The Ineffable Bob Gibson
“Don’t dig in against Bob Gibson. He’ll knock you down. He’d knock down his grandmother. Don’t stare at him, don’t smile at him, don’t talk to him. If you hit a home run, don’t run too slow, don’t run too fast. If you want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first. And if he hits you, don’t charge the mound, because he’s a Gold Glove boxer.”
–Hank Aaron
“We’d talk about it openly and in no uncertain terms. In our clubhouse, nobody got a free pass. The Cardinals had no tolerance for ethnic or racial disrespect.”
–Bob Gibson
“I’ve played a couple of hundred games of tic-tac-toe with my little daughter and she hasn’t beaten me yet. I always have to win. I’ve got to win.”
–Bob Gibson
“Gibson is the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn’t score any runs.”
–Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver
The Big Three–Gibson, Koufax, Ryan
If there’s a diamond in Heaven they added three superstars to the roster in the past month. Lou Brock. Tom Seaver.
And now the ineffable Bob Gibson.
Gibson, Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan are the most dominant studs to ever set foot on the hill. They blew hitters away like a hurricane blitzing a stack of straw. They weren’t just overpowering, they were a blitzkrieg. Stepping into the box against the Big Three was like Robespierre waiting for the guillotine to drop.
I won’t go into all of Gibson’s brilliant stats, just a few that transcend.
***A 1.12 ERA in 1968.
***Career 251-174 with a 2.91 ERA and 3,117 strikeouts
***56 complete game shutouts. No, that is not a typo.
***Over 200 K’s in nine different seasons
WORLD SERIES DOMINANCE
***Seven straight wins.
**Series MVP twice.
***17 K’s against the Tigers in game one 1968
***Nine Series starts, 81 innings, 7-2 with a 1.89 ERA.
***The only pitcher to win Game 7 twice
And this one is as unbelievable as a UFO landing on the White House lawn and singing Sweet Caroline karaoke with the Secret Service agents.
In the 1964 Series Gibson fired a 10-inning complete game and then returned to the hill for game 7 with only two days rest. Two days rest. After throwing 10. And he went the distance again to beat the Yankees 7-5. “I had a commitment to his heart,” manager Johnny Keane said later.
Gibson did all of this with a blistering fastball, a wicked slider that cut through steel, blue chip command and a competitive mean streak that sent a searing slice of shrapnel into the heart of even the toughest hitters.
He claimed he wasn’t like that at all, he was just near-sighted and that malicious glare was merely him squinting to see the signals. No one believed it, especially when Gibson posted a sign over his locker that said, “I’m not prejudiced. I hate everybody.”
And that was the mantra that separated Gibby from the herd. He quite probably is the most competitive pitcher to ever set foot on the hill. Just ask his daughter.
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Once, when McCarver came out to the mound, Gibson told him, “Get back behind the plate. The only thing you know about pitching is you can’t hit it.”
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For Gibson the hitter was Satan, a filthy sneak thief stealing food off his table, vermin to be euthanized with a K stapled to his forehead.
And this is one of my favourite Gibson stories. There’s a runner on second who’s making like Sherlock Holmes, doing detective work and relaying McCarver’s signals to the hitter. Gibson notices. He turns to the runner and says, “You better stop that or someone’s gonna get hurt.” Suffice it to say the terrified hitter told the sleuth to cease and desist.
In the 1960’s Gibson and Koufax lit it up like a thousand flamethrowers. And the powers that be said, This is no good, strikeouts and shutouts don’t sell tickets, we need jacks.
So let’s humble the mound
The mound was 15 inches high so they chopped it down to 10. And they also bushwhacked half of the zone. The rule book says a strike ranges from the knees all the way up to the letters. But you’ll have as much chance of getting a call above the belt as a Sumo wrestler has of riding in the Kentucky Derby.
“I was pissed,” Gibson said, later. So he thumbed his nose at the rules committee by winning 20 games in 1969 and tossing a no-hitter two years later.
“It didn’t affect me much, because I was more of a three-quarter pitcher,” he said. “It would affect guys who threw overhand and a lot of curveballs that started up in the zone. I just had to adjust my slider a little.”
“Lefty” Well, isn’t that obvious?
The slider is a killer for the elbow and one of the main reasons Tommy John surgery is as rampant as internet scams. Gibson mentored a young phenom, Steve “Lefty” Carlton, who had one of the best ever. Carlton was a master of innovative training techniques to protect his arm. “Gibby said if you throw sliders it’s going to hurt,” Lefty says. “There’s truth in that.”
How good an athlete was Bob Gibson? For openers he was a nine-time Gold Glover, despite a delivery with so much drive and rotation he spun off the mound like a break dancer sipping vodka.
Gibson went yard 24 times
And get this. He crushed 24 home runs, drove in 144, and even hit .303 in 1970. About 95 per cent of MLB guys never hit .300 and they take BP every day. It’s a wonder they didn’t slot Gibson in the four hole.
“When you lose a legend like Bob Gibson, it’s just hard,” says Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina. “Bob was funny, smart, he brought a lot of energy. When he talked, you listened. It was good to have him around every year. We lose a game, we lose a series, but the tough thing is we lost one great man.”
And here’s the most staggering stat of all. The minimum MLB salary today is $563,500. That’s what rookies and utility guys are raking in.
And the most money Bob Gibson ever made in one season was $175,000 in 1975. Today it would be $30 million. At least.
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