{"id":4036,"date":"2021-06-29T15:52:37","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T15:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=4036"},"modified":"2021-06-29T15:52:37","modified_gmt":"2021-06-29T15:52:37","slug":"first-it-was-bob-gibson-now-its-all-pitchers-that-need-to-be-restricted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=4036","title":{"rendered":"First it was Bob Gibson, now it’s all pitchers that need to be restricted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

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TOP OF THE TOWN \u2013 <\/strong>We are humans and as humans we always try to find the loopholes around the rules and laws. It\u2019s a natural instinct. It is why when we build a recreational sports team we aren\u2019t satisfied until we add as many super talented players we can. When Major League baseball hitters batted a combined .237 in 1968 the powers-to-be lowered the pitching mound five inches and reduced the strike zone. It became known as the Bob Gibson rule. Gibson had become too dominant with a 1.12 ERA in 1968. His ERA went up to 2.18 the next year. Gibson died in 2020 and a story written by Gloria S. Ross of St. Louis Public Radio marking his passing follows at the end of this. We are at another point of our instinct to do an end-around of the rules. The baseball gods have decided to crack down on pitchers what may be using illegal substances to better throw their pitches because they are concerned about the lack of offense. Right now, the collective batting average of the 30 teams is .239. So what to do? Go after the pitchers. It doesn\u2019t help their argument that pitchers today routinely throw in the mid to high 90s Somebody the other day was recorded throwing 104. Gibson threw hard. He sometimes hit 100, and that was rare back in his days for pitchers to throw that hard. You name the sport and I can tell you we have come a long way from my young days. Players train better, are better younger, and are pushing up against the rules of their sport. The NBA is in their final playoffs and watch them. These guys make the game look so easy. They hit shots from 35 feet away with ease, fly high above the rim and are outclassing the rules. When you have a 7-footer hitting bombs from anywhere on the court (Kevin Durant) and dunking so fast and easy you know the rules of the game are obsolete. You know, the \u201csticky\u201d substance baseball is attacking may be harmful to a hitter\u2019s health. Yeah, it allows a pitcher to throw harder and with more command. But take it away and they will still throw hard, but with less command. You don\u2019t like to get hit with a baseball, but getting hit with an 100 mile-an-hour fastball in your ear is dangerous. So, yeah, go after pitchers who have found a loophole in the rules, but baseball better be careful. Don\u2019t wish for something that harms the game in ways you won\u2019t like. Here is the story with a photo of Bob Gibson. Stay safe.<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there.<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

BOB GIBSON<\/p>\n

File Photo | Aine O’Connor | St. Louis Public Radio<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bob Gibson, shown during a 2015 appearance on “St. Louis on the Air,” died Oct. 2 at age 84.<\/p>\n

Bob Gibson, the longtime St. Louis Cardinals ace who pitched with the ferocity and speed of a cheetah, leaving thousands of befuddled, dejected batters in his wake, has died. He was 84.<\/p>\n

Gibson was known for pitching economically and quickly, helping many of the games he pitched to clock in well under even the shorter times typical of the 1960s and ’70s. He threw with such power that he often violently hurled himself to the edge of the mound, causing, he said, every muscle in his body to ache the next day.<\/p>\n

A scorching fastball that sometimes reached 100 mph was the go-to weapon in his arsenal. The ball approached the plate so fast or so unpredictably that the ephemeral sphere eluded and confounded hitters.<\/p>\n

At the height of Gibson’s dominance, Cardinal broadcaster Harry Carey would often declare, \u201cGibby gon\u2019 to smoke!\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1968, Gibson had the lowest ERA for a season in modern Major League history. He struck out 17 Detroit Tigers, a record, in winning Game 1 of the World Series.<\/p>\n

Longtime Cardinals announcer Mike Shannon was playing third base in that game. In a 1980 story in the New Yorker, Shannon recalled the game with pity for the Tigers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of them had never seen Gibby before,\u201d he said, \u201cand they had no idea what they were up against. It was like watching a big-league pitcher against Little League batters. It was frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibson, who spent the entirety of his 17-year major league baseball career in St. Louis, died Friday, Oct. 2,\u00a0<\/strong>in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He had diabetes and had announced in July 2019 that he\u2019d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Services are pending.<\/p>\n

He called pitcher \u201cthe most commanding and cerebral position on the field\u201d and said it was the position that the sport and society were \u201cleast willing to hand over to a Black man.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Gibson simply took it.<\/p>\n

A Negro quota<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI was fatherless. I was poor. I was Black.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Gibson introduced himself early in his first autobiography, “From Ghetto to Glory,” written with Phil Pepe in 1968.<\/p>\n

When he penned the book, he was a lifetime and a world away from the housing projects of Omaha, Nebraska, where he was born three months after his father died of tuberculosis.<\/p>\n

