don't know the answer to that. I don't know. Yeah. I know. So little is known about gritty, really. I know, because gritty is a gem. Yeah, we all understand Gritty in our own personal way.

So let's take a quick break and we'll get to Sean. And I guess full disclosure, you and I are both members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which hands out this MVP award. hands out this MVP award, and we were both, as was every other member, asked to vote on the proposal to strip the award from Landis's name a couple months ago. And we have not, as of yet, at least, been asked to weigh in or vote on any potential replacements. So as you will hear Sean say, this could be coming to a head sometime soon. And I don't know if all the members will be surveyed or polled or not, but there have been various proposals for whose name could be on the MVP award, which is a possibility. You could just make it the MVP award and not name it after anyone, but it seems like it would be a missed opportunity, I think, not to name it after someone, not to have it honor someone. So I'm in favor of it being named after someone. And as Sean notes, a few people have been at least informally proposed. Branch Rickey, Josh Gibson, who we'll be talking about, Frank Robinson. And Rickey, I guess, would be consistent with naming it after a non-player, Landis. And of course, it would be symbolically satisfying, I guess, to go from someone who was an impediment to integration to someone who spearheaded integration. But to me, it seems like it's an award for players. It

should be named after a player, I think. And I don't think you can go wrong with either Gibson or Robinson. I think they both have strong cases, and we'll talk about those in our upcoming conversation. I think since I became aware of this debate, I tended to favor Robinson just because it seems so appropriate to me to have the guy who won the award in both leagues have it be named after him. And of course, he was a trailblazer as a manager and as an executive in MLB. And if you are someone who thinks it's sort of a sticky issue that Gibson never played in the AL or the NL. That's obviously not an issue for Robinson. So I guess if I had to choose, that's the side I'd come down on. But I'm certainly not against the Gibson candidacy. I think they'd both be good. And we'll hear Sean list out the reasons why he thinks Gibson is a great choice. and I think really they both are.

So hopefully one of them sometime soon will have the award named after them. Yeah, I will admit that this is perhaps embarrassing. I did not realize before the Associated Press article about Landis being on the trophy came out that the award was named after him. I did not know that. It's not like the Landis name was often mentioned when we were talking about the MVP award. Right. I think it was sort of a surprise to everyone. And then in that same article, I don't remember who among the BBWA leadership it was who said this, but they said, if anyone, I think it might've been Jack O'Connell, if anyone

brought this up now that we could discuss it. And I think that they didn't realize quite how many emails they were going to get that day being like, we probably need to take his name off. So I am glad that we were able to resolve that, at least to the point of not having the 2020 awards bear it. But yes, there are a number of very deserving players who I think are deserving in their own rights and are also sort of an important statement to make about what we think that award should honor and recognize. And so, yeah, I really appreciated hearing from Sean.

I am also not decided as a voter, but it was really great to hear his perspective on why Gibson is such a worthy candidate to assume the name. And yeah, even if you didn't know that Landis' name was on the award, it was literally on the award. Like they hand out a plaque that the player gets and it says Kennesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award or it used to say that and then MVP in much smaller letters in the middle with the player's name there. So it was very much there, even if a lot of people didn't know about it. All right, so let's take a quick break, and we'll be back with Sean Gibson to talk about his great-grandfather, Josh. Ooh, Josh Gibson Played for the Pittsburgh Coffers Played in the Homestead Grays

In the Negro League You had no peers You and Satchel Paige Just before Jackie broke in At 35 years of age They laid you down in Pittsburgh In an unmarked grave In October of this year, the Baseball Writers Association of America voted to remove the name of Kennesaw Mountain Landis from the MVP award.

Landis' role in maintaining the color barrier in baseball was the impetus for that move, but as of now, no new name has been suggested to replace him. no new name has been suggested to replace him. The association will meet in 2021 when it's safe to do so to decide if there will be a name on the league's MVP awards at all, or if there will simply be a blank award. And there are a number of potential players that have emerged as candidates to take his place and to discuss one of them. We are joined today by Sean Gibson, the executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation and Josh Gibson's great grandson. Sean, thanks so much for joining us. No, thanks for having me.

I think we're going to talk about the foundation and your campaign in a moment. But before we did that, I wanted to ask you what it was like growing up knowing that you were Josh Gibson's great grandson. He was an incredible player with an important legacy on and off the field. But obviously, the discrimination that he faced means that the context of that legacy is complicated and can't be ignored. And so I'm curious when you first realized who your great grandfather was and what it was like growing up knowing that you were part of his lineage.

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first of all, it's an honor to be his grandson, great grandson. I didn't really realize it until probably about 12, 13 years old. I mean, you would hear stories through the family, like family reunions and family gatherings. And my grandfather is Josh Gibson Jr. So they would say Big Josh. So Big Josh was Josh Gibson. And they'll say Little Josh, meaning junior.

