“Forgotten Hollywood”- A Pitcher for the Ages…
Manny P. here…
“`Another legendary St. Louis Cardinal has passed on (Last month, we lost Lou Brock). Bob Gibson became a tough pitcher, who battled Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Juan Marichal. The pinnacle of his career was 1968, when Gibby posted a 1.12 ERA for the season. He then recorded seventeen strikeouts in Game One of the 1968 World Series.
“`After briefly playing under contract to both the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team and the St. Louis Cardinals organization, Bob decided to continue playing only baseball professionally. He became a full-time starting pitcher in July 1961.
“`A nine-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion, he won two Cy Young Awards and the 1968 National League Most Valuable Player Award. Only Clayton Kershaw has won the MVP award as a National League pitcher. Known for intimidating opposing batters, he was elected in 1981 to Baseball’s Hall of Fame in his initial year of eligibility. The Cardinals retired his uniform number forty-five in September 1975 and inducted him into the team Hall of Fame in 2014. He was later selected for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999.
“`Off the field, Bill White, Curt Flood, and Gibson led a civil rights campaign to allow players to live in the same clubhouse and hotel rooms. The Cardinals became the first sports team to end segregation, three years before Lyndon Johnson signed Great Society legislation in 1964.
“`After retiring from playing baseball, Gibson had various assignments with the Cardinals, and with their local broadcast team and on ESPN. He spent the last years of his life with his family in Omaha.
“`Bob Gibson was eighty four.
Until next time> “never forget”
This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2020 at 12:01 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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