![]() Includes new biographical information and some never-before-seen photos. 1920/21 bacharach giants in cuba: passport applications.This probably gives you the best idea of the park ’s configuration in the area of the left field bullpen. UPDATE And here’s an aerial view of Yankee Stadium in the late 1920s, after the 1928 renovation. UPDATE Here is a photo showing what left field in Yankee Stadium looked like in 1930. UPDATE The grandstand was extended around into left field in 1928, so the photo above is not what Josh Gibson would have seen when he went to bat against Connie Rector in September 1930. View of Yankee Stadium down the left field line during the 1927 World Series. Honestly, absent someone digging up some old footage somewhere, we will probably never know exactly where it landed. In any case, it is a little astonishing to think that the same hit could be described by one observer as bouncing into the center field stands, and others as going into the left field bleachers or bullpen, and by yet another as leaving the park entirely. I don’t know whether or not the Negro leagues followed suit with this rule change. (I’ve seen several described in accounts of Negro league games in the 1920s.)Īs it happens, such “ground rule home runs” were eliminated from the major league rules the following off-season, as described in the Chicago Tribune (December 13, 1930): Such hits were, through 1930, counted as home runs. ![]() So, contradicting the Courier and Afro-American/ Defender accounts, as well as Lincoln players Bill Holland and Larry Brown, Josh Gibson himself, and Cumberland Posey, the Amsterdam News has the ball hit on a bounce into the center field bleachers-what today would be a ground rule double. It’s from the New York Amsterdam News (October 1, 1930), which published detailed batter-by-batter descriptions of both Saturday games. I’ve got one more (very brief) account that I’ve never seen mentioned by anybody. The Defender says it was hit into the left field bleachers for 460 feet, but declares it “the longest home run that has ever been hit at the Yankee stadium by any player.” The Afro-American agrees that it was hit into the left field bleachers and that it was the longest home run of the season in Yankee Stadium, but ups the distance to 460 feet. To recap, Wilson in the Courier says it was hit “into the left field bleachers,” “the longest home run wallop of the year in Yankee Stadium,” over 430 feet. In any case, the Defender’s version has one interesting difference: The Chicago Defender actually ran almost exactly the same story as the Afro-American-I am not sure which paper was reprinting from which, or whether they were both running the same wire story. Here is the Baltimore Afro-American’s paragraph on the home run (October 4, 1930): Rollo Wilson’s brief account of the game in the Pittsburgh Courier (October 4, 1930): Here are a few accounts of Gibson’s home run in the second game. The four-run outburst in the first was keyed by two home runs, one by Vic Harris to right field, the other by rookie Josh Gibson, his second of the day. In game two, though, the Grays jumped on Broadway Connie Rector for four runs in the first inning, and cruised to a 7 to 3 win. Going into the ninth inning, the Grays led 8 to 5, but the Lincolns rallied for four to stun the Grays, 9 to 8. The famous home run happened in game two, Saturday Gibson had already homered in the third inning of game one, a two-run opposite-field shot into the right field stands off Lincolns lefty Luther Farrell. The Grays and Lincoln Giants played a doubleheader on each day, Saturday and Sunday, as the conclusion of their series to determine the eastern championship. Most of the players, Homestead Grays manager Cumberland Posey, and Gibson himself all believed it was hit deep into the left field bullpen, perhaps hitting the back wall Judy Johnson maintained that the ball “went over the stands, went over everything,” clear out of the park, but he was apparently alone in that belief. His blast impressed many witnesses, including a number of players who later recalled it and reporters who wrote about it at the time. When looking up the 1930 game in which Chino Smith was knocked unconscious, I realized that Josh Gibson, then only 18, had hit one of his most famous home runs just the day before (Saturday, September 27).
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