St. Louis's great Gibson was out to win games, not friends

By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff, 03/31/00

JUPITER, Fla. - He is reminded of his place in Red Sox history, Bob Gibson said, just about every time he goes to Boston.

"I go there for card shows,'' said the Hall of Fame pitcher, "and those Red Sox fans tell me, `Hey, Gibson, you broke my haahht.' I say, `Get over it.'''

The reference point, of course, is the 1967 World Series between the Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. Gibson beat the Sox three times, all complete games, including Game 7, when for good measure he also hit a home run in Fenway Park off Jim Lonborg.

"The Impossible Dream team, right?'' Gibson said slyly, referring to the nickname given those '67 Sox. "It was impossible.''

In 27 innings against the Sox, Gibson gave up just 14 hits and allowed three earned runs. He beat Jose Santiago in Game 1 in Boston, 2-1, a six-hitter in which he fanned 10. He threw a five-hit shutout in Game 4 in St. Louis, striking out six. Before Game 7, he said, he picked up a Boston paper.

"I'll never forget this,'' he said. "The paper said - what was that headline? - `Lonborg, Then Champagne.'''

Gibson hit his home run into the center-field triangle off Lonborg, who was pitching on two days' rest. Gibson gave up just three hits, and the Cardinals won, 7-2.

After the game, Gibson said, he went into the clubhouse and thought about that headline. "I said, `Yeahh, right.'''

And here's a scary thought for Sox fans: Gibson said he was hobbling at the time. On July 15 of that summer, a line drive off the bat of Pirates Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente fractured Gibson's ankle (he remained in the game for two more batters before coming out).

"We clinched the pennant early in September,'' said Gibson, "and I think I pitched just once after that, and I was still limping around [in the Series].''

In any discussion of the game's greatest pitchers, Gibson's name is an automatic. In 17 seasons with the Cardinals, Gibson won 251 games, with 3,117 strikeouts and 56 shutouts (12th on the all-time list). Five times he was a 20-game winner, and in 1968, when he won 22, he had an earned run average of 1.12, the third-lowest in history. The next year, Major League Baseball, inspired by Gibson's domination, lowered the mound in an effort to generate more offense.

Three times Gibson pitched the Cardinals into the World Series. He was the first pitcher to win two Game Sevens, beating the Yankees on two days' rest in the '64 Series, then the Sox in '67.

The following season, in 1968 against Detroit, he broke Sandy Koufax's record for strikeouts in a Series game when he fanned 17.

"He was about as good that day as anybody I'd ever seen,'' said Al Kaline, the Tigers' Hall of Fame outfielder.

Gibson beat the Tigers and their 31-game winner, Denny McLain, again in that Series, striking out 10 in a 10-1 victory in Game 4. But he was beaten in Game 7 by Mickey Lolich, 4-1, in a game that was scoreless after six innings. His overall Series record was 7-2 with a 1.89 ERA.

He was a first-ballot selection to the Hall of Fame in 1981, and last year was one of nine pitchers voted by fans to the All-Century team. The others? Koufax, Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, Warren Spahn, Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Christy Mathewson, and Roger Clemens.

He threw hard and threw inside and with a demeanor he once described as that of "a glowering black man who wouldn't make small talk or apologies for pitching inside.''

Just like Pedro Martinez, Gibson's face contorted into violent visages usually seen only on Gothic gargoyles.

"Have you ever thrown a ball 100 miles an hour?'' he asked. "Everything hurts. Even your ass hurts. I see pictures of my face and say, `Holy [expletive],' but that's the strain you feel when you throw.''

Gibson, who was in uniform in Cardinals camp this spring serving as what he called a "celebrity coach,'' laughs now at the notion of being so intimidating.

"I had one of those faces you look at it, man, and say, `Man he's an [expletive],''' Gibson said. "Could be. Depends on if you pissed me off or not.''

He insists he didn't know how feared he was until after he stopped playing.

"You don't find out until you quit,'' he said. "Intimidation, that was one of those things I was totally unaware of until after I got done. Now, when I hear the stories, I say, `God, if I knew that's the way they felt about me, I would have been nastier.'''

His secret, he said, was to remain as much of a mystery as he could.

