Negro League Baseball Discussion Forum: General Discussion About The Negro Leagues: X files
By Larry Leach (Reddog) on Sunday, April 25, 1999 – 11:46 pm:
I am watching the x files which has a story line featuring the negro league. I know the situation is ficticious, but I am curious if it was loosly based on a real player. In the story the players name is Exley and he plays for the Roswell Gray's (I know Roswell didn't exist) and hit 61 homers in 1947 and was touted by the Yankees. Does anyone loosly fit that description??
PLMK by e mail: [email protected]
By Forum Administrator (Admin) on Monday, April 26, 1999 – 12:15 am:
Josh Gibson and the Homestead Grays would immediately come to mind. No other Negro League player was quite so prolific in the homerun department, and of course he played for the Grays.
I didn't see the program, though, so I could be very much off base
By Richard Gibson (Mr_red) on Tuesday, May 4, 1999 – 12:28 am:
Message From: rMay 3, 1999
Here is some info I came across from the SABR discussion group:
Someone on the show must have been doing their homework. The record for home runs in a season (72) was set in Roswell in 1954 by Joe Baumann. He also had 188 runs scored and 224 RBIs in 138 games. Bill James describes Baumann as follows:
Baumann was an enormous man, 6'5" and 235 pounds. He ran a Texaco station in roswell, pumped gas during the day and hit home runs at night.
By Forum Administrator (Admin) on Tuesday, May 4, 1999 – 01:06 am:
Joe Baumann was a white player with the Roswell Rockets (Longhorn League, Class C). As I said before, I didn't see the X-Files episode, but I am told by several who did that it was a rather ridiculou, wholly fictional portrayal in which the principal character was ultimately exposed as an alien being. As far as I know, neither Joe Baumann nor Josh Gibson were aliens.