The East-West Game is held at Comiskey Park. Mule Suttles’ 3-run homer off Sug Cornelius in the bottom of the 11th wins it, 11 – 8, for the West. Josh Gibson goes 4 for 5 with 3 runs.
In a Negro National League game, Satchel Paige pitches a 4 – 0 no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Crawfords against the Homestead Grays in Pittsburgh, with only a walk and an error spoiling a perfect game. He strikes out 17. Josh Gibson is his catcher, the only time in Negro league history in which battery-mates in a no-hitter are both members of the Hall of Fame, something which has never happened in the white majors. Legend claims that Paige then drives to Chicago to shut out the Chicago American Giants, 1 – 0, in 12 innings, giving him two shutouts in two different cities in the same day, but the claim has since been disproved. The no-hitter, however, is documented.
On September 10, 1933, the first East-West All-Star Game in the history of the Negro Leagues is played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Future Hall of Famer Willie Foster notches a complete game in earning an 11-7 win for the West. Mule Suttles hits the games only homerun. Comiskey was the site of the first major…
In the second game of a doubleheader, Satchel Paige pitches the first no-hitter in Greenlee Field as the Pittsburgh Crawfords defeat the New York Black Yankees, 6 – 0. Three Hall of Famers support Paige: Oscar Charleston at first base, Judy Johnson at third, and Josh Gibson in left field. Ted Radcliffe, who pitched in the first game, is behind the plate for Paige’s gem.
In Yankee Stadium, Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays hits what his biographer John Holway will call “perhaps the longest home run ever hit in the House that Ruth Built,” and Gibson himself describes as hit “on a line into the bullpen in deep left field.” The Pittsburgh Courier’s guess-timate is 430 feet while the Amsterdam News says 460. The bullpen in question extends quite a long way, and could easily accommodate anything from a 415-footer to a 500-plus-foot blast.
On December 21, 1911, future Hall of Fame catcher Josh Gibson is born in Buena Vista, Georgia. Although record-keeping in the Negro Leagues is somewhat nebulous, Gibson will become the leading home run hitter in all of black baseball. Gibson’s legendary power will earn him the nickname, “The Black Babe Ruth.” Gibson began…