"Hitters see you, they draw conclusions of who you are, they're intimidated by things they don't know about you,'' he said. "They get to know you, they lose their inhibitions.''

He didn't believe in fraternization.

"Even at All-Star Games, I didn't talk to anybody except pitchers,'' he said. "I'd go stand in the outfield, and I didn't get too friendly or comfortable out there, because I knew I'd be facing these guys two days later and they'd be trying to beat my brains out.''

In his biography, "Strangers to the Game,'' Gibson wrote, "Hitters were my enemy and the inside pitch was my warhead.''

If he hit a batter, Gibson would not react on the mound.

"There were a bunch of guys standing on the plate,'' he said. "I wasn't throwing at those guys. If I hit a guy, I just stood out there. I didn't show any emotion. They didn't know if I was throwing at them or not.

"But it is just as much the hitter's responsibility to get the hell out of the way as it is the pitcher's. That's b.s., that every ball inside is someone throwing at them. You can miss inside with a pitch just as easily as you can miss outside. If they want to fight, come out and fight, but I don't remember anyone running out to the mound because I threw inside.''

His signature season, 1968, will stand as a measuring stick against which all other single-season performances - including Martinez's last season - will be compared.

He won 22 games and lost 9. In those nine losses, the Cardinals scored a total of 12 runs.

"In '68, I had 13 shutouts and lost five 1-0 games,'' he said. "That's 18 games in which I gave up one run or less. I lost nine games with an ERA of 1. How do you do that? It drove me crazy. And people wonder why I was always grumpy - when I'd get one run, win or lose?''

He won 15 straight games that season, including 10 shutouts. In one span of 96 innings, the equivalent of almost 11 complete games, he allowed just two runs. He made 34 starts, and completed a staggering 28 of them. In the other six starts, he was lifted for a pinch hitter. Not once was he knocked out of a game.

"I pitched in a hurry,'' Gibson said. "I wasn't trying to intimidate anybody. Billy Williams, once at a Hall of Fame dinner, imitated how I pitched. Throw the ball, catch the ball, throw it again.

"And Williams used to hit me good. That's when you can't be too stupid. Swallow your pride. Use your better judgment. Pitch around somebody.''

Only Grover Cleveland Alexander, with 16 in 1916, has had more shutouts in a season than Gibson's 13, which matched another old-timer, Jack Coombs of the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics. Gibson's ERA of 1.12 was just above the 0.96 of the Red Sox' Dutch Leonard in 1914 and the 1.04 of Three-Finger Mordecai Brown of the 1906 Cubs. Those pitchers played in baseball's so-called dead-ball era, before the ball was juiced up in 1920 and Babe Ruth made the home run a staple of the game.

Fifty-nine times, a pitcher has had an ERA of 1.60 or lower. Only four have come since the dead-ball era. Besides Gibson, there was the Mets' Doc Gooden in 1985 (1.53), the Braves' Greg Maddux in 1994 (1.56), and Cleveland's Luis Tiant in 1968, when he won the American League ERA title (1.60) while Gibson was winning the National League's.

"In '67, I was coming back from the broken ankle,'' he said. "In '68, I was a lot stronger. I pitched better. I don't know. I felt better, that's for sure.''

His catcher, Tim McCarver, once said that Gibson would throw a strike even if the zone were the eye of an needle.

Every time he pitched, Gibson said, it seemed he was always matched up against another ace.

"Every time I went out there, I was facing the other team's No. 1,'' he said. "It was a matter of if I was going to win, 1-0, or lose.

"Koufax or [Don] Drysdale, [Juan] Marichal, Ferguson Jenkins. Every time we went to Chicago, Ferguson Jenkins. It got to be a pain in the ass. So many times I went head to head with Koufax. Let somebody else get [bleeping] Koufax. I didn't get any particular thrill.''

Gibson said he learned something about his elite mound opponents after he retired, too.

"I see them at golf tournaments, and every one of those guys is a real nice guy,'' he said. "Before, I thought they were just another [expletive] trying to beat me.''

Gibson had a ready answer when asked if he'd ever like to match skills with today's ballplayers.

"Yeah, for just one reason,'' he said. "I think I'd feel real comfortable making 15 to 20 million a year.''