He was the seventh child, small and fragile. His mother was astonished at how he matured.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was born sick,\u201d Victoria Gibson Bolden told the New York Times during Gibson’s second World Series game against the New York Yankees in 1964. \u201cAnd he got sicker \u2014 he had rickets, hay fever, asthma, pneumonia and rheumatic heart. I hardly let him out of the house until he was 4 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibson had developed a serious case of pneumonia when he was 3. According to family lore, as he was being carried into a\u00a0hospital by his big brother Josh, he asked, \u201cAm I going to die?\u201d<\/p>\n

Josh, whose real name was Leroy, assured him he would live and promised that when his little brother was well, he\u2019d buy him a ball and glove. He lived up to his promise and later became Gibson\u2019s first coach.<\/p>\n

By the time he was a senior at Omaha Technical High School, Gibson said he\u2019d earned a reputation as \u201ca pretty fair athlete in several sports.\u201d It was an understatement.<\/p>\n

But basketball was Gibson\u2019s sport of choice, and he had his heart set on hoops at Indiana University. He expected to receive an athletic scholarship; Indiana had other plans. His rejection letter said he was being denied a scholarship because the school had its \u201cquota of Negroes.\u201d He later found out that meant one.<\/p>\n

Again, Josh came to his rescue. He mentioned his little brother\u2019s talents to the athletic director at Creighton University, and a basketball scholarship soon materialized.<\/p>\n

Becoming No. 45<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gibson became Creighton\u2019s first Black varsity basketball and baseball player. He set school basketball scoring records that stood until Paul Silas, who later played for the St. Louis Hawks, broke them nearly a decade later.<\/p>\n

His Creighton records helped make him a member of the College All-Stars, giving Gibson a chance to play against the inimitable Harlem Globetrotters. The All-Stars defied the script and beat the Globetrotters, who were never supposed to lose, by one point. Gibson only played the fourth quarter, but he posted 15 points. That earned him an invitation in 1957 to join the Globetrotters, which he accepted. His roommate was the \u201cClown Prince,\u201d Meadowlark Lemon.<\/p>\n

It was the clowning part of the Globetrotters show that Gibson didn\u2019t like. For him, sports was serious business, so when the Cardinals offered him a Triple-A contract that same year, he snapped up that opportunity, too. The two salaries amounted to $8,000 for the year. At the time, he said, it seemed like a fortune.<\/p>\n

Baseball soon became his only job, and he bridged the distance of 60 feet, 6 inches as well as anyone ever had or ever would.<\/p>\n

Gibson became a stat monster. He became the Cardinals\u2019 all-time leader in innings pitched (3884); wins (251); strikeouts (3,117), the second pitcher to surpass 3,000; complete games (255) \u2013 relievers were like the Maytag repairman when he pitched \u2013 and shutouts (56).\u00a0During his 17 years with the club, he won two National League Cy Young Awards and nine Gold Glove Awards. He hit 24 home runs and was named an All-Star nine times. Gibson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, his first year of eligibility.<\/p>\n

At his induction, fellow Hall of Famer Stan Musial declared Gibson to be \u201cone of baseball\u2019s greatest competitors.\u201d Musial and Gibson admired each other. When Gibson joined the Cardinals, Musial had welcomed him. In his autobiography, Gibson said Musial \u201cwas the same with everybody, whether you were a rookie or a ten-year veteran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or whether you were Black or white.<\/p>\n

In 1958, Gibson rode solemnly in the \u201ccolored\u201d section of the train to his first spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida. When he arrived, Curt Flood, a teammate who later ushered in the era of free agency, was already there. Like all of the Black players, they were relegated to staying in the homes of local Black families. In their respective autobiographies, Gibson and Flood said their manager, Solly Hemus, had declared they would never make it in the big leagues. Both players attributed the statement to racism.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t Gibson\u2019s first brush with overt racism. On an earlier train ride when he was an 18-year-old sophomore at Creighton, he learned that he wouldn\u2019t be able to stay or eat with his basketball teammates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cried when I was told that,\u201d he admitted to the New Yorker in 1980. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have gone if I\u2019d known. I wasn\u2019t ready for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angry Black man<\/strong><\/p>\n

Such incidents became the kindling that ignited his rage; the racial strife of the \u201960s was the firewood that stoked it and earned him a reputation as an angry Black man. His anger fueled his single-minded focus on the mound. For Gibson, pitching was a solitary affair, and he would brook no distractions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pitched better angry,\u201d he said in his second autobiography, “Stranger to the Game,” written in 1994 with Lonnie Wheeler.<\/p>\n

Gibson was catapulted to the pinnacle of success by a combination of raw talent, brotherly love, an unwavering work ethic and his righteous anger. But setting pitching records could not insulate him from the wounds of second-class citizenship.<\/p>\n

