Gibson
Posted: June 30th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 110 Comments »
Bob Gibson smiles hard. It’s about to happen again. Over the years, Gibson has learned to tell when someone is about remind him how ferocious … heartless … intimidating he used to be. He has learned to brace himself for those peppy, ‘You were vicious!” compliments (they are compliments, right?) and the awed “You were a killer out there!” tributes (they are tributes, right?). He has learned to see them coming, the fans — they’re definitely fans — who remember him fondly for a glare and up-and-in fastballs, who think of him as young and raging and invincible, with fury and pride and the purest annoyance oozing from his forehead instead of sweat.
“Mr Gibson,” this man says. “Oh, do I remember the way you pitched. I remember all those batters you hit. They were so scared of you.”
Yes, Bob Gibson smiles hard. He shakes the man’s hand warmly, and he signs a baseball, and he says thank you in that voice that always surprises, that soft voice tinged with warmth. And it is only when the man has walked away and is long out of hearing range, that Bob Gibson asks — not angrily but with a sense of wonder — “Is that all I did? Hit batters? Is that really all they remember?”
* * *
Bob Gibson thinks this might be the first time in about 50 years that he has talked to a reporter from Sports Illustrated. He isn’t sure — he might have slipped up a couple of times through the years and talked to one by mistake. It’s probably better to say that this is the first time in memory that he has willfully talked with someone from the magazine. Something happened a half century ago that he has not forgotten. He will not forget. He only agrees to talk now because the main topic is Stan Musial. He has deep respect for Stan Musial.
“A good man,” he says. “I remember I was a rookie, and Stan woke me up. I fell asleep on the end of the bench. And the game ended, and Stan walked by and said to me: ‘Game’s over kid. Wake up.’ Stan’s a good man.”
More than one person has made a point about Bob Gibson’s voice: It is so measured, so welcoming, so proper; he sounds like a professor teaching class. The point is usually brought up in irony — the point being that the tenderness of Bob Gibson’s voice does not match the terrifying aura of the man.
Certainly no baseball player, not even Ty Cobb, has had so many stories told about menace. There are two — TWO — famous stories about Gibson throwing at a batter in an Old Timer’s Game. In one Old Timer’s Game, he plunked Pete LaCock, who had the gall to hit a grand slam off Gibson in the last inning of Gibson’s career in the Major Leagues (after he hit LaCock, Gibson shouted, “I’ve been waiting YEARS to do that”). In another, Gibson brushed back Reggie Jackson, who had the gall to hit a home run off him IN AN EARLIER OLD TIMER’S GAME.
The stories are enjoyable largely because Gibson is the man pitching — much in the same way that the stories in Curb Your Enthusiasm are funny because it is Larry David in the middle of them. The Gibson stories would not be as fun if you replaced him as a character with, say, Marichal or Feller or Koufax or Seaver or even another intimidating pitcher. There were other renowned intimidators, of course — Wynn and Drysdale, Maglie and Clemens and so on — but Gibson is a man apart. If the name “Lombardi” evokes images of duels in the snow and the cold November mud (as Steve Sabol at NFL Films so memorably suggested), then the name “Gibson” evokes images of a batter lying in a cloud of dust and the merciless man on the mound, glowering, daring, never ceding ground, never forgetting.
A quick scan of famous quotes about Gibson:
Dick Allen: “Gibson was so mean, he’d knock you down and then meet you at home plate to see if you wanted to make something of it.”
Don Sutton: “He hated everyone. He even hated Santa Claus.”
Red Schoendienst: “He couldn’t pitch today because they wouldn’t let him. The way he’d throw inside, he’d be kicked out of the game in the first inning.”
Tim McCarver: “I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the plate where I belonged, and that the only think I knew about pitching was that I couldn’t hit it.”
Dusty Baker: “The only people I ever felt intimidated by in my whole life were Bob Gibson and my Daddy.”
And so on. Perhaps the most telling words about Bob Gibson’s persona came from Hank Aaron in his poetic advice to Dusty Baker (as remembered by Baker):
Don’t dig in against Bob Gibson
he’ll knock you down
He’d knock down
his own grandmother.
Don’t stare at him
Don’t smile at him
Don’t talk to him
He doesn’t like it.
If you happen to hit a home run
don’t run too slow
And 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 Golden Gloves boxer.
This is the reputation of Bob Gibson. Inescapable. And unlike ordinary reputation, it seems to grow larger every year. Children whose fathers are not old enough to have seen him pitch, still come up to Gibson to say he’s their favorite pitcher, not because of his 3,117 career strikeouts or 1.12 ERA in 1968 or his unrelenting brilliance in the World Series. No, it’s because he was mean, tough, a symbol of badass. Gibson smiles when they say that, and he says that he appreciates it, and he certainly feels good being remembered.
“The only real problem is,” he says, “they got it all wrong.”
* * *
Dusty Baker, now Cincinnati’s manager, seems to have an endless supply of Bob Gibson stories, and he tells another one. He idolized Gibson, of course, and one night he saw Gibson eating in a restaurant. His teammates encouraged him to walk over and say hello. “It’s OK,” they told him. “It’s away from the field. This is a good time. Bob will be happy to talk.” Then, while those teammates snickered, Baker and his wife walked over and, Dusty said, “Excuse me, Mr. Gibson.”
And Gibson looked up and without even a hint of a smile he snarled, “Why the *$*#&$* should I talk to you?” Then he looked past Dusty, to his wife, and said, “It’s very nice to meet you Mrs. Baker.”
The story’s punch line, though, comes years later when Dusty retold the story to Gibson, now his close friend. The way Dusty remembers it, Gibson nodded, and without even a hint of a smile said: “Well, what do you want? I said hello to your wife.”
* * *
Here’s a question: How tall do you think Bob Gibson is? Before you answer, you might remember that before he played in the big leagues, Gibson played for the Harlem Globetrotters, and he was known for his ferocious dunks. Player after player from his time will talk about the larger-than-life image of him scowling on a pitcher’s mound. “He looked like a giant out there,” his catcher and friend Joe Torre will tell you.
So how tall? Six-foot-four? Six-foot-five? Bigger?
No, of course not. Gibson is 6-foot-1. He was inches shorter than Drysdale and Jenkins, Sudden Sam and Gaylord Perry, Koufax and Bob Veale and the other big pitchers of the era. He was, for that matter, an inch shorter than Joe Torre.
But Gibson did not dominate with size, not exactly. And you know what else? He did not dominate by hitting an excessive number of batters either. Not exactly. He never once led the league in hit-by-pitch. He only once finished in the Top 3 in that category (and that was 1963, when he was young and still quite wild).
Instead, perhaps, Gibson’s aura grew out of something else. He needed to win. It wasn’t a choice with him. The pain of failure was something that threatened his very existence, something that he simply could not live with. Gibson has never enjoyed revealing much of himself — he certainly did not talk much during his playing days. But he once opened up with a bit the New Yorker’s brilliant Roger Angell. He said this: “I’ve played a couple hundred games of tic-tac-toe with my little daughter. And she hasn’t beaten me yet. I’ve always had to win. I’ve got to win.”
This is a common theme — the much used “I want to win even if we’re playing ping pong/tic-tac-toe/tiddlywinks” quote. But Gibson turned it on its head. He doesn’t say that he WOULD NOT let his daughter win at tic-tac-toe. He doesn’t say he HATES LOSING even when playing tic-tac-toe with his daughter.
No, he says that in hundreds of games he NEVER HAD let his daughter win at tic-tac-toe. The games are over. The lessons, if there were lessons, have been learned. And Bob Gibson won.
* * *
What is more intimidating than than a man who is hungrier, more determined, willing to go farther to win than you are? What made The Terminator in the first movie so savage, I think, was not that he was strong, and not that he was virtually indestructible, and not that he had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscles … but instead it was that he wanted to kill you more than you wanted to stay alive. There is no easy human response to that sort of intensity.
