Whether truth or legend, or a little bit of both, there’s a story repeated among lovers of baseball history about Babe Ruth and a Negro League catcher named Josh Gibson, who, like Ruth, was a power-hitting phenomenon.
“They used to call Josh Gibson the black Babe Ruth,” says Brian LoPinto of Clifton. “A reporter once asked Babe Ruth, ‘You know they’re saying that Josh Gibson is the black you. How do you feel about that?’ And Ruth goes, ‘No, I’m the white Josh Gibson.’ ”
Josh Gibson, a Negro League catcher, was a power-hitting phenomenon who called Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson his home field.
Negro League statistics were notoriously unreliable at the time. However, Ruth’s plaque at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown lists “714 home runs in addition to fifteen in World Series,” while Gibson’s Hall of Fame tribute cites “almost 800 home runs in league and independent baseball during his 17-year career.”
But this is not about which Hall of Famer hit the most career home runs. It’s about a decades-old effort by LoPinto and others to save Hinchliffe Stadium, a crumbling relic in Paterson that, in its heyday, bore witness to Gibson’s triumphs and those of many other Negro League greats, including Roy Campanella, Monte Irvin and Larry Doby.
“People have asked me, ‘Who’s the greatest player to have played at Hinchliffe Stadium?’ I always say that there are two answers,” says LoPinto. “There’s a sentimental favorite — and that’s Larry Doby, because Larry played high school baseball and football in the stadium. He walked the same streets in this town. This was his ballpark before it became his ballpark. Then he tried out for the Negro Leagues here and that, one day, changed his life. But, statistically, I would say the best player to ever play here was Josh Gibson.”
Hinchliffe Stadium sits atop a bluff overlooking the Passaic River, directly adjacent to the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park, from which you can hear the water roar as it crashes 77 feet to the river below.
Clifton resident Brian LoPinto, standing in Hinchliffe’s crumbling, graffiti-marked ticket booth, is a member of Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium, a group that hopes to revive the baseball park.
LoPinto, 35, grew up two blocks from the stadium. He helped to found the volunteer, nonprofit organization Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium 12 years ago and calls the structure “a remarkable survivor of neglect.” Yet look beyond the pockmarked walls and abundant graffiti, and you’ll see the simple Art Deco-style grandeur that once was Hinchliffe.
There are the ceramic tile plaques in red and gold displayed at even intervals around the outer wall, each depicting one of four classical Olympic events: relay, javelin, hammer throw and discus. The red Spanish tile roof atop the ticket booths still brightly shines, while the word “TICKETS,” spelled out in multicolored ceramic tile above the ticket windows, harkens back to the day when fans eagerly queued up to see a game.
“Dream of Years Comes True as Stadium Nears Completion,” a Paterson Evening News headline declared on July 7, 1932.
Completed at a cost of $200,550 and named for former Paterson Mayor John V. Hinchliffe, the 10,000-seat stadium initially was built for high school football, baseball and track and field. It was hailed by one journalist at the time as “long a dream among the youth of Paterson.”
The ticket booth and entrances gates of Hinchliffe today clearly show signs of neglect.
“There has arisen on Monument Heights, a stadium that far exceeds in size, in completeness and in aesthetic revelation the wildest dreams of the most optimistic crusader in the 1921 campaign,” wrote reporter John O’Rourke in that same edition about Hinchliffe and the initial campaign to raise funds for the stadium.
A few months later, on Sept. 19, The Morning Call (which billed itself as “Paterson’s Principal Paper”) heralded the “thrilling and inspiring ceremonies, enthusiastic audiences, colorful track events and glorious weather” that marked the “formal presentation to the City of the magnificent athletic field.”
But the real allure of Hinchliffe Stadium lies in the fact that it provided permanence to Negro League teams at a time when black players often had to scrounge for a field. It is one of only a handful of Negro League stadiums still standing in the United States.
The stadium “is a great learning tool,” says LoPinto, who played four games at Hinchliffe as a high school outfielder. “This isn’t a baseball bat. It’s not a uniform and it’s not a baseball. It’s not an artifact. It’s a true piece of Negro League history because this is where the games were played.”
Larry Doby played in Negro League games at Hinchliffe Stadium before becoming the first black player in the American League.
From 1933 to 1937, and again, from 1939 to 1945, the stadium served as the home field for the New York Black Yankees. In September 1933, Hinchliffe hosted the “Colored Championship of the Nation.” On July 28, 1934, the Pittsburgh Crawfords and their all-star lineup of future Hall of Famers, including Gibson, Judy Johnson, James “Cool Papa” Bell and Oscar Charleston dazzled fans at Hinchliffe. And, in 1942, Larry Doby was scouted by the Newark Eagles while playing there. Doby became the second black baseball player (after Jackie Robinson) to play in the major leagues when he was signed by the Cleveland Indians
in 1947.
“It’s a part of American history,” says Christopher Coke, 38, director of Paterson’s Department of Public Works and project manager of the stadium’s restoration efforts. “You hear the stories of Larry Doby practicing here and how it had an integral part in his ascent to the American League, and that he was the first black player to play in the American League.”
In 2009, Paterson voters overwhelmingly approved a $15 million bond referendum, with about $11.5 million earmarked for Hinchliffe’s restoration. LoPinto — who would like to see the stadium restored for use by Paterson’s high school teams and entertainment purposes — says $1.2 million (a combination of funding from the city, the New Jersey Historic Trust and the 1772 Foundation) will be used to begin stabilizing the stadium’s exterior wall and to rehabilitate its ticket booths. An architectural and engineering firm has been hired to do the work and to conduct engineering studies to determine the overall cost of repairing the decrepit structure.
“More than anything, it’s still the sense of pride that’s really needed in Paterson,” says Coke, who also grew up a few blocks from the stadium, running track and playing football for his high school there. Coke now lives in Prospect Park with his wife and 3-year old-daughter.
The Paterson stadium, completed in 1932, hosted occasional car and motorcycle racing events in its later years.
Eventually, Hinchliffe reverted back to hosting local high school sporting contests and the occasional automotive and motorcycle racing events. It was forced to close in 1997 for lack of funding for maintenance. That same year, Preservation New Jersey named it one of New Jersey’s 10 most endangered historic sites.
Last June, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-9th Dist.) introduced legislation to “adjust the boundaries of Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park to include Hinchliffe Stadium.” In addition, while previously listed on national and state historic registers, Hinchliffe Stadium was designated as a National Historic Landmark last year. This month, a ceremony at the stadium will celebrate the milestone.
“Hinchliffe Stadium joins the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building as a National Historic Landmark,” LoPinto says. “From a sports landscape, this is the first baseball stadium in the entire country that is a National Historic Landmark.”
Josh Gibson never made it to the major leagues. Reputed efforts to add Gibson to the Pittsburgh Pirates roster in 1943 were stymied by then-baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Later that year, Gibson was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died four years later at age 35, three months before Jackie Robinson played his first game as a major leaguer with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
But standing on the approximate location of home plate on the cavernous horseshoe-shaped field in Hinchliffe Stadium, you can almost hear the crack of a bat as you imagine the 6-foot-1-inch Gibson taking a powerful swing and sending the ball sailing over center field and, as legend has it, into the Passaic River beyond.