And so you always hear stories about Big Josh did this or Big Josh, Big Josh. And, you know, as a kid, I would hear these stories and never really made any sense to me. So I was in the seventh or eighth grade and a buddy of mine, we were in the library doing a project for school. And he brings out a Josh Gibson book that he found that he found in a library, not found what he saw in the library. And so at that time, I did take the book out and I took it home and I was talking to my mother. So my mother is a Gibson. So people get confused and think that my father's a Gibson, but my mother and father was never married. So my mother's actually the Gibson. And so I remember going back home and said, Hey mom, this is the person you guys already talked about. And she was like, yes.

And so it was that actually, you know, cause you know already talk about. And she was like, yes. And so it was that actually, because as a 12, 13 year old kid, you don't expect to go to the library and see a book on a family relative. And so at that time, that's when I really realized some of the stories that my family were saying during these father gatherings and family reunions, that they were talking about big Josh and how great of a player he was. And not only a great player, but a great person. So I would say around the age of 12 or 13 is when I actually found out about Josh Gibson. And what made you decide to devote part of your life to extending his legacy and all

the other things that the foundation does? Because I can imagine that someone might think, well, it's cool that I'm related to Josh Gibson and it's fun to hear the stories, but you never got to meet him. And maybe it would seem sort of abstract or that connection would seem a little less personal. But clearly it means a lot to you and you've done a lot to ensure that it means something to many other people, too. Yeah. So my grandfather, Josh Gibson Jr., he actually started the foundation. He was the one who got it incorporated to 501c3 status. Once I got out of college in 93, that's when I got involved with the foundation. And once I got involved, I started adding components of the

actual programs that we do, the scholarship program, the fundraising efforts. So I've made it a full-time business for myself. And I've been involved with this since, like I said, the fundraising efforts. I've made it a full-time business for myself. And I've been involved with it since, like I said, 93, 94. And we have grown since then. But it all became with my grandfather, Josh Gibson Jr. He always said that he wanted to keep his father's legacy alive. And so he created a foundation. But the most important thing is, it was not just about Josh Gibson. He wanted to keep the other great Negro League baseball players alive as well. So we focused on, like I said, our main focus is education and athletics for inner city kids. But my grandfather had a vision to keep his father's legacy alive, and especially the two great teams right here in Pittsburgh,

which is the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Yeah, and I heard you say on another interview that it was kind of difficult for your grandfather to be Josh Gibson's son because you tend to get overshadowed, at least as a player, and your grandfather was a player too, and I guess your great-great-uncle was also a player, Josh Gibson's brother, Jerry Gibson, played in the Negro League. So it's pretty tough to be Josh Gibson's brother or Josh Gibson's son if you're also a baseball player. So what made your grandfather want to bring more attention to Josh, even though I guess it was probably difficult for him to be compared all of his life to his father? Yeah, and that's a good point. So Josh Jr. also played baseball and he was an infielder.

He usually played second base or shortstop and he played in the Negro Leagues. Actually, the last year of the Homestead Graves, 1949 and 1950. He also played in Canada for a long time. And so, you know, my grandfather used to always say that, you know, reporters are asking him to try to compare him to his father. You know, he was nowhere near the talent of his father. But he would always say, like, you know, having that stress coming from a Hall of Fame baseball player as a son trying to live in his shadows. And that wasn't his, you know, he didn't have that ability to live in his father's

shadow. So he always talked about that, that you know being not only the other thing he used to say is it was like a double curse because he played baseball but he also had the same name so that's the other thing he had the same name as his father but he knew his father was a great baseball player and i think it was when i talked to my grandfather about this years ago it wasn't really about josh as a baseball player it was more of the adversity these guys actually went through. He wanted people to know about, not just about Josh Gibson, but what these men went through during a time of segregation and not able to go in certain hotels, go in certain restaurants, discriminated against. So our foundation, the foundation was really focused on the legacy of

Josh Gibson. And when I say the legacy, it's not just based off the baseball career. It's based off his career playing in the lightning countries, playing in the Negro Leagues, in an era where Blacks weren't accepted. What inspired you to embark on your campaign to have the MVP award renamed in your great-grandfather's honor? Yeah. Like you said, in August, there's been a big push for this MVP. And I think back in I read an article and it talked about, you know, everything going on in America right now with the whole Black Lives Matters. Right. And there's been a lot of movement going on and a lot of statues and monuments being removed. Barry Larkin and Mike Smith was the first ones to come out an article back in the summertime saying that Kenneth Saul Landis' name should be removed off of the MVP award. And so once that happened in October, as you mentioned, that was a first step.

