King of Sluggers: Josh Gibson’s Legacy A century has passed since the founding of the Negro Leagues, and the great-grandson of the game’s most feared yet forgotten hitter is fighting for the recognition of Pittsburgh’s Black baseball history. November 11, 2020 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHUCK BEARD He has a set of hands that could wrap around the trunk of a Southern Live Oak — the state tree of his native Georgia — and a pair of forearms that could snap one in half. It’s sometime in the 1930s in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh when he steps up to the plate and bashes a baseball that clears the ivy-veiled outfield walls of Forbes Field and soars into oblivion. The following day his Pittsburgh Crawfords are playing in Philadelphia, and from out of nowhere, a baseball falls from the heavens and lands into the glove of a surprised center fielder. The umpire points to the twenty-something kid named Josh Gibson and shouts, Yer out — yesterday in Pittsburgh.