So Bob Gibson looked bigger than 6-foot-1. Yes, by the numbers he only hit 10 or so batters a year, but those 10 never ever forgot. He threw his 95-mph fastball and savage slider by unfolding into a wind-up that screamed ancient violence — Bill James would say that Gibson “sort of looks like he is attempting to fly.” This was a wind-up without guile, it was all business, David used this wind-up when smiting Goliath. Yes, Gibson didn’t look like he was trying to strike out batter. He looked like he was trying to smite them.
“That’s a whole lot of (expletive),” Gibson says. “I wasn’t trying to intimidate anybody, are you kidding me? I was just trying to survive, man.”
* * *
Nothing came easy to him. Gibson signed with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1957, and his first stop was Columbus, Ga. — his memories of his eight games in the South in the 1950s are pungent and unpleasant and too personal to talk about. That was how baseball began for him. He made it to the big leagues in 1959, when he was 23, and then got beat around for a year and a half. He became a full-time starter in 1961 and led the league in walks. He was no instant sensation, no Stephen Strasburg. He won 20 games for the first time when he was 29.
And, he felt threatened. “People don’t know what it was like to be a young black pitcher in those days,” he says, not defensively but as a point of fact. The way Gibson saw it, people wanted him to fail. Hitters wanted him to fail. Racists wanted him to fail. Opposing fans wanted him to fail. And, in they end, he had to beat them all. Every game was a fight to the finish, every hit against him a dagger that could get him sent down, every loss a disaster that he might not recover from.
Yes, he had to figure out ways to beat them all. That is one of the things people missed. It wasn’t about the fastball. It wasn’t about the slider. It wasn’t about coercion. Hell, he wasn’t getting Henry Aaron out by scaring him. Aaron didn’t scare, no matter what funny quotes he may have offered to the newspapers. No, Gibson couldn’t throw his fastball by Henry Aaron — nobody could. He learned to throw slow stuff to Aaron, tried to get the great man to twist himself into a knot. That was the only thing that might work.
It was always like that. Nothing was easy. You had to match up. Billy Williams owned his slider, Gibson had to throw something else. So he did. Gibson figured out how to pitch Mays, held him to a .196 average over the years. Roberto Clemente couldn’t touch him. But for every Clemente and Mays, there was an Eddie Mathews and Richie Hebner who hit him hard. He could not rely on being Bob Gibson to get them out — there WERE NO easy outs.
So, he did things, small things, stuff nobody ever noticed because they were so enraptured with his image as bully. Never throw the same pitch in the same place to the same batter — that was Bob Gibson’s thing. Field every single bunt and ball up the middle — Gibson won nine straight Gold Gloves. Drive in every run possible — Gibson hit .206 with 24 home runs in a low-scoring era (two more in the World Series) and he was a brilliant bunter and he hit 18 sacrifice flies, more than any other pitcher since they started keeping track. Twenty six games in his career, Gibson drove in more runs than he allowed.
“It wasn’t easy,” Gibson says, and that’s the point, that’s the thing he’s most proud of, that he kept on going, kept finding new ways, kept answering the challenges, kept winning. And it wasn’t easy.
* * *
Bob Gibson started nine World Series games. He finished eight of them. The only game he didn’t finish was his first — that was at Yankee Stadium, 1964. He was pulled for a pinch-hitter with the Cardinals down by three runs in the eighth inning. After that, he went 7-1 with a 1.60 ERA in World Series games. And no manager dared take him out.
The complete games … this comes up often. People are always eager to ask Bob Gibson how he feels about today’s pitchers and the way they come out of games in the fifth or sixth inning. What’s wrong with America? Why can’t people finish games the way Bob Gibson did? They always want to ask him about it, always want to listen to him celebrate himself and his time. Only to ask Gibson this question is to once again misjudge him.
“PItchers are just doing their jobs, man,” he says. “The game has changed. Pitchers today want to win as much as we did. When I pitched, you were expected to finish what you started, but it’s not like that now. Pitchers have different jobs. There are different expectations.”
Ask Gibson if he likes the new expectations is to misjudge him further. He doesn’t care all that much. He doesn’t watch a lot of baseball now. He watches the Cardinals, of course — he feels like the team has treated him well. Gibson also finds himself rooting quietly for the Dodgers, of all teams, because his close friend Joe Torre manages (“I was even a Yankees fan there for a while, believe it or not,” he says). But, mostly, he has other things to do. He has a different life to live. Baseball does not define him.
This does not change. Bob Gibson refused to let any one thing define him.
“This guy came up to me a little while ago,” Gibson says. “Did you hear him? He goes: ‘You were so mean when you pitched. You hit all these guys.’ Stuff like that. I mean, that’s all right, people can think what they want. They can have their own memories. But you know how many times I’ve heard that? And I was thinking: Who comes up to you and says something like that?
“I wasn’t mean. I don’t buy into any of it. I was just doing my job. You hear people talk about this glare that I had. You know, I’ve been wearing glasses for almost 60 years. I wasn’t glaring … I just couldn’t see the catcher’s signals. I was just trying to see. That’s all. But people turn everything into something else.”
He shakes his head. People turn everything in something else. He’s not angry, or anyway he does not sound angry. That voice. So friendly. He seems almost amused by it all — the reputation, the aura, the way people seem endlessly fascinated by the way he looked, the way he threw a baseball. It’s like there was this part he once played, when he was young, this part of a pitcher who scowled and raged and struck out hitters on high fastballs … and that part lives on, grows bigger every year.
Only he doesn’t play the part anymore.
* * *
Gibson leans close and explains why he has not consciously talked to Sports Illustrated for a long time. It is over a story he says ran a long time ago, fifty years ago, a story that was filled with condescension and disdain, a story that quoted him saying “Ahs really hums dat pea,” or some such cringe-inducing and racist thing. Gibson doesn’t remember the precise quote. But he remembers it well enough to still feel its sting.
“You know, a few years ago I was writing my book,” he says, “and I called Sports Illustrated and asked for a copy of that story. And they wouldn’t get it for me. They said they didn’t have it. But I know they have it.”
I tell him that I’m sorry, and he shrugs. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “That’s why I’m talking to you.” I tell him that I will find that story and get him a copy of it. He shrugs again. “It doesn’t matter,” he says.
Only, of course, it does matter. As soon as I got home, I began to look through the Sports Illustrated archives. I looked under Bob Gibson. I looked under Robert Gibson. I looked under Gibby. I looked and looked. I could not find much at first. Gibson is right — he did not spend much time talking with Sports Illustrated through the year. The first story I saw that was entirely about Gibson was in 1963, when he was emerging as one of baseball’s best pitchers. It was about how Gibson had overcome injuries and it quoted umpire Al Barlick saying that Gibson threw harder than any pitcher he had ever seen. That wasn’t it.
There was a short item about Gibson in 1964, a funny little story about how Gibson, when he was pitching at Creighton, faced a promising young hitter named Jesse Bradshaw. Gibson threw one of his high inside fastballs, and it was such a menacing pitch that Bradshaw twisted violently out of the way and swallowed his chewing tobacco. He became the Rev. Jesse Bradshaw not long after that.
Gibson was quoted in the “They Said It” section in 1967: “I get a lot of dopey questions, and women ask some of the silliest. One lady asked me, ‘Are you going to play next year?’”
In late 1967, there was another short item — this one about Gibson visiting a school in a poor area of Omaha. Gibson, for his reputation, was always doing things like this. “We love you, Bob,” a little girl yelled. And the magazine reported with surprise: “Gibson wept.”
In 1968 — that remarkable year of the pitcher when Gibson had a 1.12 ERA and the league hit .184 against him — he offered perhaps his most famous quote: “Too many people think an athlete’s life can be an open book. You’re supposed to be an example. Why do I have to be an example for your kid? You be an example for your own kid.” Gibson does not back off the quote. He says his proudest achievement still was being an example for his son.