And so now we're trying to make a campaign for Josh's name to be on there. There's other two good candidates, which is Frank Robertson and Branch Rickey. But we feel as though Josh is a great candidate for the renaming of the award. And since you started working for the foundation or since you became aware of Josh Gibson's career, we've gotten much better stats and coverage of the Negro Leagues through the efforts of people like Larry Lester and John Hallway and others. And if you go to the Negro Leagues statistical database at Seamheads now, you can see fairly complete stats for Josh Gibson and others in their league games. And I wonder how that has helped your efforts or whether it has affected people's appreciation at all of Josh or of other Negro

leaguers to have those numbers kind of codified. And we had Larry Lester on the podcast earlier this year and talked about all the effort that has gone into finding those stats. But what does that mean for someone like you who is trying to bring this legacy to greater attention to actually have that data? Yeah, well, you know, the more data they find is great because of the Negro Leagues. Back then, you know, some of their stuff may have been lost or not able to be able to keep up with. But the more data, the better. You know, recently there was an article in L.A. Times where they're thinking about including Negro League stats into the Major League records.

And there's been a big effort for that. And if that happens, I want to say Josh will be in the top five and I think he'll be second in batting average behind Ty Cobb and fifth in on-base percentage behind Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, and a few other players.

So I think right now the timing is great for us, for Josh Gibson, because of what we're trying to do with the MVP. The more that is out there and is talked about with Josh's name, it helps us bring a more awareness of why we feel as though Josh is a great candidate for the MVP award. Yeah. And I wrote about that effort earlier this year in MLB finally considering making those stats of major league designation, according to MLB. And as a lot of people have pointed out, that would sort of change certain leaderboards, you know, because the Negro Leagues tended to play shorter schedules. You wouldn't say have Josh Gibson at the top of the all-time home run list, even though his plaque in Cooperstown alludes to the 800 home runs he hit. That's, you know, including semi-pro games or non-league games.

And if you go to seam heads, you see 238 quote-unquote official home runs, although that's not complete. And I know some are missing because Larry mentioned when we talked to him that he knows of some home runs that Josh Gibson hit that are not in the record because they can't find the box scores. that Josh Gibson hit that are not in the record because they can't find the box scores. But I guess you would still have, you know, rate stats and short seasons that would show up if you were to look at a list of the highest average seasons, for instance. You know, we all talk about Ted Williams as the last 400 hitter, but Josh Gibson hit 400 in a season after Ted Williams did. He hit 400 multiple times and he hit 441 in 1943. And so I guess we would have to adjust how we share those stats because these players had extraordinary seasons and granted shorter schedules and fewer plate appearances and all that. But I guess that would require some reframing of how we say those things

and some of the stats that maybe we've all memorized or the trivia questions we all know. And I guess that would bring greater attention to Josh and other players from that time. Yeah, and as you mentioned too, I mean, when you talk about these records, yeah, we know their season probably wasn't as long as Major League Baseball seasons. I think their season might have been a as long as Major League Baseball seasons. I think their season might have been half compared to Major League Baseball season.

We know they didn't have the finances like the Major Leagues did. But I will say this, you know, we look at that time, you know, of course, Josh, Satch, Oscar Charleston, Kool Papa, all those guys who loved the pain of majors. You know, he stopped them from that. He denied them that opportunity. So

these guys had to do what they had to do. They played in the Latin countries. They played in America. They played in the Negro League. So they played some barnstorming against some Major League Baseball players. And so they did what they did. They did what they had to do to play. And again, like I always say, it was not up to their choice.

But when you talk about the statistics, you know, sometimes I wonder if Major League Baseball statistics are correct. You know, back then, everything was handwritten, you know, so everything wasn't typed into a computer. And so, you know, and they talk about the talent in the Negro Leagues. The talent wasn't always that great in the majors as well. And there were some great players, of course, but, you know, there wasn't always a lot of great talent in the majors at that time as well. And you take some of the greatest teams in the Negro League. You take the 1935-36 Pittsburgh Crawford team.

I'll put that team against any major league baseball team. That team had five Hall of Famers on that team with Josh and Satch leading the way. So and then in 1937, 1945, Homestead Grays won nine pennants in a row. And so there are some great teams in the Negro League and some great talent. But we can't just discredit all their records and things like that because who knows about Major League Baseball? We assume because it's Major League Baseball, we assume everything is correct, Major League Baseball, right? But we don't know that for a fact. You know, we don't know that for a fact.

