Word: gibson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
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...
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...
...Weber & Fields reunion, when Lillian was 51 and over 170 lb., she was asked to do it again. As she broke, monumentally, into Come Down, My Evenin' Star, an audience including Arthur Brisbane, William Randolph Hearst, Diamond Jim Brady, Condé Nast and Charles Dana Gibson blubbered frankly over its boiled shirts...
Because the King was not there, it was Queen Elizabeth, in a plain grey dress prettied with orchids, who from the dais of Buckingham Palace's Grand Hall be stowed decorations on Empire heroes-first among them R.A.F. Wing Commander Guy Gibson, leader of dam-destroying planes over Germany. Possessor of letters patent making her one of five Councilors of State during the King's Mediterranean tour, the Queen said to Gibson: "The King has asked me to say how sorry he is not to be able to give the Victoria Cross to you personally...