Thanks for making the trek over our way for the annual dinner. We’re proud of the event, and what guys like Bob Broeg, Rick Hummel and many others have made of it. And you’re welcome any time.

Just, sheesh, leave some stories for us to tell next time.

dg

“Hey I’m here! Look at me! I came to your awards show! Ain’t I great?! Oh, and I hate Scott Rolen, and chased him away so we can now go with a steroids abuser who plays sucky defense, which will go really really well with our pitchers who can’t strike anyone out! I’m Tony La Russa baby! Someone get me some more wine!”

If he didn’t save puppies when he isn’t being a total tool, I’d hate his guts.

As for Pujols, I can’t blame him. The media needs to stop just posting every rumor as if it’s somehow corroborated truth.

BTW, Gibson’s K/9 in the World Series is 11.3. Koufax’s is 10.7, and Randy Johnson’s is 10.9.

Oh well. Doug Harvey should be in the Hall of Fame.

It’s interesting to note that Gibson never led his league in K/9, though he was perpetually up there with the leaders, and only once led in fewest hits/9 IP. From 1961-9, a reasonable definition of his prime, he was seventh in K/9 among pitchers with at least 1000 IP, behind Koufax, McDowell, Veale, Maloney, Lolich, and Tiant. He was fifth in hits/9 IP behind Koufax, McDowell, Tiant and Siebert. (It should be noted that Gibson pitched significantly more innings than any of the above, though.)

What else could make a pitcher “intimidating?” Well, there’s hit batters, like Paul said, in which, again, he never led the league, and was fifth for 1961-9 behind Drysdale, Bunning, Cardwell, and Kaat. There’s complete games perhaps – maybe the “iron man” is considered intimidating – in which Gibson led the league once, was second or third a bunch of times, and was second for 1961-9 behind Marichal. Notice though that he never once led the league in IP. There’s shutouts – Gibson does shine there, leading the league four times and again finishing right behind Marichal for his prime years.

From the basic statistics, I’m not sure there’s anything pointing to Gibson being unusually “intimidating” by any definition of that word that means something other than “pitched really well, and had strengths in both power and stamina measures.” You could try to look for starters who took the day off when he was pitching, perhaps, but lefties like Randy Johnson have such an advantage in that category that I’m not sure it’d tell you much. If you had modern pitch-by-pitch stats, you could look for guys who induce a high percentage of misses per ball swung at, but wouldn’t that just track strikeout rate again?

Overall I’d have to say it’s a good thing that Bob Gibson’s Hall of Fame case wasn’t borderline, so that arguments like “he was intimidating” didn’t affect voters’ judgment in fairly evaluating his career.

second Gibson wasn’t saying he would finished the game because he was tough or anything like that, but because in that era the bullpen was comprised of bad pitchers, there were few good relievers because they would go on to be starters if they were any good.

as to not cream of the crop, there is a good argument that they were the cream of the crop, there were fewer players going to football, basketball or golf or any other sports.

as to the intimidation thing, the number of hit batsman gets brought up everytime that it’s mentioned, but intimidation isn’t about hitting the guy, it’s about willingness to come inside with control. Great pitchers like Gibson were not afraid to come inside and had confident in their ability to NOT hit the player but still scare him. That is intimidation. You come inside, make the guy scared of being hit, and then you have mastery over the entire plate, something you don’t see today because the mlb pampers the players.

as to Selig, not sure how out of touch he is with the average fans, as baseball has set an attendance record for it’s fourth consecutive season, interleague play is loved by average fans(not old fogeys of course, but who really cares about that subset?) the all star game “this time it counts” generates newspaper articles every year that is free publicity whether or not it is the best way to determine home field advantage. You have baseball opening in different countries (which may upset some people, but on the whole is a great thing) sure you have problems that bud caused (although a tie all star game isn’t one of them, I just wish people would shut up about that one, that is not evidence of a bad commissioner not in any degree) MLB.com is a huge money maker for MLB and he managed to get it to be a shared revenue stream which was tremendous savvy on his part. The salary cap attempts have been a joke of course, but at least it’s an effort better than in the past where good teams got richer and poor teams got poorer, and contrary to NFL claims baseball enjoys the highest parity of any of the four major sports. Bud Selig will probably go down as one of the best commissioners when it’s all said and done, and that is from players, fans and owners perspective.