MLB honors Negro Leagues legends with new baseball cards designed by a former player: ‘They’re superheroes’

A massive baseball card stood in front of the main entrance Saturday at Citizens Bank Park. But the card wasn’t honoring a former Phillie, or even a former Major League Baseball player.

It honored Josh Gibson, one of the most talented players to play in the Negro Leagues and the current major league record holder for single-season and career batting average, after MLB’s recent decision to include Negro League statistics in the record books. Micah Johnson, an artist and former MLB player, created baseball cards of Gibson and other Negro League legends for Topps in partnership with FOX Sports, to celebrate in the lead-up to MLB’s Negro Leagues tribute game on June 20 at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala.

“The thing that stuck out to me the most through this project was just how incredibly talented these players were,” Johnson told The Inquirer. “And then you stack all the adversity that they were facing. They were just superheroes to a degree, the numbers that they put up on the field, what they did off the field, what they had to deal with, and the challenges with that. They’re superheroes.”

» READ MORE: Including stats of the Negro Leagues changed MLB’s record book. Here’s a look at those added.

The project highlighted six players: Gibson, Monte Irvin, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, and Larry Doby. Five of the six players were some of the earliest athletes to break the color barrier in MLB, but Gibson never got the opportunity to play in MLB, dying in 1947 at age 35.

To design the cards, Johnson did extensive research into the players. On some of the cards, he included details in the background of the photo in honor of pieces of the players’ backgrounds. For instance, on Irvin’s card, Johnson included the words saxophone and baseball on his two shoulders, since Irvin initially wanted to play saxophone before choosing baseball instead.

“Tons of reading, going through source material and trying to understand on a deeper level to grasp the importance of this project,” Johnson said of what went into his designs. “Because once you start to read about these players and their accomplishments on and off the field, it put an extra emphasis on me to do the best job I possibly could at that moment, because that’s what the players deserve, for their stories to be told.

“It’s truly remarkable to see this kind of work pay off. Sometimes you work really hard as an artist and some of the details might go unnoticed, but I feel like this project has brought a lot of attention, a lot of eyes to these players, deservedly so. I’m just happy to play a small, little role in that.”

Johnson, a utility player who appeared in 61 major league games from 2015-17 for the Dodgers, Braves, and White Sox, used charcoal, paint rollers, an eraser, and his hands to create the designs for the six cards.

The larger-than-life cards will make two more stops before the June 20 game in Birmingham — in New York from June 7-12 and in Baltimore on June 14. Fans can also purchase standard-size versions of the cards from MLBShop.com or Topps.com.