And I can guarantee you that if those guys would have had a chance to play in the majors, there'd be a lot of records from African-American baseball players right now that will stand in the majors. Yeah. And I was going to ask you, I mean, we've brought up Landis and his role in maintaining the color line. I would imagine that you've gotten a fair amount of support for your campaign, but that the folks who perhaps have pointed to other players as a better fit for renaming would point out that Gibson never played in Major League Baseball. But I think that for you, it seems like that's a part of why you view his name as the right one to put on the award. So I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about the relationship, not only that obviously his career stands on its own, but that selecting him in relation to Landis

would be a powerful statement for that award. Yes, as you mentioned, and we get the feedback from that. We have some great positive feedback and we have some other feedback. As you mentioned, a lot of feedback has been saying that, well, you know, Josh didn't play in the majors. And I'm like, okay, well, if you read my essay from The Undefeated, it kind of explains our position. We know Josh didn't play in the majors. He didn't play in the majors because of Candace on Mount Landis. So our story is more of a redemption, poetic justice type story.

It's more of a redemption type story as well as that, you know, how ironic would it be for a person like Josh Gibson to replace the name that denied him and other great Negro League baseball players the opportunity to play a major. So, yes, Josh is in the forefront of this renaming award, but it's not just about Josh Gibson.

It's about all the other great Negro League baseball players as well. So if Josh was to be able to be on this award, he's not representing just Josh Gibson. He's representing all those players from 1920 to 1944 that were denied the opportunity to play because of Kennesaw Mountlanders. So it's not about playing the majors. It's not about Josh. We know that. It's about a redemption. And we feel as though if Josh had that opportunity to play in the majors, who knows how many MVPs he would have won.

I know he would have won one or two. He could have won multiples. He could have won just like Frank Robinson in the American League as well as the National League. But he didn't have that opportunity. So our position is more of a, like you said, it's a poetic justice. It's about what Kennesaw Mountain Landis did in those early 1920s to deny these African-Americans opportunity. to deny these African-Americans opportunity. And now we have a chance to have some kind of redemption of having Josh's name replace that same person who denied these guys this opportunity. Yeah, it seems to me, I mean, there's no doubt about what a great player Gibson was

and that he would have been an MVP contender perennially if he had been in the NL or the AL at that time. So I don't think the fact that he didn't play in those leagues means that he can't have his name on those leagues awards. I guess for me, the criticism that I would anticipate hearing maybe is that MLB is almost appropriating his name in a way. Like if MLB or the BBWA during his life and during his career kept him out, then should they even be entitled to use his name and put his name on their award? And could that maybe obscure the way that they kept him out of that league during his lifetime?

And I guess for you, the good that would be done by that in bringing attention to Josh and to other Negro leaguers kind of outweighs that concern. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, like you said, it outweighs it definitely because, like I just said, it's not just about Josh Gibson. And we know, if you know Kenneth Mountain Lansing's story, he came into baseball at the time, you know, he was a judge, right? He came into baseball to barely put a hold on a Black Sox scandal. Okay. So that was his main objective at that time. And, you know, you hear a lot of people say, well, you know, he did deny African-Americans the opportunity. I don't know why people say that because if he didn't, he wasn't a commissioner, if he wasn't a commissioner, maybe Blacks would have played. But as soon as he got out, 44, I mean, 47, who comes in?

Jackie Robinson. So there was all these other great players before that. So when you talk about the situation of Kennesaw Mountain Land, it's more of, like I said, it's a situation where the voters voted on it. They removed his name. That's the first step. You know, baseball winner meetings are going on right now virtually from December 7th through the 10th. This may happen as soon as this week. You know,

I've talked to several writers who have been voting for the Baseball Writers Association, and this vote may happen any minute. It may be happening now as we're talking, but it can happen soon. So we're just hoping that they take the consideration and look at all the facts about why they think Josh should be a great candidate. I was going to ask you, what has the reception to the campaign been so far? Have you found sympathetic ears among the BBWA? Oh, yeah. I mean, we did an article with Bob Nightingale, who's a voter as well from USA Today. Jason Mackey, who's a local reporter here in Pittsburgh. He's a voter.

We've gotten some support publicly from the Baseball Writers Association, some members. But I will say this. Since we started our campaign, we've seen a lot of momentum about Josh, a lot of social media momentum. There was just an article in the Base baseball hall of fame um winter winter edition of their uh it's called dreams and memory memories and dreams publication there's a nice article about josh just came out and like i said we've done several articles locally and nationally

about this so it's been some momentum definitely about josh one of my buddies said he was listening to his uh serious XM satellite and he heard Josh's name being mentioned as far as a replacement for Kennesaw Mountain Landis' name. So as far as I know, some great feedback. Only negative feedback I've been hearing is from social media is based off of people say Josh didn't play in the majors. And when they say that, I don't respond to it, but I just say, read the article before you say that. We know he didn't play in the majors. And when we were doing a series of episodes

on the Negro Leagues earlier this year, we talked about Soul of the Game. We talked about the Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings. And both of those movies have representations of Josh in them, whether fictional or, well, lightly fictionalized, but supposed to be Josh. And I wonder what you've learned about him that kind of makes misconceptions out of some of the ways that he's been portrayed, or just stories that have been passed down about him that one wouldn't know just from his career or from his numbers, you know, what he was like as a person or what he wasn't like as a person that he has been represented to be.

along with the first movie that came out in James Earl Jones. That movie portrayed Josh, which is more of a... That movie was a great movie, but I thought it really portrayed the Newberleys as more of an entertainment type of ball club at that time because they were doing a lot of clowning around and things like that.

