Josh Gibson

CTL-E-6045 · Person · other · 1911-1947

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07268 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6045.

Josh Gibson, born December 21, 1911, in Buena Vista, Georgia, and raised in Pittsburgh from 1923, was the catcher regarded as the greatest power hitter of the Negro leagues. His professional start was accidental: on July 25, 1930, sitting in the stands, he was called in to replace the Homestead Grays' injured catcher, and he stayed. Gibson played for the Grays in 1930-1931, starred for the Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1932 to 1936, and returned to the Grays from 1937 to 1939 and 1942 to 1946, with seasons in the Dominican and Mexican leagues between. A 6-foot-1 catcher with a powerful arm and quick release, he hit for average and immense distance, winning consecutive batting Triple Crowns, a feat no batter has matched since. Segregation's unwritten agreement barred him from the American and National Leagues for his entire career. He died in Pittsburgh on January 20, 1947, months before Jackie Robinson's major-league debut, and in 1972 became the second Negro league player elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, after Satchel Paige.

The record

• Also known as: Joshua Gibson, the Black Babe Ruth

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 3 — 747 Program, Wave 10; third Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Josh Gibson entity in the live graph at 3,683 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-6045 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche, ranks #1401–#2050 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1946). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — National-canon Negro leagues scope, homed through the Homestead Grays record staged in this same wave (CTL-E-6022) and the Monarchs generation already in the graph; Gibson is the power-hitting counterpart to Satchel Paige (CTL-E-5965). Vital status: DECEASED — died January 20, 1947, in Pittsburgh (Baseball Hall of Fame; Wikipedia concurs). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): CONFLICTS SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: career batting average after MLB's 2024 statistics integration is .371 in Wikipedia's current account and .372 in its earlier captured version — CTL prints both with their vintages. Home runs: roughly 800 by some accounts and on his Hall of Fame plaque tradition, against about 176 credited in league play in encyclopedic accounts and 174 recognized by MLB.com in the captured version; Negro league records are incomplete, and CTL stages no single career home-run total as settled. Single-season mark: .466 in 1943 (MLB integration, 2024, via Wikipedia). MEDIA: photo HELD (Josh Gibson in Homestead Grays uniform, 1930s-1940s press photograph — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6045-josh-gibson.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Homestead Grays — played for
  Josh Gibson played for the Homestead Grays in 1930-1931 and again in 1937-1939 and 1942-1946; the Grays record CTL-E-6022 is staged in this same Scan Tail Wave 3 packet (packet-internal endpoint).

Sources

• National Baseball Hall of Fame, Gibson, Josh (accessed 2026-10-16) — December 21, 1911 Buena Vista birth, the 1923 Pittsburgh move, the July 25, 1930 accidental Grays debut replacing Buck Ewing, the 580-foot Yankee Stadium home run credited by The Sporting News in 1967, election to the Hall of Fame in 1972, and death on January 20, 1947 — https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/gibson-josh (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, Josh Gibson (accessed 2026-10-16) — the Grays-Crawfords-Grays team sequence 1930-1946, Dominican and Mexican league seasons, second Negro league Hall of Fame inductee in 1972 after Satchel Paige, consecutive Triple Crowns, and Major League Baseball's May 28, 2024 integration of Negro league statistics giving Gibson the highest single-season and career batting averages — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Gibson (build store)
• SABR BioProject, 'Josh Gibson' biography, accessed 2026-11-03 (build store)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Josh Gibson', accessed 2026-11-03 (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6045 · Combined Graph record U-07268 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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