Bob Gibson, Hall of Fame Ace for Cardinals, Dies at 84
Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, the dominant St. Louis Cardinals pitcher who won a record seven consecutive World Series starts and set a modern standard for excellence when he finished the 1968 season with a 1.12 ERA, died Friday. He was 84.
The Cardinals confirmed Gibson’s death shortly after a 4-0 playoff loss to San Diego ended their season. He had long been ill with pancreatic cancer in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
Gibson’s death came on the 52nd anniversary of perhaps his most outstanding performance, when he struck out a World Series record 17 batters in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series against Detroit.
One of baseball’s most uncompromising competitors, the two-time Cy Young Award winner spent his entire 17-year career with St. Louis and was named the World Series MVP in their 1964 and ’67 championship seasons.
Gibson died less than a month after the death of a longtime teammate, Hall of Fame outfielder Lou Brock. Another pitching great from his era, Tom Seaver, died in late August.
At his peak, Gibson may have been the most talented all-around starter in history, a nine-time Gold Glove winner with a fierce, sweeping delivery and a strong hitter who twice hit five home runs in a single season and batted .303 in 1970, when he also won his second Cy Young.
Baseball wasn’t his only sport, either. He also starred in basketball at Creighton and spent a year with the Harlem Globetrotters before turning his attention to the diamond.
Averaging 19 wins a year from 1963-72, he finished 251-174 with a 2.91 ERA, and was only the second pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts.
Gibson snubbed opposing players and sometimes teammates who dared speak to him on a day he was pitching, and he didn’t even spare his own family.
“I’ve played a couple of hundred games of tic-tac-toe with my little daughter and she hasn’t beaten me yet,” he once told The New Yorker. “I’ve always had to win. I’ve got to win.”
Ball in hand, he was no nonsense on the hill. He had no use for advice, scowling whenever catcher Tim McCarver or anyone else thought of visiting the mound.
His concentration was such that he seemed unaware he was on his way to a World Series single game strikeout record (surpassing Sandy Koufax’s 15) in 1968 until McCarver convinced him to look at the scoreboard.
During the regular season, Gibson struck out more than 200 batters nine times and led the National League in shutouts four times, finishing with 56 in his career.
In 1968, thirteen of his 22 wins were shutouts, leading McCarver to call Gibson “the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn’t score any runs.”
He was, somehow, even greater in the postseason, finishing 7-2 with a 1.89 ERA and 92 strikeouts in 81 innings.
Despite dominating the Tigers in the 1968 Series opener, that year ended with a Game 7 loss and a rewriting of the rules that he would long resent.
Gibson’s 1.12 ERA in the regular season was the third lowest for any starting pitcher since 1900 and by far the best for any starter in the post-dead ball era, which began in the 1920s.
His 1968 performance, the highlight of the so-called “Year of the Pitcher,” left officials worried that fans had bored of so many 1-0 games. They lowered the mound from 15 to 10 inches in 1969 and shrank the strike zone.
“I was pissed,” Gibson later remarked, although he remained a top pitcher for several years and in 1971 threw his only no-hitter, against Pittsburgh.
Signed by the Cards as an amateur free agent in 1957, he had early trouble with his control, a problem solved by developing one of baseball’s greatest sliders.
Hank Aaron once counseled Atlanta Braves teammate Dusty Baker about Gibson.
“Don’t dig in against Bob Gibson; he’ll knock you down,” Aaron said, according to the Boston Globe.
“He’d knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him. 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, don’t run too fast. If you happen to 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.”
Born Pack Robert Gibson in Omaha on Nov. 9, 1935, Gibson overcame childhood illness that nearly cost him his life. His father died soon before his birth, and he grew up in poverty. His mother was a laundry worker, trying to support Gibson and his six siblings.
“Growing up without a father is a hardship and deprivation that is impossible to measure,” Gibson wrote in “From Ghetto to Glory,” one of a handful of books he published.
Gibson went to Omaha Tech High School and stayed in town, attending Creighton from 1954-57 and averaging 20.2 points during his college basketball career.
The roughly 6-foot, 2-inch Gibson spent the 1957-58 season with the Globetrotters before turning his full attention to baseball.
The pitcher’s career soon took off. He made the first of his eight National League All-Star teams in 1962, and the following year went 18-9 and kept the Cardinals in the pennant race until late in the season.
In 1964, a year he regarded as his favorite, he won three times in the last 11 games as the Cardinals surged past the collapsing Philadelphia Phillies and won the National League title.
Gibson lost Game 2 of the World Series against the New York Yankees, but he came back with wins in Games 5 and 7 and was named the MVP.
The series was widely regarded as a turning point in baseball history, with the great Yankee dynasty falling the following year and the Cardinals embodying a more modern and aggressive style of play.
Gibson enjoyed 20-game seasons in 1965 and 1966 and likely would have done the same a third straight year, but a Roberto Clemente line drive broke his leg in the middle of the season. (Gibson still managed to finish the inning).
Gibson returned in September, finished 13-7 during the regular season and led the Cardinals to the 1967 championship, winning three times and hitting a home run off Red Sox ace Jim Lonborg in Game 7 at Fenway Park.
But 1968 was on a level few had seen before. He began slowly, losing five of his first eight decisions despite an ERA of 1.52, and fumed over the lack of hitting support.
But from early June to late August, Gibson was unbeatable. He won 15 straight decisions, threw 10 shutouts and at one point allowed just three earned runs during 101 innings. One of those runs scored on a wild pitch, another on a bloop hit.
He was at his best again in the opener of the World Series, giving a performance so singular that his book “Pitch by Pitch” was dedicated entirely to it.
On a muggy afternoon in St. Louis, facing 31-game winner Denny McLain and such power hitters as Al Kaline — who also died this year — Norm Cash and Willie Horton, he allowed just five hits and walked one in a 4-0 victory.
Gibson struck out at least one batter every inning and in the ninth fanned Kaline, Cash and Horton to end with 17, the final pitch a slow breaking ball that left Horton frozen in place.
“I was awed,” Tigers second baseman Dick McAuliffe later said. “He doesn’t remind me of anybody. He’s all by himself.”
By the mid-1970s, Gibson’s knees were aching and he had admittedly lost some of his competitive fury. On the last day of the 1974 season, with a 2-1 lead and a division title possible, he gave up a two-run homer to the Montreal Expos’ Mike Jorgensen in the eighth inning and the Cards lost 3-2.
He retired after 1975, humiliated in his final appearance when he gave up a grand slam home run to the Chicago Cubs’ Pete LaCock. (When the two faced off a decade later at an old-timers game, Gibson beaned him).
Gibson was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1981, and the Cards retired his uniform number. He had a far less successful career as a coach, whether for the New York Mets and Braves in the 1980s or for the Cardinals in 1995.
He was married twice, most recently to Wendy Gibson, and spent much of his retirement at his longtime home in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue. He was active in charitable causes and hosted a popular golf event in Omaha that drew some of the top names in sports.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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