Still, though I looked and looked, I could not find the story and the quote that had wounded him. I started over and began looking inside other stories that were not about him. I found that Gibson was mentioned in a story back in 1959 — the story said that the young Gibson might offer some help to the Cardinals (along with fellow rookie Gary Blaylock). His first big league victory was mentioned in another story about the Cardinals (along with an unrelated quote from Musial saying that he’d been out of the lineup so long “I’ve forgotten the strike zone”).
Gibson was mentioned in passing in Roger Kahn’s story about how pitchers throw at hitter (Gibson had hit Duke Snider with a pitch, fracturing his elbow). In 1962, there was quote from Musial about Gibson: “He’s the fastest I’ve seen over nine innings since I’ve been in the league.” And so on. I could not find the offensive quote. I could not find that story that Bob Gibson remembered.
And I went back to the beginning again. I went through issue by issue from his rookie year through the mid 1960s. There was one story — a story that has not aged especially well — written in March of 1960 called “The Private World of the Negro Ballplayer.” The story was a direct effort to get into the inside world of black ballplayers back when nobody else in mainstream America was really trying to do such things. There were 57 black players in the big leagues then — it was only one year after the Red Sox became the last team to bring a black player to the big leagues. The story cannot be judged by today’s sensitivity, of course, but that said there are paragraphs in it that crash against the ears.
Slang is a rich field. The words mullion, hog-cutter, drinker and pimp apparently came from the Negro leagues. Drinker and pimp barely survive today. A pimp is a flashy dresser, and a drinker—so Jimmy Banks, a Negro Memphis Red Sox first baseman, told me—is “a fielder who can pick it clean. He catches everything smooth. He can ‘drink’ it.” Ernie Banks also told me about some other words, but I have been unable to find them used in the majors. A choo-choo papa was a sharp ballplayer. An acrobat was an awkward fielder. A monty was an ugly ballplayer, and a foxy girl was a good-looking girl. Unfortunately, my research came to an abrupt end when I foolishly asked Banks if he had a nickname. “I’m a ballplayer, man,” he said as he walked away. “I’m not gonna nickname myself. Man, you have to calm down!”
There are no quotes in the story from Gibson in the story … or more to the point there are no quotes that name him. There are, however, a few anonymous quotes in there. There is one in particular, from a pitcher, probably a National League pitcher, that goes like this:
“Negroes play harder against Negroes than against whites. I’d rather anybody in the world get a hit off me than Mays or Aaron. If they hit, they tease me about it, and that doesn’t go down well with me.”
That could be Gibson, of course. There were only a few black pitchers in the big leagues at the time — Earl Wilson … Sam Jones … Don Newcombe was about to retire, a handful of others. That could be Gibson. There’s something about it that superficially sounds like Gibson.
But maybe not. This was 1960 — Gibson had only pitched in 13 big league games when the story came out. And anyway, the quote is not recorded in the insulting language that offends the senses. I kept looking.
But could not find anything else. Maybe I was missing it. Maybe the story had run in another magazine or a newspaper. I did a few other searches in a few other publications, but could not find it.
I have no doubt the quote is out there, scorching the page, forever spurring a young Bob Gibson to win more, to win more, to leave broken bats and broken hitters in his path, to win more, to avoid Sports Illustrated reporters, to win more, to smile hard when fans told him how scary he once was, to win more, to create a legend that would impress everyone except himself. And, even now, I go back to the beginning, start again, pore through the archives, look more for Bob Gibson’s pain. I still have not found it.
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Circle jerk. Everybody gather round for the circle jerk.
Joe, I think we should have a pretty good new candidate for dumbest move of the baseball season…
The Reds pitcher, Mike Leake, had given up 6 runs through 6 innings last night. When his spot in the batting order came up in the bottom of the 6th, they were down 6-3, but had men on first and second with two outs. Seems like the most logical time in the world to pinch hit, no? Apparently not to Dusty Baker. He let him hit, and he flew out to end the inning.
But that isn’t the worst of it! Dusty then sent out Danny Herrera to start the 7th.
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Joe, Thanks for showing why Gibson is great and getting behind all of the legends. I hope you can do the same thing for Stan.
I watch Around the Horn on ESPN and if most writers are anything like that bum Marrioti from Chicago, it is no wonder why deserving guys miss out on the Hall. Let’s hope this doesn’t end up like the Gene Hickerson situation in the NFL. I would hate to see him get in when he either no longer has his wits about him, or even worse, if he has already passed away.
See, Joe, the problem with blog entries as good as this is that now we want you to write a book on Bob Gibson (as well as Stan Musial).
Thanks for the article, Joe.
I remember the first poster I ever put up in my room. I was probably 5th or 6th grade and got to choose one because of some fundraising activity. They had a Bob Gibson poster, and I don’t remember now why I chose that one except that I knew that he was the very best pitcher in MLB. Over time, I’ve learned to adjust my reverence: he’s just about the very best pitcher ever in all of MLB history.
Thanks for reminding me.
Awesome.
Mike Leake has a .379 batting average including a hit in his first at bat in last night’s game. In the at bat in the sixth, Leake flied out. He did not strike out or hit a weak ground ball. Who on the bench has a better average? The also-ran Reds are contending in friggin July and yet the Dusty Baker hate continues. It’s beyond obnoxious.
I never thought Kal Daniels could be described as “an acrobat” in Left Field.
Joe: I seem to remember reading somewhere long ago that the awful quote was in Sport magazine.
I absolutely loved the usage of the word smite in this article!
My favorite kind of article. It takes something or someone we all think we know and shows us that we’ve been wrong all along. I give up. I’ll send a check to that food bank.
@2
I had the same question last night…why in the world would he leave Leake in with 2nd and 3rd and 2 outs??? If you remember, he had Rolen in the on-deck circle before the 2-run double was hit. I was thinking that maybe Dusty left Leake in to pitch the 7th since it got to within 3 runs…then he took him out???
There really was zero logic to that move…
- Saving Rolen for later? Put another pinch hitter in.
- You have nobody as good as your pitcher to hit with 2nd and 3rd and 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th inning of a game where you starter already gave up 6 runs? Time for a new bench!!!
@9
It’s not Dusty hate…it’s a crazy move. Yes, Leake has hit the ball well, thus the .379 average. But that’s a small sample, he is the pitcher, and the guys on the bench are paid to hit for the pitcher in this exact situation. If he had no confidence in them, then he is making a serious statement to his GM…get me someone that can hit on this bench. He did have Rolen in the on-deck circle though, so there was no reason to pull him back and let the pitcher hit if he wasn’t going to leave him in the game. Completely illogical.
Correction…man on 2nd and 2 outs…not 2nd and 3rd…maybe that made a little bit of difference, but it still is illogical, considering he had Rolen in the on-deck circle already.
Joe, great article. One of my favorite. I was wondering if you could do your readers a favor and please fix your articles in the archive. Every time I try to reread one of my favorites or introduce my friend to an old favorite the article is messed up. Every time a comma or quotation mark appears, some weird symbols come up and ruin the article. If you need some help deleting those symbols to make them more readable let us know, we can help. Otherwise thanks a lot for your wonderful blog.
That was great. You said before you thought a book on Bob Gibson would be a good idea. After reading this I would 100% buy it.
The man has a .379 batting average. 11 for 29 may be a small sample size, but it is not microscopic. The man can hit. It was not an illogical move.
It would’ve been bad to burn through the bench that early in a game. Save your best bench hitters for situations where the team can tie or take the lead. Had Arthur Rhodes pictched the tenth inning like Sir Arthur has pitched the rest of the year , Rolen would’ve been available to hit in extra innings when the team could really use him. Inserting Rolen into the game in the 6th inning defeats the purpose of giving him a day off. The man is 35 years old, he cannot maintain his current pace without time off.
Great article/post.
Stranger to the Game was a great baseball book.
Interesting that Gibson’s quote on the way he is viewed could be applied to the way he views SI and thus ignored them for so long.
“People turn everything into something else.”