His career was heating up at the same pace as the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

He won 18 games in 1963, the year Martin Luther King Jr. declared \u201cI have a dream\u201d during the March on Washington; Gibson won 19 games the following year. He won two of the three games he started during the \u201964 World Series against the Yankees, including Game 7. It was the city\u2019s first World Series title since 1946.<\/p>\n

In 1965, he became a 20-game winner, a feat he would accomplish four more times. It was the year that spawned \u201cBloody Sunday,\u201d the march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; the signing of the Voting Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson, and the murder of Malcolm X.<\/p>\n

During the \u201cLong, Hot Summer of 1967,\u201d so named for its racial unrest and sweltering weather, Gibson was bringing his own heat. He appeared invincible \u2013 until midseason, when Roberto Clemente delivered a searing line drive to Gibson\u2019s right leg, breaking it.<\/p>\n

It was a mere delay. Gibson returned to help the Cardinals down the stretch to win the National League pennant \u2013 and pitched three complete games to secure the 1967 World Series for St. Louis against the Boston Red Sox. He won Games 1, 4 and 7. In the final game, Gibson\u00a0allowed a meager three hits\u00a0and helped himself with a home run to clinch the Cardinals championship. He was named the World Series MVP.<\/p>\n

In 1968, the nation reached a boiling point: King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.<\/p>\n

\u201cRFK\u2019s murder, coming two months after Dr. King\u2019s, hardened me,\u201d Gibson wrote. \u201cThe slaying of Dr. King had touched me \u2014 and [Curt] Flood and [Lou] Brock and [Roberto] Clemente and millions of others across the country \u2014 on so many levels that anger competed against a squall of other emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the turmoil in 1968, Gibson posted a 1.12 earned run average, the lowest single-season ERA in modern baseball history. That year, Gibson won his first National League Cy Young Award, was named NL Most Valuable Player and again powered the Cardinals to the pennant and World Series.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 2, 1968, the day of the first World Series game in St. Louis, Gibson was approached by a TV reporter when he arrived at Busch Stadium. He assumed he was about to be asked about the game. Instead, the reporter asked, \u201cWhat do you think of the Black people demonstrating under the Arch?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibson responded: \u201cI don\u2019t give a f—. I\u2019ve got a ballgame to pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was tired of being a de facto Black spokesperson. He doubted that his white counterparts would have been asked about national affairs before a World Series game.<\/p>\n

His response was merely due to timing. Gibson was willing to talk about race and discrimination.<\/p>\n

Like the time during a postseason tour of military bases in the Pacific, when he heard an American League player make an anti-Semitic remark. Gibson reportedly stopped the player in mid-sentence \u2013 and advised him to keep his distance in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if I ever pitch against you,\u201d Gibson warned, \u201cI\u2019m going to hit you on the coconut with my first pitch.\u201d The two never faced each other.<\/p>\n

But Gibson knew and understood why he was sometimes prompted to talk about social issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a little smarter than the average dummy,\u201d Gibson laughingly told St. Louis Public Radio while promoting his 2015 book “Pitch By Pitch,” which detailed his stunning performance in the first game of the 1968 World Series. He explained that his level of education afforded him a more credible platform than some professional athletes.<\/p>\n

The reporter\u2019s off-topic question merely fired him up for that Game 1.<\/p>\n

It was the Year of the Pitcher, and Gibson was the pitcher of the year.<\/p>\n

Gibson Rules<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was so dubbed because pitchers were so stingy in allowing runs, none more than Gibson.<\/p>\n

“For that entire year,” Gibson once told his hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald, “I felt baseball-wise that I could do whatever I wanted.”<\/p>\n

Gibson came into the 1968 World Series one of the most feared pitchers in baseball, and he left that way, despite a loss in Game 7 that gave the series to the Detroit Tigers.<\/p>\n

The first game had sealed Gibson\u2019s immortality. Opposing the Tigers\u2019 Denny McLain, he struck out 17 batters, breaking Sandy Koufax\u2019s single-game postseason record and winning, 4-0. Willie Horton ended the game by striking out on a slider, the pitch Gibson said made him dominant. “My slider was nasty,” Gibson later said. “They could look for it and couldn’t hit it.”<\/p>\n

Gibson garnered his armload of awards that year by posting a 22-9 record. The Cardinals offense averaged just 2.8 runs a game when Gibson pitched in 1968. Along with that 1.12 earned run average, he had 28 complete games and 13 shutouts, 268 strikeouts, 15 consecutive wins and a stretch of 92 innings in which he gave up just two runs.<\/p>\n

“He’s the luckiest pitcher I ever saw,” Gibson\u2019s catcher, Tim McCarver, wryly told the World-Herald that year. “He always pitches when the other team doesn\u2019t score any runs.”<\/p>\n