They didn't really take it seriously. So, the game, that movie definitely was different because the way it portrayed Josh was like he was an alcoholic and he was on drugs and he had a mental problem. And I will say this from what I was told through my family. My grandfather never was on drugs, never had a mental problem. Yes, he did drink. He was an alcoholic. He was more of a social drinker. I'm pretty sure like any other casual person or athlete at the time, he was a social drinker. Mentally, he was OK. He just said that he he had brain tumor and so that's what he died from so you know i don't know the effects of a brain tumor

and i never had a brain tumor so i think some of those things that maybe he had made some outbursts or so he was going through some things they probably thought was mentally was more of his conditioning of having a brain tumor that he was going through. And so those are some of the things that we'd like to just kind of clear up is that, yeah, he was a social drinker, but the way in the movie of Soul of the Game made it seem like, you know, he was losing his mind and you hear stories of Josh dying of a broken heart, right? Because he didn't make it to the majors. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't know, like the Josh Gibson,'m like okay well i don't know like the josh gibson actually

like before he died said hey i'm down of a broken heart but uh but those are the stories those are the those are some of the stories you hear about josh and you know but the main thing is just like sold that you brought since you probably sold the game i just want to just clear that up is that and i get it when you said fictional people try to sell tickets just want to just clear that up. And I get it. When you said fictional, people try to sell tickets. They want a good audience to come to the screens and to the movie theater. So they got to fictionalize some of these scenes, but that scene there, that never happened. But Josh, yes, he did drink, but more of a social drinker. And that was pretty much it. I'm curious what the experience of seeing him inducted posthumously, of course, but inducted into the Hall of Fame was like for you and your

family. Well, I was only four years old. So you don't have a lot of clear memories of it then? I don't have no memories of it. I just hear conversations. But at the time he got inducted, Josh Jr. was there, his wife, which is not my grandmother. My grandfather remarried, which is his wife was there. My aunt was there, which is his daughter. And Josh Gibson's sister was there. And so I would say this when my grandfather told me. So Satchel Paige went in in 71. And my grandfather always said this. And I don't know if you heard this speech from Ted Williams. Ted Williams got into the Hall of Fame in 1966. During his Hall of Fame speech, he mentions that he hopes that one day players from the Negro League like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson get inducted to the Hall of Fame.

My grandfather, until he died, always credited Ted Williams. He felt that if Ted Williams doesn't mention Josh and Satch's name in his speech, he doesn't think Josh, he doesn't think Satch goes in in 71. He thinks Satch goes in much later. But he used to always credit Ted Williams for that. And later I found out that Ted Williams' mother was Mexican. And he hid that from society and Major League Baseball because he didn't want to be discriminated against. from society and Major League Baseball because he didn't want to be discriminated against. So once I heard about that, and then I realized what he said in his speech, it all made sense to me because he was a minority.

And being that his mother was Mexican, and for him to think that he would be discriminated against because of that, he stood up for the players that could not stand up for themselves, which was Josh and Satch. And so when you talk about that, the Hall of Fame, you know, I'll say this. People ask me if we were to get to MVP award, how would that, what kind of stats would that be? It would be just like the Hall of Fame. You know, it would just be like the Hall of Fame because Josh Gibson's name will always

be connected to the Hall of Fame, right? He's always going to be a Hall of Fame 1972 It would just be like the Hall of Fame because Josh Gibson's name will always be connected to the Hall of Fame. He's always going to be a Hall of Fame 1972, no matter what. Same with this MVP award. He'll be on this MVP award hopefully forever or for a very long time. So the Hall of Fame is definitely something that is very important. Probably the most important piece of Josh's legacy being that he never played in the majors and the Hall of Fame accepted these guys into their Hall of Fame. And you mentioned that it's probably a distortion to say that he died of a broken heart and a brain tumor seems like a sufficient explanation to explain how he died. But he didn't live to see Jackie make the Dodgers. He died early that year in January. He was just 35 years old. And even though he was sick, he was a great player really right up until