This was awesome. Sometimes I can’t believe you post this stuff for free.
The possibility that the quote actually appeared in Sport feels plausible to me. That would really be some twist on the story.
@19 BSG
Why did he have Rolen in the on-deck circle to pinch-hit for Leake before the double? To “trick” the Phillies? ‘Splain that.
I grew up near St. Louis in the 50′s and 60′s. I was an aspiring little league player and at age 9 in 1962 my Dad took me to see Gibson pitch in old Busch Stadium. I remember to this day the image he projected from the mound and I became a “Gibby” fan for life. After that, because my Dad had contacts in the Cardinals ticket office, we always had tickets whenever Gibson pitched, even in the World Series in ’64 and ’68.
The words I have always used when people ask me to describe watching him pitch are “ultimate competitor”. I met Mr. Gibson after a Cardinals/Cubs game when I was 12. He couldn’t have been nicer. He asked me if I played baseball and at what position. I asked him for any advice. He just smiled and said “Watch the pitcher and don’t blink when you’re in the batters box otherwise the next time you see the ball the catcher will have it.”
Bob Gibson will always be my 2nd favorite Cardinal. The first of course is “Stan the Man”.
Leake was the best athlete at Arizona State just a year ago. Had he also not been the second-best college pitcher, he would have been the starting shortstop and No. 3 hitter in the lineup for a team that won 51 games. He’s no slouch with the bat, and you don’t forget to hit in just one year.
I had the pleasure of watching Bob Gibson pitch; if the Devil put my soul on the line in a baseball game, I want Bob Gibson pitching for my team! (And yes, Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, and Albert Pujols would be in the lineup!)
Had Hernandez only hit a single or earned a walk, the Reds would still be behind by four or five runs with either two men on or the bases loaded. That situation would have called for more desperate measures and a more liberal use of the bench. Having your best hitter come to the plate in the sixth inning down three with only one on is a waste of your best bullet.
Like I said earlier, the move actually worked. Rolen was still available in extra innings. The by-the-book no-questions-asked move of having Rhoades pitch in the 10th inning is the move that backfired.
Mays hit .196 against Gibson – Wow!
What did Clemente hit against Gibby? Maybe not any better than Mays but I do recall that it was a screaming line drive back up the middle off Clemente’s bat that broke Gibson’s leg in the middle of 1967 season. The most remarkable thing about that event was Gibson finished the inning before being taken out of the game. He was on the DL for 6-7 weeks, then came back and pitched as well or better than before. I would love to read more about Gibson…Joe, maybe you can stop time and research, write, research, write, research…
@25
I didn’t realize Mike “A-Rod” Leake was such a good hitter. I wonder why Dusty didn’t play him as DH when they played in the AL parks?
@27
Sounds like you are making two different arguments here. Either Leake was a good enough hitter to leave in to bat for himself or he needed to be pinch-hit for. Why is “A-Rod” Leake good enough to hit for himself with a runner in scoring position and 2 outs and a 6-3 game, but not good enough with 2 outs and a 6-2 game? Seems contradictory to me.
Career hit batters, Bob Gibson: 102
Career hit batters, Greg Maddux: 137
Rolen was in the on-deck circle to get the pitcher to PITCH to Ramon Hernandez. Runners on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs, BEGS for the intentional walk if your pitcher is up next. Hernandez is batting .290. So, you put Rolen in the on-deck circle to make sure (a very good contact) hitter is going to get a pitch to hit. A double and 2 runs later, the move looked good. Now you have a very good hitting pitcher at the plate with 2 outs, a slow runner on 2nd, and you haven’t wasted Rolen. I liked the move. Besides, Rolen would have stepped up had the bases been loaded.
Tough loss for the Redlegs last night. Dusty’s been doing a lot better this year (a lot of managers look better when Willy Tavares, Alex Gonzalez, and Ed Encarnacion aren’t your everyday players).
“Bob Gibson started nine World Series games. He finished eight of them. The only game he didn’t finish was his first — that was at Yankee Stadium, 1964. He was pulled for a pinch-hitter with the Cardinals down by three runs in the eighth inning. After that, he went 7-1 with a 1.60 ERA in World Series games. And no manager dared take him out.”
And in the 1964 World Series where he was taken out after 8 innings in Game 2, he still averaged 9 innings a start because he went 10 innings in the Game 5 win, then went another 9 innings 3 days later in winning game 7. Unreal.
Well, Joe, as usual, you just nailed it. I grew up following Gibson, and I do not remember all the hit batsmen that has become part of his lore. Why would he put someone on base when he could strike them out?
You know what’s always been missing in the Gibson saga? How damn smart he was/is. Hell, yes, he was fierce, but he was always an incredibly intelligent pitcher. I don’t want to lay the blame at racism, necessarily, because I think that’s used too often, but it’s telling how few stories about Gibson ever focus on that intelligence. Bob Gibson didn’t just overpower hitter, he outsmarted them.
@31
The entire question is this…is Leake better than any other hitter you have on your bench? OK, fine. I get that you guys want to keep Rolen available. But what you are saying, then, is that you have a pitcher who is a better hitter than all of your bench players(since Rolen is a starter). You have 4 other guys besides Rolen who could pinch-hit. If a rookie pitcher, who is 11 for 29 in his career, is better than anybody else you have available, then that is a sad commentary on the state of the Reds bench. Because there’s no other way to look at it. Leake was hitting because of his HITTING, not because Dusty was saving a pinch-hitter or a bullpen arm. Leake stayed in because Dusty decided he was better than the alternative, non-Rolen pinch hitter. Ugh.
And look at it this way…if Rolen gets a hit there, and makes it 6-4, then Votto’s 3 run dinger in the 9th WINS THE GAME. So yeah, you can theoretically say that move cost them the game if you believe that Rolen has a better chance to get a hit than Leake. Of course, Leake is a lifetime .379 hitter, and was a number 3 hitter on the Arizona State team just last year. So he probably had a better chance than Rolen to get a hit anyway, right? LOL.
Gibson:
Tim McCarver has told the story about looking at Johnny Keane, manager, on the bench and seeing him signal for McCarver to go to the mound. McCarver looked at Gibson and Gibson stared him down. For a moment McCarver was scared to move. He finally made it out and the result was as Joe described above.
Another story: Bill White, Gibson’s closest teammate, went to the Phillies. In the first Spring game Gibson put him down. White said “I knew that was coming”.
McCarver also says that the display of Gibson pitching on a broken leg after the Clemente drive smashed it (mentioned by a BR above) was described to all new pitchers over the next few years and the training room was lonely.
I loooove these baseball stories
Joe, great blog as always…
I’m working on Gibson’s autobiography that was written in the early 90′s. In it, he mentions how one of the sports magazines wrote a very distasteful piece about him. He mentioned that he thought it was SI, but that he may have been wrong, that it may have been one of the others. I’ll go back and look for exactly what he said and post it here. I’m guessing the reason you couldn’t find it Joe, was because another magazine wrote it.
@30
Career games, Bob Gibson: 528
Career games, Greg Maddux: 744
Bob Gibson figures prominently in the Curse of the Bambino. The Red Sox didn’t win any championships from 1918 to 2004, but in part that’s because when they got to the WS they faced very stiff competition. They faced the 108-win Mets in ’86, the 108-win Reds in ’75 and Bob Gibson in ’67.
@34
I totally understand your point. I am wondering if you watched/listened to the entire game. By saving the pinch hitter, Dusty made available double switches and bringing in bench players later in the game (supposedly for defensive purposes). In the 10th, had Stubbs and/or Nix made plays, the gamble works. I don’t think anyone is saying Leake/Nix/Stubbs is a better option than Rolen off the bench last night. I think the overall point is that sometimes a manager has to weigh his options. The key reason Rolen was even brought up in the 6th was to make sure Hernandez would be given something to hit (which he did).
As to Rolen hitting in that position, he would have needed a sure-fire double or more to score Hernandez (to call him slow around the bases would be an insult to Jose Guillen).
