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by Mark Ribowsky

Mark_Ribowsky Social_Sciences English
  • ISBN: 0252072243
  • Category: Politics
  • Author: Mark Ribowsky
  • Subcategory: Social Sciences
  • Other formats: azw mbr lrf doc
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: University of Illinois Press (October 6, 2004)
  • Pages: 328 pages
  • FB2 size: 1732 kb
  • EPUB size: 1496 kb
  • Rating: 4.5
  • Votes: 447
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Josh Gibson: THE POWER A. .has been added to your Cart. As a dual biography, the book deserves at least one more star.

Josh Gibson: THE POWER A. 4 people found this helpful.

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Mark Ribowsky, the widely acclaimed biographer of Satchel Paige, pulls no punches in his portrait of this magnificent, troubled athlete. Mark Ribowsky is the author of several highly regarded books, including Don't Look Back, on Satchel Paige, and A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884-1955.

Joshua Gibson (c. December 21, 1911 – January 20, 1947) was an American Negro league baseball catcher. Baseball historians consider Gibson to be among the very best power hitters and catchers in the history of any league, including Major League Baseball (MLB). In 1972, he became the second Negro league player to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Josh Gibson : The Power and the Darkness. It is said that Josh Gibson is the only man ever to have hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium

Josh Gibson : The Power and the Darkness. It is said that Josh Gibson is the only man ever to have hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium. Some claim he hit as many as seventy-five home runs in a season. All agreed he was a frightening hitter to face.

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The Power and the Darkness The Life of Josh Gibson in the Shadows of the Game. Large chunks of his off-field life are either missing or vague. In the end, Gibson is the shadow in this book.

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Acrid biography of the biggest female vocal group of all time. Ribowsky (Josh Gibson: The Power and the Darkness, 2004, et. dredges up all the muck he can find on Motown Records' hit-making trio, who. راءة التقييم بأكمله . this book will not surprise you. قراءة التقييم بأكمله. بعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات. The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal

It is said that Josh Gibson is the only man ever to have hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium. Some claim he hit as many as seventy-five home runs in a season. All agreed that he was a frightening hitter to face. What Satchel Paige was to pitching in the Negro leagues, Gibson was to hitting: their greatest star, biggest gate attraction, and most important symbol.Though Gibson is best remembered as "the black Babe Ruth," Ruth became a beloved symbol of the national pastime, while Gibson lived a life veiled in the darkness that came both from the shadow world of the Negro leagues and from within his own tortured soul.Mark Ribowsky, the widely acclaimed biographer of Satchel Paige, pulls no punches in his portrait of this magnificent, troubled athlete. Ribowsky shows us Gibson's dark side, but he also enhances Gibson's historical status even as he separates fact from fiction by examining the truth behind his legendary performances.
Reviews about Josh Gibson: THE POWER AND THE DARKNESS (5):
Tehn
The 2004 paperback edition leads off with author Mark Ribowsky taking Barry Bonds to task for comments the controversial slugger made concerning the slugging prowess of Josh Gibson.

He chides the future hall of famer for falling prey to the myth surrounding the total number of official homers Gibson smacked in regular-season Negro League games. Barry bashing at its finest!

Ribowsky then pens a very uneven biography that often relies on too much game commentary and material from his outstanding biography of Satchel Paige. While the pair certainly were superstars in baseball, Ribowsky losses focus too often on the title of his book.

There are sections where Ribowsky yanks the reader from Gibson, goes into long commentary about Paige and then attempts to draw the chapter back to Gibson. It simply doesn't work.

As a dual biography, the book deserves at least one more star. Ribowsky simply needed to be more honest with himself and the reader about the direction he took with his research and writing.
Uranneavo
Since I knew basically nothing about John Gibson (other than he was the greatest slugger in Negro League baseball history) prior to reading this book, I will say that I did learn a lot about the man. I do agree with some of the other reviewers in that, as much as Josh and Satchel Paige are intertwined for a good deal of their careers, the author does seem to include a great deal of Paige material in what is a biography about Gibson.

What really enlightened me was just how poor/non-existent/made up the record keeping in black baseball really was. Yes, Gibson MAY have hit 800 home runs in his career, or he MAY have hit 75 homers in a season, but we will never know how inflated those numbers are. And the level of competition against which many of these HRs were hit is up for question, too.

Also, as far as the length of his clouts...there are a few scattered instances of a 500+ foot ones, but not all that many. Lots of the "long" blasts were 420-440 feet, which is a feat regularly accomplished today. When Bryce Harper was 16 years old he hit a 502' shot at Tropicana Field in the High School Home Run Derby. While still in high school, his coaches (supposedly) measured one at 570 feet! (As a qualifier, let me say that I am not a Bryce Harper fan, just pointing this out.)

This is not meant to denigrate Gibson's accomplishments in any way; obviously he was one heck of a player. It's just a shame that he couldn't stay off the booze. The book brought to light for me a (dark) side of the man of which I was unaware.

Overall, I feel the book was definitely worth the time I spent reading it. Just two little nits: On page 76, Ribowsky states that Forbes Field was in the Oakdale section of Pittsburgh; it was actually in the Oakland section of town. Home plate and the piece of the left field wall over which Bill Mazeroski hit his 1960 World Series-winning walk-off home run to beat the Yankees still stand on the property of the University of Pittsburgh.

Nit #2: On page 194, the factual error comes with the help of "mythmaker" Cool Papa Bell while relating a story about the length of one of Josh's homers during the 1932 season. In York, PA, the story goes, Gibson hit a ball clear out of the park and "into the back of a large truck" that was traveling on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The only thing wrong with Cool Papa's memory is that the PA Turnpike did not open until 1940--and was a wonder of its time.
Rainpick
I can't disagree with the other reviewers because it's been years since I've seen my copy of this book that I lent to a friend. But for any hardcore baseball fan, knowledge of the Negro Leagues is an imperative. So little is known about the Leagues or its players that when a book like this comes along, it should be read.

Whatever the demerits of this book -- which, candidly, I don't remember seeing -- Josh Gibson's life is tragically sad. A hitter of Ruthian legend, he drank his way out of any chance to make the bigs. Life dealt him a cruel hand. For that reason alone, serious baseball fans should read this if only to understand how men like Gibson suffered cruelly because of segregation.
Granigrinn
Gibson is one of the more intriguing players in baseball history to me and this book captures why.
Though as others have said, the book digresses from the topic at hand at points, it really provides analysis and speculation on what may have caused Gibson's death at such a young age.
JoldGold
I'm a big Ribowsky fan after reading his bio on Satchel. But this effort on Josh Gibson seems diluted. Agreed that he digresses too often about Satchel in this book on Gibson.

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