the end. Even in 1946, he was still putting up great stats. And I wonder if it is known with great detail how he did feel about being barred from the majors. You know, I imagine that a lot of players in the Negro Leagues felt the same way about that. But I wonder whether it was a source of kind of, you know, constant irritation to him or whether he just sort of resigned himself to it or accepted it. And I wonder also if you know or think often about what might have happened if he had not had that brain tumor. And, you know, of course, he was in his mid-30s by that point, and maybe that would have given teams an excuse to pass him over. But he was still such a good player at that point. And, you know, he was younger than Satchel Paige. So maybe he still could have made player at that point. And, you know, he was younger than Satchel Paige. So

maybe he still could have made it at that point. Yeah. You know, believe me, a lot of what ifs, a lot of what ifs, what could have, should have, been, it goes through my head and my family's head. Like you mentioned, Josh died at a very young age, 35 years old, brain tumor. And like you mentioned, Satch went in, who knows how old Satch was when he went into the Cleveland, when he went to the Cleveland Indians. But when he went in, he did very well for himself. And I think he was maybe a rookie of the year or close to getting a rookie of the year that year when he went in. And so that speaks volumes of the talent of the Negro Leagues. We took a player like Satchel Paige, who is well beyond his prime, right? And he goes into the

Major League Baseball for the Cleveland Indians, and he's winning games, and he's doing very well. And just imagine if you'd have had Satch in his 20s, you know what he would have done. And so, yeah, so, you know, if Josh didn't have the brain tumor and he lived on, would he have had a chance to play in his later years in the majors? Probably so.

But the thing that I would say is that, you know, sometimes in your later years, you know, who knows how great you would have been. You know, it might have would have hurt his credibility, you know, because you never know. So I'm fine with taking his legacy the way it is now. I'm happy with his legacy. I'm happy him playing in the Negro Leagues and playing in Latin countries. You know, he is in the Hall of Fame, not just in Cooperstown, but he's in the Hall of Fame in Mexico. He's in both states'

Hall of Fames, Pennsylvania State Hall of Fame, because he lived in Pennsylvania, of course, and he played in Pennsylvania. And then he's in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, because he was born in University of Georgia. He was the Puerto Rico Winter League MVP winner in 1941-42. So, a lot of accomplishments for Josh.

But, yeah, we've always thought of if he lived until he was in his 80s, you know, what would have happened. But unfortunately, God caught him a little earlier and he left. But that's what I'm here for. That's what I'm doing. I'm here to carry on his legacy through the foundation and make sure that people don't forget about Josh Gibson. And so much of his legacy as a player is the bat and how many home runs he hit and how far he hit them. And people call him the Black Babe Ruth or people call Babe Ruth the White Josh Gibson.

And their numbers really are kind of comparable. I mean, Babe Ruth has a career 206 OPS plus, and Josh Gibson against Negro League's competition, according to Seamheads, had a 200 OPS plus. And of course, he was doing it as a catcher. And I feel like that's the thing that maybe doesn't get talked about as much. And so I wonder what he was like as a catcher. It's harder, I guess, to illustrate a catcher's skills. You can look at the number of home runs or how far the home runs went, and that tells you what he was like as a hitter, but it's harder to quantify the defensive performance. So was he a good catcher as well? What did people say about his defensive performance?

Well, he's a great catcher. From what I've heard, he's a great catcher. Some people I've heard stories where he didn't even have to get out of his crouch and he would throw people out second base. Didn't even stand up. And so that alone, and we all know, if you know anything about baseball, the catcher is the probably that is the toughest position in baseball. You're on your knees constantly and you get ran over. Like I said, you don't get a chance to move. You're stuck right there on your knees.

So from what I was told and what I read, he was a great catcher. There's a quote by Walter Johnson, who's a Hall of Famer, MVP winner, where he talks, there's a big league player that any big league club would have for $200,000. His name is Gibson. You know, he said, you know, he throws like a rifle. He hits bombs. And too bad this Gibson guy's a colored guy.

That's the key part right there. The last part of the quote, he says, too bad this Gibson fellow is colored. And so when you talk about his catching ability, people always say, you know, he was a headcatcher. And I think that's what I was saying as far as the MVP, because he was very well-rounded. Yes, we all know about his home run greatness and how good he did and batting slugging percentage and on-base percentage and things like that. But defensively, you know, he was a great catcher as well. And so we talk about an MVP player.

You want to talk to the guy about his offense as well as defense. And for me, I will also add into his ability off the diamond, you know, what he was like as a person. And like I said, he was a great family man. He loved his family. a person and like i said he was a great family man he loved his family people may or may not know that josh was a single parent at the age of 19 years old you know his wife dad in labor giving birth to their twins and so here you are with 19 years old just lost your wife you got two young you got two young kids and you're trying to play baseball to provide for your family, but you got to deal

with racism. You know, at 19 years old, when I was 19, I was a freshman in college. So you talk about, you know, that's why I always talk to our kids about overcoming adversity. You know, when you talk about the Nucle Leagues, you talk about some of the Josh Gibson stories, some of the other great players, you listen to some of the things they went through. And then you talk to a kid and he's having a bad day because his cell phone ain't working. And I'm like, listen, man, do you know what these other guys went through? Just to have a positive day, you're upset about a cell phone. And so it teaches us about adversity. It teaches my family, especially our family, because we feel like we can overcome anything based off the things that Josh Gibson went through.