I disagree with your assessment that the Reds bench is terrible if Leake is batting instead of Rolen (each person on that bench has been a very productive member of this surprise team). And i think that one managerial move (like this), that worked (they got runs they needed to put themselves in a position to win the game), doesn’t define a “mind-numbing” move. Its open to argument. Which is what sports is all about.
Bob Gibson is my favorite pitcher of all time; there is no one I’d take over him in game 7 of the WS. No one! The biggest shock in my entire life as a baseball fan came when the Cards lost in 1968 with him on the mound. (Yes even bigger than the shock when Denkinger made the safe call in 1985.) Of course it took a misplay by one of the best CF in the game but still…
I knew he was never quite the danger that fans and media alike made him out to be – the stats were there then for all to see. Of course, he was no pussycat either – he was a fiery competitor who refused to lose. Yet despite that knowledge, my favorite story came from his days as Braves coach when he pitched BP and had some player make a snotty comment so he hit him. Funny and yet it rang true about his personality of not giving in.
I wonder how he feels about the congeniality that seems to happen everywhere between opposing teams’ players. He famously viewed all of the opponent as the enemy – even when they had once been his friends. Between the lines, there is “us” and “them” and no one knew that better than he did, in my view.
I swear if he came back today, I’d expect him to win. He probably wouldn’t of course but I’d expect it
Please develop the relationship and get him to let you write the whole story, Joe. Please.
And when i say “which is what sports is all about” i mean: After winning world championships for your hometown, and after playing hard for your fans, and after signing multi-million dollar endorsements, and after beating your wife/fiancee/mistress, and after punching a bartender in the face because he thought you had too much to drink. . . eventually, way down on the list is that sports are fun to talk about.
@39
I live in Philly and watched every pitch of the game. I could not have been happier when Rolen went back to the bench for the pitcher. Blanton was dying in the 6th(getting close to 100 pitches), and he would have given up a big hit to Rolen…whether it would have been a HR or a double, all I could think was that run is scoring. Then I see Leake come up and I figured, OK, Dusty wants to save his bullpen. No biggie..it’s a 3 run lead now, and the way the Phillies bullpen is going, 3 runs ain’t alot(as was displayed by Lidge in the 9th) Then I see a new pitcher in the 7th for the Reds, and I thought…wow.
When your starting pitcher is coming out of the game anyway, you don’t let him hit in the bottom of the 6th inning down 3 runs with a runner in scoring position. Unless you think your pitcher is better as a hitter than the alternative. You are home, and have only 10 outs left. If it is 2-1 and you are leaving the guy in, then maybe. And if the guy is a great hitter, maybe. This is a rookie, 11-29 in his “career”, and I totally disagree with you about leaving him in to hit. To save the other 4 guys on your bench for double-switches down the road?
The question is…who is more likely to get the run home…Rolen or Leake? If you say Rolen, then you have to say the move cost the team the game, because, like I said, the Votto HR wins the game instead of tying it up.
@42
Yeah, the object is to score more runs than the other team. And if you have the chances to score them, you better take them when you can (and a man on 2nd with 2 outs in the 6th inning is what i would consider a decent chance). I don’t think I ever really “agreed” with the Dusty’s move to bat Leake there, but i disagree with the original notion (way back in post #2) that it is a candidate for the “dumbest move of the baseball season.”
It was a gamble, and it didn’t work, and now the Reds have split the first two games against your Phils, and now Harang has to battle against Roy (in a game that i’ll probably be cringing through by the time the 3rd inning rolls around).
btw: I lived in Philly for 6 years and fell in love the Dykstra/Kruk/Daulton/ (and yes, even) Mitch Williams Phillies’ teams of the 90s. I am happy for the city that you guys have such a fun club to root for. I just home the Reds are the team to knock them off their NL throne.
Great story Joe, thanks.
You guys are over-thinking this. There are almost no circumstances in which leaving your starting pitcher in to make the last out of an inning and then sending out a relief pitcher for the next inning makes sense.
Maybe there are some limited such situations. When you have someone in scoring position in a game that is not out of reach is DEFINITELY NOT one of those limited situations.
@37…You got the idea right, though IP are more relevant than games. Gibson hit is 102 batters in fewer than 3900 innings. Maddux hit his 137 in a little over 5000 innings.
Interestingly, when you do the math, it comes out to the exact same ratio of HBP per 9 innings: 0.27.
Awesome story — I became a big baseball fan right when the torch was being passed from Koufax to Gibson as the best pitcher in baseball.
One question, though — I must be missing something. How does Gibson say “The only real problem is,” he says, “they got it all wrong.” — and yet there are all those stories about him (including 100% verifiable ones like hitting guys in old timer games)?
Is he in self-denial? Or what?
That’s not to take anything away from him. I do clearly remember the racism about blacks in high-profile positions (pitchers and quarterbacks). But I’m just trying to understand him a bit better.
Anyone?
@45
Even a starting pitchter batting .379 who already had a hit earlier that night? A pitcher that can hit is essentially an extra pinch hitter. I thought nubers guys were people that liked to think out of the box. Dusty Baker went against groupthink, FIRE HIM!!!!
My personal bob gibson story (it’s how I remember it but it was over 40 yrs ago…):
as a kid growing up in ny in the early 60s, I was a met fan. as constant losing is tough on a kid, I decided I needed another team, and chose the cardinals (I was greatly influenced by an older summer friend who was a cards fan due to his having relatives in st. louis).
I was at a mets/cards game, got there super-early to get cardinal autographs during warmups. I had never done this before (remember this was before the collectible era had begun and autographs had no monetary value, or at least as a preteen had none to me; besides no one on the mets was autograph-worthy at that time). curt flood was my favorite player (I swore he was as good as willie mays), but i’d take autographs from gibson or musial or white or brock or anyone).
I made a special autograph board for the occasion, stapling clean white paper to a sheet of cardboard. I stood, with others, at the side of the cardinal dugout. As a kid, I knew nothing of gibson’s reputation as a headhunter or hardass but “knew” he was better than koufax and marichal.
gibson was on the field signing for fans shouting “bob” and waving programs.
i shouted “mr. gibson” and to my surprise he walked over, took my cardboard and signed it.
As he was handing it back someone yelled “hey bob, what happened in philly last week?” (in his last start, gibson got uncharacteristically lit up and took a loss). Gibson’s face twisted in anger as he abruptly turned his back on us autograph seekers, and walked from the stands to the diamond.
I also got nelson briles’ autograph that day.
Interesting debate on Dusty’s move. The bigger mistake, of course, is one made by all major league teams, which is carrying too many pitchers, thus limiting how many moves you can make with your players in the mid innings. 12 pitchers is too many, especially in the AL. 13 is insane. In the AL, when a team carries 13 pitchers (which the Royals have done this year on occasion), you have exactly 3 bench players (one of whom is presumably a catcher). Someday, the teams will figure out that all that flexibility you gain with your pitchers by carrying 7 or 8 bullpen guys is lost in your bench. And to me, you would win more games by having a 5th outfielder or a 6th infielder on your roster than your 13th best pitcher.
Anyway, Joe, I said this before when you wrote about Robin Roberts, but you have to collect all this great information you have collected over the years in a book, call it “The Glory of Their Time: A Sequel”.
Whether the quote was in Sports Illustrated or Sport probably doesn’t matter to Gibson, and why should it? Both are sports magazines, and why should he talk to any sports magazines? They’re still getting his career wrong in his opinion.
In this piece, Joe goes over all the famous stories about how intimidating Gibson was, but Gibson doesn’t seem to want to be remembered that way. Why talk to any of them, if they’re going to keep writing like that? Joe is one of the best in the business, and he just brought all that stuff up again. Other sportswriters would be worse, and would keep pushing the intimidation image, instead of pointing out facts (as the BR above did) like Maddux hitting more batters.