Because pitchers, led by Gibson, were so dominant in 1968 that baseball lowered the pitching mound 5 inches and shrank the strike zone. The changes became known as the \u201cGibson Rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Postseason<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gibson and his uniform number, 45, retired in 1975. He returned to his hometown and settled in the Omaha suburb of\u00a0Bellevue with his first wife, Charline Johnson Gibson, whom he\u2019d married in 1957. They had two daughters, Annette and Renee. The couple divorced four years later.<\/p>\n

He married his second wife, Wendy Nelson Gibson, in 1979, and they had one son, Christopher Robert.<\/p>\n

In retirement, he fully expected to remain connected to baseball, perhaps as a pitching coach or color commentator. But work was slow in coming. Some speculated it was due to his prickly personality. He had never made any effort to ingratiate himself with media or the public.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Gibson retired, he did a brief stint with as a color commentator on ABC\u2019s \u201cMonday Night Baseball\u201d and some baseball programming on HBO.<\/p>\n

He also made inquiries with the Cardinals, Kansas City Royals and New York Mets. Teams nibbled, but there were no immediate takers.<\/p>\n

Work began to pick up in the \u201980s. He became a pitching coach briefly with the Mets and the Atlanta Braves. Gibson loaned the resonant voice that he was so hesitant to share during his playing days to pre- and postgame shows for Cardinal baseball games on\u00a0KMOX\u00a0from 1985 until 1989. He later served as a color commentator for baseball games on\u00a0ESPN.<\/p>\n

Gibson joined the Cardinals as a bullpen coach in 1995, working with his former teammate and friend, Joe Torre. In 1996, he became a special instructor for the Cardinals.<\/p>\n

He had become a principal investor in 1970 in a primarily Black-owned radio station, KWOH, in North Omaha. In “Stranger to the Game,” Gibson shared the challenges of keeping the station afloat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I understood the full meaning of the word bigotry until I tried to sell advertising time for KOWH,\u201d he lamented. \u201cAlmost none of the established businesses would buy from us and they searched hard for reasons not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years into retirement, Gibson and a partner opened Gibson\u2019s Spirits and Sustenance, a sports bar in Omaha. He was a hands-on owner, said to have sometimes worked 12-hour days at the eatery. It was located near his alma mater, Creighton.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t baseball, but shortly after opening the restaurant, Gibson told the New Yorker that, \u201c[It] sure is better than doing nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Better days<\/strong><\/p>\n

As his workload increased, so did his legend and the love of his fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will never be another pitcher like Bob Gibson,\u201d St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III told the Post-Dispatch during the 2018 dedication of Bob Gibson Way in St. Louis. \u201cThis honorary street-naming symbolizes what he means to our franchise and to our city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aware of the no-nonsense reputation he\u2019d built, Gibson assured his fans that he\u2019d always been a nice guy.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Batters] just didn\u2019t know it,\u201d he said. \u201cI got my bluff in early, and I\u2019m glad I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the years, Gibson returned often to St. Louis, his second home, for opening day ceremonies and honors.<\/p>\n

He was a member of the 2014 St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame inaugural class. He has a star on the\u00a0St. Louis Walk of Fame, and a bronze statue of him in full power-pitching mode has resided near the stadium since 1998.<\/p>\n

Omaha beat St. Louis in honoring him with a street, Bob Gibson Boulevard, but lagged in erecting a statue. His bronze likeness was unveiled there in 2013 outside Werner Park, home of the Omaha Storm Chasers minor league team. Three of his former Cardinal teammates were on hand for the unveiling: Tim McCarver, Bill White and Joe Torre.<\/p>\n

In 2019, he was inducted into Nebraska\u2019s Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

Pack Robert Gibson was born Nov. 9, 1935, the youngest of Victoria Gibson and Pack Robert Gibson\u2019s seven children. Gibson didn\u2019t like his first name and dropped \u201cPack\u201d as soon as he was on his own.<\/p>\n

His father was a skilled cabinetmaker who had to make a living working in hotels, for the government\u2019s Work Progress Administration, when the Depression hit and later as a janitor and construction worker. His mother also worked in a hotel, then in a laundry, and cleaned homes and hospitals to make ends meet. She married Paul Bolden when Gibson was a teenager.<\/p>\n

Gibson was one of the most gifted and lauded pitchers in history, but he wasn\u2019t always confident he would make it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t sure I was going to be able to withstand all the stuff that we had to play through,\u201d he said at his St. Louis street-naming ceremony. \u201cI\u2019m proud to say I\u2019ve seen a lot of changes. Things are altogether different than they were in 1959, and I mean all for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is survived by his wife, Wendy, and his three children.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER       TOP OF THE TOWN \u2013 We are humans and as humans we always try to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-column","category-mosher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4039,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions\/4039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}