Obviously would have been a five if he had ever played in the bigs.

Like Satchell Paige if even half the legends are true.. he was an all time great. The problem with the negro leagues is that we don't know if even 10% of the legends are true, and other than a few exhibition games we don't know how they would do against major leaguers.. The main problem I have with Negro league players being on all time lists is that their league just wasn't comparable to the majors.. everything was so different, they only played 30-40 games a year.. I mean I'm sure the Pacific Coast league had players that would rank somewhere on the list, but never went to the majors... I KNOW Japan had many players that would rank well on the all-time lists.. why aren't they mentioned? Why isn't Sadaharu Oh listed as the 10th best player of all time (for example)? Because he didn't suffer from racism... I think it comes down to negro leaguers getting better ratings because they suffered and others didn't and a lot of people feel guilty about that. Well it's sad but it doesn't make them better ballplayers..

He played in a league in which the pitchers were allowed to tamper with the ball any way they saw fit. For those who say he never faced tough pitching, I say he had to face Satchel in his prime. We could speculate that he wasn't that great of a player since he never played in Major League Baseball, but if we do we can say Babe Ruth wasn't that good because he never played in the Negro Leagues.

I just finished a great article in the most recent SI about Gibson. His life was in many ways a tragedy and it is amazing that that he isn't mentioned when the greatest players of all-time are discussed. Those who recognize the name remember him for his homeruns. Well, he did more than just hit homeruns. The man hit .517 one year. .517!!!! That is incredible even for kids in Little League. Sure, some people say that no one will ever know how good the players he played against were nor how he would have fared had he played in the Majors. But, he starred in all of the all-star games against the big leaguers. And, by the way, the huge numbers don't lie. Josh Gibson should be remembered as one of the greatest baseball players of all-time.