Gibson doesn’t need or want the publicity, which is admirable, IMO. So he doesn’t want to talk to sportswriters, I sure don’t blame him for that. It doesn’t seem very hard to understand why.
Back in the day — and I’m not sure the exact years of this, but I know it was true in the mid 70s — Sports Illustrated had regional sections in the front and back of the magazine. They weren’t labeled as such, but they existed. If you lived on the West Coast, you might read a piece about a Notre Dame student reminiscing about his failed bookmaking operation, while some one back east got something else. So you might have to widen the search for the quote if you’re looking at a single set of SI issues.
Why the hell are you guys talking about Mike Leake?
@52 – because he was the best goddarn manager in the history of the Bad News Bears.
@37: Fair enough, although I was only trying to show that Gibson’s headhunter rep was way, way overblown. How about this:
HB per 250 innings:
Gibson 6.6
Maddux 6.8
Thanks for the great read Joe. Gibson’s been a favorite of mine since I was a kid since he and I are both from Omaha and Creighton grads. (Circle me, Billy Bluejay!)
(You could say Omaha athletics was Gale Sayers, Bob Boozer, Bob Gibson, and Marmot…but you would have say it pretty fast and hope nobody was listening there at the end.)
Anyway, when I was a kid Nebraskans had this pretty severe inferiority complex (not like now) and so when my Dad would talk about this man from Omaha who grew up to play for the Globetrotters and be the dominant pitcher Gibson was, I was just fascinated by that.
I used to go to Bob Gibson’s, a restaurant he had in town, in hope of getting to meet him. Never happened and the restaurant eventually closed down and then years later the building burned down.
Thanks for the nostalgia Joe!
The way old time players and endless hack broadcasters invoke Gibson’s name every time they want to make a cliched point about “how the game used to be played” has dulled my opinion of him over the years. In lionizing him, they’ve turned him into a caricature.
Only Joe can manage to get past that.
@53: NO FRICKIN’ WAY is that Leake a better manager than me.
Of course Greg Maddux (MY favorite pitcher of all time) hit more batters. Greg didn’t throw 95 mph, more like 85. And in the ’60′s, the batters didn’t go to the plate wearing a suit of armor. If a 95 mph fastball is bearing down on you, you’re going to dive out of the way. If it’s 85, and you have pads on every elbow, knee, and shin, you’re probably going to take the hit and take your base.
If memory serves, didn’t Gibson pummel some guy after a fender bender a few years ago? I remember Jim Rome talking about what a bad ass Gibby still was, even though he was in his 60′s. Anyone?
I haven’t read this yet, but this better not be in lieu of the Gibson book you hinted that you might write some day.
Mike Leake’s father was a strikeout and his mother was a broken bat. He can induce double plays without any baserunners. He is so awesome that George Clooney and Michael Jordan ask him for advice
Dusty Baker puts his pants on upside down and wipes his butt with statistical analysis. He is so stupid he once tried to lay down a bunt on defense
…But this blog was about Bob Gibson, who once posted a 1.12 ERA
Joe had a post from a few years back that ranked the Top 10 Most Intimidating Pitchers Ever. In it, he touches on how Gibson’s HBP numbers were way overblown, among other things.
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008/01/23/in-honor-of-the-writers-strike-a-repeat/
@45 Bill C and 37 as well
Bottom line is that Gibby and Maddog hit about the same number of hitters per IP and yet Gibby’s rep is of a headhunter and Maddog’s rep is of being a choirboy or at least a professor.
Both had great command but I feel safe in saying that Maddux’ command was what he was all about and thus much better than Gibby’s. Yet he hit as many (roughly) as did the Intimidator.
All of which validates Joe’s point that Gibson’s rep is overstated.
@63
Agreed, Maddux and Gibson’s HBP/IP are similar. The aim of my original comment (@37) was not to say that Gibson’s reputation was or was not deserved, but only that we should be careful in what stats we select to make that case. Of course, I then went and undermined my whole point by using G rather than IP…
#46- I was thinking the same thing. Joe quotes from a story by Roger Angell above. That was part of an entire chapter Roger wrote about Gibson in one of his books.
The thing that struck me, in his discussions with Roger, Gibson seemed very comfortable in his role as an intimidator (he was retired by then).
I think he may be being a tad disingenuous now.
Agreed on Gibson’s headhunter rep being overblown. However, Maddux’s reputation as a finesse pitcher is equally overblown. He threw inside as much as anyone in the 90s and his strikeout pitch was his fastball.
bsg @47…yes even a pitcher batting .379 with a hit earlier that night. Contrary to your earlier assertion, 29 ABs IS a microscopic sample size, utterly meaningless as a predictor of Leake’s likelihood of getting a hit in his next AB.
I think what it boils down to for Dusty is that he is a good manager of men. He’s a leader, he can maintain control of a clubhouse even with such egos and malcontents as Bonds and Kent. He was a good everyday player for quite a few years and he can relate to his players.
Tactical managing is not his strong suit. In fact he is downright bad at it. But it’s fair to argue that Baker’s strong suits (leadership of men and the like) are more important traits for a manager than tactical brilliance (though of course one would like a manager to have both). And generally Baker’s track record is successful enough that it’s fair to say he is a good manager in spite of his tactical shortcomings.
@50–I think the point of Joe’s article is the contradiction between how others saw Gibby and how he saw himself.
@61–Surely you’ve confused Mike Leake with Derek Jeter.
Off topic … I don’t know if the reports of Woods’ divorce settlement are true but if so, I would like to change my vote to “yes I feel certain he will” break Nicklaus’ record.
OK, back to Bob Gibson. Many of his catchers (McCarver, Torre, Uecker) have been prominent in the booth or the dugout since the late ’70s and so that helped spread the legend of Gibby to those who are, unlike me, too young to remember him pitching.
@66–I agree with you, although I generally think that managers/coaches are given too much credit for their overall ability to affect a game, I can’t dispute that Dusty has gotten the Giants, Cubs, and possibly the Reds into the playoffs.
PS–In a totally unrelated note, Mark Prior is trying to make a comeback with a workout at USC. Upon hearing a Reds scout might attend his audition, Prior’s right shoulder quietly wept.
@66
“bsg @47…yes even a pitcher batting .379 with a hit earlier that night. Contrary to your earlier assertion, 29 ABs IS a microscopic sample size, utterly meaningless as a predictor of Leake’s likelihood of getting a hit in his next AB.”
Your statement is correct, but the evidence you have that Leake ISN’T a good hitter is even less than microscopic, it doesn’t exist.
Bob Gibson would be by far my first choice to pitch a WS Game 7. I enjoy the stories about his tough guy reputation, but David Halberstam’s description of Game 7 of the Cardinals/Yankees World Series in “October 1964″ is what seals Gibson’s permanent place in my baseball heart. Mr. Gibson was a flat-out competitor. All the things Joe says about him come to light in the last couple of innings in that one game. Marvelous.
Joe, as always – you nailed it again. And yes, now you need to write bios of Bob Gibson and Stan Musial.
File this under “just because”:
HR:
Bob Gibson – 24
Mark Belanger – 20
Gold Gloves:
Gibson – 9
Belanger – 8
“David used this wind-up when smiting Goliath.”
There it is in 7 words: why you are the best sportswriter currently working*. That is truly, truly brilliant.
*I would say “of all time”, but that spot still belongs to Red Smith**, IMHO. Maybe after you’ve been around for a few more decades like he was.
**For such things as, “90 feet between bases is the closest man has come to perfection”, and, after the Thrilla in Manila, “Joe Frazier makes Ali fight better than he knows how.”
As a long-time Greg Maddux fan and close observer, I would say that a fair number of those HBP were intentional. I mean, really — his control was so good that he never walked anyone, but he was so wild he hit batters at the same rate as Gibson? Talk about cognitive dissonance.
