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Pittsburgh honors Negro League stars

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PITTSBURGH (AP) – Josh Tillman remembers playing on the same team as perhaps the greatest home run hitter of all time. But the 86-year-old didn’t play with Babe Ruth. He wasn’t even in the Major Leagues. Tillman played for the Homestead Greys with Josh Gibson, a Negro League catcher who some experts say hit more than 900 home runs, far eclipsing the numbers posted by sluggers like Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755).

“Everything they said about him was true, and more,” Tillman recalls. “He was one of the greatest hitters I’ve ever seen, white or black.”

This week, in honor of Gibson and seven other Negro League stars, the Pittsburgh Pirates unveiled Legacy Square at PNC Park. Each player is honored with a bronze statue and an accompanying digital kiosk that provides details of his life, career and the history of the Negro Leagues.

Among those honored are Satchel Paige, James “Cool Papa” Bell and Buck Leonard. All were inducted into the Hall of Fame in the 1970s. And all played at some point in their careers for the Pittsburgh Crawfords or the Homestead Greys, two teams that dominated the Negro Leagues in the 1930s and early ’40s, before Major League Baseball opened its doors to nonwhites.

Some, like Gibson, played for both teams at different points in their careers.

Paige played briefly in the majors, but Gibson died of a stroke at 35, just months before Jackie Robinson broke Major League’s Baseball’s color barrier in 1947.

“If his records were recorded the way Major League Baseball documents things, his home run numbers might never be passed,” said Anne Madarasz, the curator of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at the Sen. John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

With Barry Bonds eclipsing Babe Ruth’s career home run total, more attention is being paid to sluggers like Gibson, she said.

The Sports Museum will host its own tribute to the Negro Leagues on July 10, bringing Tillman and other players to the museum for a public question-and-answer session. In addition, Gibson’s great-grandson, Sean Gibson, and Steelers backup quarterback Charlie Batch are spearheading efforts to restore West Field, the former home of the Homestead Greys.

“Pittsburgh is considered a city of black baseball just because of those two great teams and Josh,” Gibson said. “He always was a celebrity. But I think his celebrity status has grown a little more now.”

Robert Ruck, an expert on the Negro Leagues at the University of Pittsburgh, said Negro League players like Gibson were also famous in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Venezuela, where they often played in the offseason.

“Baseball was international and was integrated in the Caribbean a hundred years ago, long before Major League Baseball integrated,” he said. “They made often better money down there and were treated better.”

The Pirates deserve credit for being one of the first teams to honor Negro League players, but baseball in general was slow to recognize their importance, Madarasz said.

And for many players, no amount of belated glory can compensate for missed opportunity.

“I was never bitter by not being allowed to play in the major leagues. I just said, ‘The time has not come,”‘ said an actor reading a quote from former Greys first baseman Buck Leonard at one of the Legacy Square kiosks. “I only wish I could have played in the big leagues when I was young enough to show what I could do.”

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