Yeah. And so this is the centennial of the founding of the Negro Leagues, and that's brought a lot of attention to the Negro Leagues legacy, as has that centennial coinciding with the greater attention to Black Lives Matter and racial injustice. And that's led to things like Landis' name being stripped from the MVP award. So that has led to more attention, but it's also happening in the middle of a pandemic. And we talked to Bob Kendrick earlier this year about some of the things that he had planned that he wasn't able to do or had to postpone. And yet that anniversary has, I think, also raised a lot of awareness. So how has this year worked for your foundation and for awareness of Josh Gibson?

Are there things that you wanted to do that you weren't able to do and things that you were able to do that you didn't even anticipate being able to do? Yeah, it was a bad year, basically. I just think it was a lot of things planned for 2020. You know, like you say, you only got 100 years once. And this was going to be a big year for us. And we had three events actually planned for our foundation to raise money. We had a Josh Gibson Youth Classic, ages 11 and 12. We were bringing teams in from other cities to represent their Negro League teams.

That was canceled in June. And then we were doing a symposium on the Negro Leagues. And then we were doing our annual big fundraiser, our Black Tie Gala. Those both events were in October. So, yeah, the COVID-19 really hurt us through this pandemic. It came at a bad time. So everything that we had planned for this year has been pushed to 2021. So hopefully we'll be able to celebrate our centennial, which we call it 101 next year. But also, too, is besides the centennial, for us, 2022, we'll also be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Josh Gibson's Hall of Fame induction. He was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 1972. So 2022 will celebrate his 50th anniversary of the Hall of Fame induction.

So we're hoping to have maybe two great years of 21 and 22 back to back. So you've highlighted those programs. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about some of the other programs that the foundation runs and then also how they can support your work? Sure. Yep. Yep. So one, I would definitely say our website is joshgibson.org. We have several programs, meaning from, we focus on inner city kids and education. So we have after school program. We partnered with two local universities, which is duquesne university here and the university of pittsburgh to provide tutors for us we have a curriculum in the schools called bosa and bosa stands for business sports academy it teaches kids the business side of sports this is a college credit course to duquesne university

it's for juniors sophomores i mean I mean, sophomore, juniors and seniors. The courses are sports media, sports marketing, sports law, sports sales and sports events. And we know there's a lot of kids, several kids who wants to be professional athletes. And what I tell them is I'm not telling you to give up your dream of being a professional athlete. But if you do not make it, you can still be involved in sports behind the scenes. And that's what that curriculum teaches them. We have a summer camp called Camp Challenge that goes on. We have our two other program, which is a STEAM program for boys, sixth to eighth grade. And then we also have a Boys and Men Mentoring Program. So those are our major academic programs.

Then also we have our Josh Gibson Baseball Academy. So all that information can be found on our website. We also are running a campaign for our MVP, which is our hashtag is JG20MVP. And then we also have a website, which is JG20MVP.com. You'll see a lot of information about what we're doing, about our campaign, a lot of support, a lot of quotes from different players that we have listed on our site. And so, yeah, please visit both sites, joshgibson.org or jg20mbp.org to hear about more about the Josh Gibson Foundation and the MVP campaign. Great. and the foundation at joshgibson underscore 1911. And one more thing I wanted to ask about, a few years ago, you were involved in an effort to save some statues, right, that were being removed from Legacy Park near PNC outside the Pirates Ballpark there. What happened there? Why were

those statues being removed? And I know that some of them are at the Negro Leagues Museum now, right? So what part did you play in preserving them and making sure that they were still on display to the public? Well, I didn't play, you know, I wish I played a bigger part because we'd still be here. But no, and it's actually Pittsburgh Magazine. The recent article to Pittsburgh Magazine has an article about, I Pittsburgh magazine has an article about those statues that just came out. So what happened was in 2015, I had a meeting with the Pirates. They called me to a meeting and said, hey, we're going to remove the statues.

Basically just like that. And I said, well, why? And they said, well, the area of the statue, we're trying to make it, we're going to make it to a bar area. We're going to have a flat screen TV, a big bar where people can come down there and congregate and have a socialize and stuff like that. I said, okay. So my

thinking was, okay, well then why don't you spread the statues out like a scavenger hunt? Say have Josh Gibson in section 201, then have a sign that says to go see Satchel Paige, go to 302 to see Cool Papa Bell. So spread them off to the ballpark.