To be more specific, I remember watching a Braves game on TV when Maddux was the starter, and the opposing leadoff hitter was what used to be known as a “banjo hitter”. (I want to say it was Juan Pierre, but I can’t find any evidence at B-R.com.) Anyway, the first time up, the leadoff guys dinks a single just over the 3rd baseman’s head. In his second at bat, he dinks a single over the 1st baseman’s head. The 3rd time up, Maddux hits him in the butt with the FIRST pitch, as if to say, “Here, go to first — but this time we’re doing it my way.”
The nickname “Mad Dog” was not entirely a joke.
I remember watching Bob Gibson pitch in hisheyday and one of the impressions that has always stuck was that he was probably the best athlete on the field. You can’t say that about too many pitchers.
Oldtime fans (I’m 68) like to think back to the 1960′s and think of that era as the “Golden Age of Pitching.” 2010 seems to be a new “golden age.”
Joe, I loved the column.
norm e: You nailed it with Gibson being the best athlete on the field. I believe he actually became the best possible when he faced Mays, Aaron or Clemente in their prime. Those challenges are what took him to his level of greatness.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
When I was a kid in New York, Bill White and Phil Rizzuto were the voices of the Yankees, and White liked to tell that story cited in post #35. He and Gibson came up through the Cardinals’ organization together, and were fast friends. To some extent, segregation FORCED all black players on the Cardinals to stick together, and that made them even closer than most teammates.
But as #35 notes, White was traded to the Phillies, and in White’s first at-bat against the Cardinals the next year, Gibson plunked him!
White was NOT angry at Gibson. He EXPECTED it, and understood perfectly. Gibson and WHite went out for drinks and dinner that night, so there obviously weren’t any hard feelings. White told the story largely to show a) how competitive Gibson was (even his best friend was NOT going to be allowed to crowd the plate), and b) how much the game has changed ( in White and Gibson’s day, you were expected to take your beaning like a man and shrug it off- NOT charge the mound!)
I’m reminded of a TV interview Don Drysdale gave not long before he died. The interviewer noted that Don seemed like a very mellow, laid-back, jolly, thoroughly nice guy… but as a pitcher, he had a reputation as a headhunter. How, the interviewer wondered, could a nice guy like Drysdale throw at the head of a nice guy like Stan Musial or Hank Aaron?
At first, Drysdale still looked cheerful, but his demenaor changed drastically as he began to reminisce. “Well, you have to remember that in my day, we didn’t make a lot of money,” Drysdale began. “So that World Series check was VERY important to me. That World Series check sometimes meant the difference between paying my mortgage and not. Between sending my kid to college or not. So, here’s Stan Musial or Hank Aaron at bat. He’s trying to beat me. He’s trying to keep me out of the World Series. He’s trying to take my World Series check. That son of a bitch is taking money from me and my kids…”
I’m not kidding- Drysdale had been out of baseball for ages at this point, but you could see in his face that he was ready to bean Stan Musial or Hank Aaron right then and there!
I suspect Bob Gibson would understand.
Baker explained in detail why he let Leake hit. The question is, would he have hit for Bob Gibson in that situation?
From Cincinnati.com:
Dusty Baker knows he was heavily second-guessed for letting Mike Leake hit last night in the sixth inning rather than pinch-hitting with Scott Rolen. There were two outs and Ramon Hernandez was on second. Here’s his explanation:
“I didn’t want to waste Scottie there because they weren’t going to throw Scottie nothing with first base open.
“The strong side of my bench (Miguel Cairo and Chris Heisey) was actually in the game already. I was down to (Paul) Janish. (Laynce) Nix, (Corky) Miller. I didn’t want to use Nix in that situation. I lose him against a righty (reliever). I was trying to save Scottie because I knew they were going to use (J.C.) Romero at some point in time. I know how Charlie (Manuel’s) been using his bullpen. I know he’s been stretching his starters to not go to his bullpen.
“Plus, that fact (Leake) can hit. Why would I waste Scott Rolen, my top pinch-hitter, in the sixth inning when I still have three innings to go?
“If Ramon had walked or just hit a single, then it’s a different situation. The fact that first base was open he wasn’t going to throw Scottie anything. I wouldn’t throw Scottie anything.
“That’s why Scottie went out there first.”
“Things change. I know sometimes people are scratching their head and asking why or whatever. The situation changes and it changes what you do. Who do you have up next? Who do you have left on your bench? Who do you have in the bullpen? All those things go through your mind and have that long to make up your mind.
“If they pitch around Scottie, then I lose Scottie, and people are asking why did you use Scottie in the sixth inning?
“. . . Especially people looking are looking for something you did wrong. It’s easy when you’re looking for something you did wrong. Rather than looking for something you did right. Right is what turns out right.”
Thank you Joe, that was terrific.
The July 1965 issue of Sport magazine has an article on Bob Gibson in it, but I don’t have access to it. Someone might try looking there.
Half of Gibby’s HBP came in the first 37% of his ML innings, before he perfected control.
Furthermore, his totals don’t come close to those of contemporaries like Bunning or Drysdale.
Joe’s point is that Gibson’s fierceness was in his determination to win. His throwing inside was nothing special, but his intensity was intimidating. I’ve seen them all since Feller, and I never saw a better competitor.
Gibby pitched in three World Series. He threw 27 innings in each of them.
This is the problem with stats obsession. Some of the posters above are arguing that Gibson’s Hit Batter count is evidence that Gibson’s point of view is correct, that he was not a mean or deliberalty intimidating pitcher. Yet batters who faced him were inimitated. Just because he didn’t hit a lot of them, doesn’t mean he didn’t knock a lot of them down, or brush them back, or hot them hard as pay back. Looking at one stat is isolation is rearely a proof of anything, and taking a stat and using it to claim the opposite of what opposing players say they felt is just nonsense. Gibson may not have hit a large number of hitters, but he obviously hit enough, and did other things, to make players remember that he would hit them. He had it in their heads, and that’s what indimitation is.
(sorry, its late and I typed my comment poorly)
Joe,
Great article.
This may help with finding/not finding the SI article in question (From a Google search):
Exerpt from this blog. http://emsworth.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/why-would-a-black-actor-want-to-play-in-priestley-anyway/
… In his fine autobiography, Stranger to the Game, which we just finished, the Hall of Fame pitcher tells how he was interviewed by Sports Illustrated in 1959 during spring training.
“I felt reasonably good about the interview. When the magazine came out, there was a forgettable short story accompanied by a photograph with an unforgettable caption that said something like: “I don’t do no thinkin’ about pitchin’. I just hum dat pea.”
Gibson is putting out a very different message in this interview than in the book he recently co-wrote with Reggie Jackson, “Sixty Feet, Six Inches.” Hearing him now reminds me of Charles Barkley complaining of being misquoted … in his own autobiography.
@66
Bill, you just defined Charlie Manuel. Everybody considers him this wonderful manager, and he is…of players. He is one of the worst gameday managers in baseball. He routinely mishandles the bullpen and makes dumb decisions…but he handles the egos the way they need to be handled and they went out and won two straight pennants for him. They freaking adore the guy.
@79
“I was down to (Paul) Janish. (Laynce) Nix, (Corky) Miller. I didn’t want to use Nix in that situation.”
Thanks for posting Dusty’s rationale…I’m glad I’m not Janish or Miller…now I know that Dusty considers the rookie pitcher with 30 career at bats a better hitter than me. Way to show your guys some confidence, Dusty.
Leake – .379/.414/.419 29ABs
Janish – .227/.364/.346 44ABs
Miller – .179/.214/.233 28ABs
@87
Those numbers just prove the point that the Reds bench is pathetic. I still say he should have batted Rolen. Dusty said they would probably not have given Rolen anything to hit…OK, so he walks, the order is turned over, and the lead-off hitter, who just happened to lead off the 7th inning with a single, is coming up as the tying run. Blanton was exhausted.
#78 Astoria – twould be odd that Bill White would remember coming up with Gibson in the Cardinal organization, considering White was signed by the Giants and traded to the Cards after he was in the major leagues.
