FASTBALL ON THE OUTSIDE CORNER

Set in 1930s Pittsburgh, FASTBALL ON THE OUTSIDE CORNER chronicles the life and times of Josh Gibson, one of the game’s most prolific—yet largely unrecognized—home run hitters of all time.

Born in 1911 in Georgia, the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of a slave, Gibson moved with his family to Pittsburgh in the early 1920s. There, his natural athletic ability led him to excel in all sports, but especially baseball. This history-laced biopic tells the story of Gibson’s meteoric rise from the Steel City’s sandlot leagues to his unmatched stardom in the Black ball era’s professional ranks—whose best teams not only rivaled, but often surpassed, their white “big league” counterparts in talent.

Gibson’s life was marked by great personal tragedy, as well as largely unrecognized triumph, during a time when segregation—still deeply entrenched throughout the country—was only beginning to be questioned by society at large. Yet if the outside world was cruel, within the world of baseball, despite its enforced separation, Gibson and his contemporaries found sanctuary—even peace—along with a widely accepted way to express their God-given talents and a dignified sense of purpose that said they were playing for something more than just a much-needed paycheck.

The story also explores how financial support for professional Black baseball often came in the form of questionable participants and tangled alliances, particularly during the Great Depression. While the ballplayers “just played ball,” some of the men behind the scenes had their fiscal roots in Prohibition liquor sales, illegal gambling, and other prohibited activities.

One such significant—if dubious—figure in the life of Josh Gibson was local numbers kingpin and “businessman” Gus Greenlee, owner of the hoppin’ Crawford Grill in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. “The Grill on the Hill” was where everyone who was anyone—Black or white—came to hear the most fantastic music on the planet. Prominent businessmen, politicians, athletes, and celebrities alike filled the famed nightclub to see jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington in their prime.

It was before the vibrant musical tapestry of these remarkable artists, and many others from the jazz scene of the 1930s and ’40s, that much of the Black ball era unfolded—along with the life and times of one of the greatest, yet most unheralded, baseball players who ever lived: Joshua “Josh” Gibson.

FASTBALL ON THE OUTSIDE CORNER tells how it all went down.