They're still in the ballpark, but they're just spread out. They didn't like that idea. So when they didn't like that idea, now I'm kind of getting upset. So I think, okay, you called me down here for this meeting just to tell me this. And so make a long story short, they asked me what to do with the statues. At that time, my

mind is, I'm upset that they're getting rid of them. So I'm not even thinking about what you can do with them. So I get in the car as I'm driving. I said, well, man, they're going to get rid of them. I said,

we'll just take them and sell them. So I called the next day. I said, we'll take the statues. Not knowing that I could sell these statues, right? Well, the crazy part is the first thing they said was,

well, when can you pick them up i'm like what like i could just close them come down in my car and throw them in the back seat and so david hunt i don't know if you heard david hunt from hunt auctions you heard he heard head auctions yeah good friend so i called davis hey i think i might have i don't know if i did something i shouldn't have done but i I got like seven lifestyle statues from the pirates. Do people buy statues? His exact words were, Sean, people buy anything. I said, okay.

So he came and got them. All-Star Game was in Cincinnati that year. He said, look, we'll do this at the All-Star Game. Well, it raised $195,000. We got $195,000 we raised. None went to the museum. we got 195 000 we raised none went to the museum josh went to it was three that went to a private museum in california josh buck leonard and somebody else went there satch went to a guy in ohio and i can't remember the other ones went but yeah that's what happened to the statues

basically we were they were sold and the joke, if the pirates would have known how much money we got from them, they would never give them to us. All right. Well, thanks for all of your efforts and also for coming on to tell us about them. And I know there's also a petition going around about Josh being on the MVP Awards, and we'll share that too. So good luck with the rest of the campaign. Thank you, Sean. Well, thank you, guys. As you mentioned, our website has all the information.

The websites I gave everybody, the Josh Gibson website as well as the MVP website, the campaign is on there. I would encourage you to read the story first before you sign the campaign. It can kind of give you an understanding of why this MVP Award means so much to us and what our reasoning is behind it is. And if you understand that, then I suggest you sign the petition and we can go from there. All right. Thank you very much, Sean. Thanks, Sean. Thank you. All right. That will do it for today. Shortly after we recorded this episode, we got the news that Dick Allen had died.

Yet another really great legendary player lost in 2020, which has been a difficult year in so many ways. And one of those ways has been the losses of an inordinate number of great players and Hall of Famers. Allen, of course, is the great player from the 60s and 70s, primarily for the Phillies, who is often cited as one of the best players not in the Hall of Fame, and there's still considerable support for him as a Hall of Fame candidate. He was 78 years old, and Dick Allen was a former MVP. He won the AL award in 1972, and in fact, Allen's last tweet in late November was quote tweeting an article about renaming the MVP award after Josh Gibson and saying, this sounds like a great idea. So obviously Allen was in favor of it.

And man, what a player he was. What a hitter. If you look on the Fangraphs leaderboard, set a minimum of 7,000 plate appearances in the modern era. So since the start of the 20th century, there have been 410 hitters who have had that many plate appearances. And Allen's weighted runs created plus ranks 14th at 155, right between Mel Ott and Willie Mays. So he didn't have a very long career and doesn't rate well defensively,

but he was quite an offensive force. You really have to adjust for the offensive environment when you look at Allen's stat lines. In the context of today, his slash lines from the late 60s and early 70s don't look so hot, but back then they were really impressive. And he may yet get into the Hall of Fame sometime soon, and it's unfortunate that he didn't live to see that and enjoy it. And although his career obviously came post-integration, it was certainly still affected by racism. You can read all about how race affected how he was perceived and portrayed. His number, at least, was finally retired by the Phillies earlier this year. And I will link to two pieces for now that you might find interesting about alan one was written for fangrass by shakia taylor a

couple years ago it's called is baseball ready to love dick allen and then the other is a bp piece an excerpt from jay jaffe's entry on alan in his book the cooperstown casebook so check out the show page for links to both of those and And perhaps we will discuss Alan Moore on an upcoming episode. And we will also, of course, have to discuss the Lance Lynn trade, news of which just broke as I was about to post this episode. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks richard smiley tyler birch kenny felicelli elijah and matt aaron judge o'gorman perhaps not the name on matt's birth certificate but in a time of some upheaval for the world and for this podcast

specifically we thank you very much for your continued support without which we could not continue to do this the way that we do you You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. That helps us too, by bumping us up the rankings and helping us attract new listeners. You can email me and Meg, and at least for now, still Sam, at podcast at fangraphs.com, or you can message us via the Patreon site. If you are a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

And we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Goodbye, Dick. Goodbye, Jim. I really can't believe you're gone, but I saw you walk across the white house.

Goodbye, Jim. Goodbye, dear Goodbye, dear