St. Louis Cardinal Bob Gibson’s greatness lay in his toughness, tenacity and courage
He was, arguably, the greatest Cardinal pitcher ever.
He was, arguably, the greatest pitcher of his generation.
But no argument here: Bob Gibson – more than any other baseball player I can think of – symbolized toughness, tenacity, competitiveness and courage.
That singular fact hit home when the Hall of Fame pitcher died Friday at the age of 84, losing his fight against pancreatic cancer. His death came three weeks and five days after the loss of his teammate Lou Brock, on Sept. 6.
And so we’ve lost another piece of our youth, another shining symbol of greatness on and off the baseball field, another Red Jacket demonstrating the best of The Birds on the Bat.
“Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher in baseball,” his catcher and longtime friend Tim McCarver said more than once. “He’s always pitching when the other team doesn’t score any runs.”
Most Cardinal fans today, I warrant, never got to see Gibson, at his best, on the mound, willing yet another Redbirds World Series team to the pinnacle of the sport.
But those fans, told so by their dads and moms, know the central role he played on three World Series teams in the 1960s.
I hope they also know of the injustice he had to endure in the segregated 50s and early 60s, when he wasn’t allowed to stay in the team hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida. Imagine: The best pitcher on the team being told he couldn’t room with his teammates because of his race.
And I hope those fans know the details of Gibby’s unparalleled season in 1968 – a record 1.12 ERA, 28 complete games, 268 strikeouts, 13 shutouts, a record 17 strikeouts against Detroit in Game 1 of the World Series – caused the sport to lower the pitching mound from 15 inches to 10 inches.
That rules change – the first major revision in the rules book since the deadball era decades before – gave hitters a better chance against the likes of Gibson, Koufax, Marichal, McLain, Drysdale et al.
Gibson may have been the best of the bunch: At one point in that 1968 season, from the early days of June to the end of July, he allowed two earned runs in 96 2/3 innings spanning 11 starts.
Unthinkable. But also unhittable.
Once, San Francisco Hall of Fame hitter Willie Mays retreated to the Giants dugout, having struck out against Gibson. His manager, Herman Franks, responded by yelling at Mays and his teammates, urging them to try harder.
“You don’t understand, Herman,” Mays told his skipper. “That’s Mr. Gibson over there.”
Gibby’s greatest asset was his grit, a fierce determination to never leave the game with the outcome on the line. He had 28 complete games in 1968 and another 28 in 1969; by comparison, Adam Wainwright has 24 for his career, pitching in a different era of the game.
Gibson’s resolve led to the most remarkable stat line of any pitcher I’ve ever seen: He had 251 wins in 17 seasons, but 255 complete games.
Who does that?
This player does: A pitcher so competitive he pitched to three more batters after Pittsburgh’s Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente broke his leg with a line drive on July 15, 1967, at Busch Stadium.
I know the date because it was my 14 th birthday, and I was in the stands with my twin brother, John, and our best friend Davey Jalageas, watching in disbelief from the general admission seats in the uppermost reaches of the ballpark.
Years later, after I’d become the beat writer covering the Cardinals for the Belleville News-Democrat, I told Gibson and Red Schoendienst the recollections of that teenage boy on a sunny and yet dark summer afternoon at Busch.
“It was my birthday,” I said. “The worst day of my life.”
“Hey,” Gibby said, chuckling, “it might have been the worst day of my life, too.”
If Gibson was responsible for the worst moment I’ve had at Busch, though, he was also responsible for the best.
I’d begun my baseball writing career the autumn that Ozzie Smith hit his “Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!” home run in 1985. I was at Busch for Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, staring in wonder as David Freese tripled and then homered in what may be the most remarkable Fall Classic game ever played. I was there for Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols and Tony La Russa and all the rest.
But I never had as much fun as I did on a sleepy Sunday morning in 2000 or 2001 – I don’t remember for sure – when Gibson was holding court in La Russa’s clubhouse office.
A handful of reporters were there, along with La Russa. And all of us must have looked like kids on Christmas morning.
For more than an hour, Gibby told war stories: How he pitched higher and higher in the strike zone during Willie McCovey’s at-bats, knowing the Giants Hall of Famer couldn’t resist the temptation to swing; how he didn’t really throw at hitters, they just wouldn’t let him have the inside part of the plate; how he threw all those complete games.
And how he learned to appreciate fine wine after attending a fellow player’s wedding during an otherwise forgettable spring training in the early 1960s.
“They had a champagne fountain,” Gibson said. “I filled a glass and took a sip, and said, ‘Hey, this is pretty good.’
“I go down to the corner liquor store the next day, buy a case of the stuff – it probably cost 10 bucks or so – and put it in my trunk where it was the rest of spring training. I was just a kid. What did I know?
“Well, we got back to St. Louis, and I opened one of the bottles. ‘Man, this isn’t very good.’”
I’ll never forget that morning. Or all the proud, principled memories that Bob Gibson gave the Cardinals organization, their players, and their fans.
Joe Ostermeier, chairman of the St. Louis Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America, has written about the Cardinals for the News-Democrat since 1985.
This story was originally published October 3, 2020 at 1:32 PM with the headline "St. Louis Cardinal Bob Gibson’s greatness lay in his toughness, tenacity and courage."