Gibson said he told White that if he ever dove across the plate to hit an outside pitch he, Gibson, would hit him. White did and so did Gibson.
I grew up in the St. Louis area during Gibson’s prime and have these clear memories.
1. He was the quickest pitcher I have ever seen. He would stand impatiently at the top of the mound waiting for the ball after every pitch, and then immediately go back into his windup after the catcher returned the ball.
2. He was smart and very well spoken, sounded like Jackie Robinson.
3. He was an excellent fielder, a good hitter and a fast runner.
4. He was all business on the mound and had an attitude.
5. He lost that 7th game of the 1968 World Series to the surprise of everyone. Curt Flood misjudged a line drive (took a step line) in the 7th and opened the gates to 3 runs, breaking up a scoreless tie. Boy, the game would have been a classic without that mistake. Gibson still pitched a complete game and struck out 8.
6. He struggled at the end of his career in 1975 at age 39, like most everyone, although he was good at 37 (1.33 ers+) and okay at 38 (95 ers+) It feel to 75 in 1975.
7. I remembered a brief resurrection as a relief pitcher in 1975, and confirmed in in looking at baseball reference. He was pulled from the rotation after a July 8 start with a 2 and 8 record. He then picked up a win and 2 saves in his first 3 games as a relief pitcher, striking out 10 and giving up no runs in 8.2 innings. The third outing he struck out the side in the 11th to save a 4 to 3 victory, and there was much talk about about him becoming a closer. The thought was that he could still throw hard for a short time, or perhaps he had a new pitch. Alas, it was a mirage. He pitched in only four more games, giving up 7 runs in 5.2 innings and striking out no one, culminating on September 3 with him giving up 5 runs in one inning with that grand slam by Pete LaCock (!!!) ( the only one of his career) with 2 outs in the seventh inning, dropping his record to 3 and 10. He apparently got the next guy out or at least someone out to end the inning. There were 23 gamess left. You’d think Schoedienst would have run him out one more time, but that was the end before about 14,000 in St. Louis.
8. He looks great in the photo with President Obama, for a guy 74 years old.
In his autobiography which part of the quote was already excerpted in #84 Gibson says that during spring training in 1959 he was photographed next to George Crowe for an interview he done and the caption for the photograph contained the “hum dat pea” quote. Now it is possible that we cannot find this quote because it is a caption for a photo and from what I can remember when searching through the SI archives the photos are taken out. So you almost have to go back and search a real copy of the SI and not a database.
I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody looked into the April 13, 1959 issue of SI you would fine a picture of Gibson. They did a whole article about the Cardinals in that issue.
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Mark S.: if I got the details of the story wrong, my memory is undoubtedly at fault, and not Bill White’s.
nobody cares about Leake, a temporary condition, soon to be forgotten…
Gibson is an immortal; what on earth has gone wrong with us where half the comments on a post about him are instead about some transient circumstance?
in 40 years, no one will care about Leake and Dusty Baker and the circumstances of one game.
80 years after 1968, we will still remember Gibson.
The race issue is also interesting with Gibson. He was a very proud and tough guy who was very strong against racial bigotry, and St. Louis historically had not been the most integrated place, but at least by the time I arrived in 1966, race did not seem to be an issue. The fans very much liked Gibson, Brock, Flood, Javier (Latin) and then loved Cepeda (also Latin).
[...] * Joe Posnanski on Bob Gibson. [...]
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In 97 AB in college, Leake had a .299/.402/.485/.887 line.
As a sophomore, he “started playing in the field midway through the season, batting .340 with two homers and 11 RBI in 47 at bats…played first, second, short, left, center and right in addition to pitching” according to the sun devils’ website.
Joe — Great piece on Gibson. I grew up in the 1960′s and early 1970′s as a die-hard Cardinals fan, and to this day, he is my favorite player of all time. The first full-length book I ever read (at 9 years old) was “From Ghetto to Glory” by Bob Gibson. It was a classic and displayed the complexity and intellectual depth of Gibson the man, as well as Gibson the pitcher. For those interested, I wrote an essay entitled, “High and Inside: Appreciating Bob Gibson,” which can be found on my blog at:
http://ehlersoneverything.blogspot.com/2009/12/high-and-inside-appreciating-bob-gibson.html
I remember all of those things about Gibson, but I also remember him guest starring on an episode of “Flipper.”
In response to the HBP comparison between Gibson and Maddux, keep in mind that HBPs are much more prevalent now than in Gibson’s day. In 1970 a batter was hit about every 42.1 innings. In 2000 that figure was at about one every 27.1 innings, the same as in 2009. One big reason fewer batters were hit was because they wouldn’t crowd the plate as most hitters do today. Ever watch an old game on MLB Network? I am amazed at how most players in the ’50s (or ’60s or ’70s) could not reach a pitch on the outer half of the plate. When Guidry struck out 18, the batting stances of the Angel hitters would be laughable these days. Dave Chalk (not that he was even a decent hitter) choked up at least six inches on the bat (and that is no exaggeration), and stepped in the bucket badly. And by the way, how many batters do you think Guidry hit in his career? A whopping 13, fewer than the league leaders for a season these days.
[...] yet, the people who play sports, better than any sportswriter I know. This long Sports Illustrated story on Bob Gibson is a perfect [...]
KC Oracle is right- while segregation did exist in St. Louis, most of the black men who played for the Cardinals LIKED the Busch family and thought they were embraced by the fans. That’s one reason a guy like Curt Flood fought so hard against being traded to the Philadelphia, which most black players thought was a much more hostile environment to play in (at the time, anyway).
On the race issue, I realize that I cannot prove it, and it may have been only a minor factor, but Harry Caray as the Cardinal announcer may have helped St. Louis get past race through his unabashed love of the team and of the great players on the team such as Gibson, Brock and Flood.
Not two stories about Old Timers Games, but 3. Here’s a story Bobby Richardson told me when I met him 2 years ago:
“Bob Gibson was an imposing guy and had a great series in ’64 but I (Richardson) did as well, breaking the WS record for hits. I actually had 7 of my 13 hits that series off Gibson, although Gibson got me out to end Game 7 and give the Cardinals the Series win.”
“I retired in 66 and didn’t see Bob Gibson again for quite awhile. Much much later I was playing in an old-timers game and Gibson was the opposing pitcher. I mentioned to someone on my side that I hadn’t seen him since the 64 Series and I wondered if he even remembered me.”
“My first at bat, first pitch from Mr Gibson was right at my head.” “In an old timers game.” “I guess he remembered”, Richardson related with a long laugh.
Hey Joe,
I enjoy your articles so much– this type of article in particular. I so appreciate the way you take the time to thoughtfully turn this man around and look at him from different angles, telling us a story not just about baseball but about what it is to be human. You do that as well as any writer I know. I don’t always post a comment just to say “Thanks, Joe, for another wonderful article…” so consider this my thank you for a few hundred thousand illuminating words.
I remember reading a qoute by Gibson that went “I didn’t throw at men often, but when I did I hit them.” I think that nicely reconciles Gibson’s reality with everyone else’s. You don’t have to bean guys left and right when you project a fearsome demeanor and bean them every time you intend to.
I LOVED this post…..Hate St. Louis…(another story for another day) but Mr. Gibson(Gibby) was the best….realize, I was 3 or 4 when Mr. Gibson was great..but he was my brother’s (whom I idolized) favorite pitcher. So he was/is mine. I had the great fortune of attending Creighton University in the 80′s and personally paid Mr. Gibson’s rent on the bar he owned for the four years I was there. He would come in on a Saturday to check out the place. I, of course, would try to be cool but fall all over myself in awe. Mr. Gibson was one of the NICEST men I ever met…bought us a pitcher or two over the years…I say Mr. Gibson because he deserves it….not that he was older…he just deserves the moniker….
Mike Leake’s batting line tonight against the Phillies… 3-4 with an RBI
FIRE DUSTY BAKER!!!
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