…They are probably holding out big-name players for future editions. This did say Season 1, so there is still hope for more Greats down the road.
I’m kinda leaning that way too, and it makes the most sense in all honesty…especially when you consider that (I’m admittedly making an assumption here) chances are, your average baseball fan isn’t going to be acquainted with the better part of the players from back then…I mean everyone has heard of Mays, McCovey, Satchel, and Big Josh Gibson, but I’ve rarely heard mention of many others…myself included as an average fan that is ignorant when it comes to the Negro Leagues, except every old timer that I can remember discussing baseball with from my younger days (when these people were still alive), now these guys ALWAYS made sure to bring up the incredible talent that made up that league. I got the impression from the press release that, indeed, one of the major tenets behind this incredible upcoming edition is just that; to educate us all about some of these incredibly talented athletes. I personally cannot wait!
Hey, real quick, on the subject that you brought up about ‘stories’, I’ve just remembered another that I heard a while back on some show that I caught on tv that is relevant here. It was a show, possibly a documentary, where they had this very grizzled, ancient looking old retired sports journalist from way back in the day…picture the guys in cheap suits, cigarette smoke as thick as fog, and each man with a portable typewriter in their laps and you’ll begin to get the idea. This old timer was around to see the golden age of baseball (again my opinion) and he covered the Yankees back when greats like Gehrig, Ruth, and DiMaggio played. He said one day he was walking through a particular ball field (I picture from what he said like he might’ve been going through the concourse and hadn’t emerged into the seating yet), and his routine was to speak with the players during BP prior to the game to try and get some juicy bits of info, rumors, news, etc. He said all of the sudden, he heard the most tremendous(yet very familiar) sound that he had ever heard…he said it was unmistakably the familiar ‘CRACK’ of bat on ball, but he said the only swing that he ever heard that made a noise like this was from the Babe himself, but, he being someone who covered the Yankees, he knew that there was no way it was he because the event he came out to cover was a game between two teams from the Negro Leagues! The hairs on my neck stood up as he was telling this and you could just see it in the old man’s bright eyes - he was reliving this moment! He said the man at the other end of that bat, a mountain of a man over six feet and “well over 200lbs of solid muscle”, was none other than the incomparable Josh Gibson!
Isn’t that awesome?
