Sixty Feet, Six Inches

by Bob Gibson

  Bob Gibson

  There are so many things that go into hitting—eyesight, hands, hand-eye coordination, quickness, timing, strength, intelligence, instinct—that you can’t stereotype the guys who do it well. There’s no way to tell a hitter just by looking at him. There’s no prototype body for a baseball player.

  What kind of body does a pitcher need to throw hard? Big, strong legs? Hell, mine look like bird legs. I had plenty of spring in my legs—I could easily dunk a basketball back in the day when the coach would take you out of the game for doing that—but it’s not something you could tell by looking at me. You’ve got skinny guys who can throw the ball ninety-five miles an hour and great big guys who throw ninety-five.

  Arm speed makes a big difference. But I couldn’t tell you exactly what kind of athlete has it, or how to get it.

  Reggie Jackson

  Arm speed is the thing that jumps out at you with a pitcher like Joba Chamberlain. He’s a big guy, thick and strong, but that’s not what makes him different. His arm speed is what makes him different.

  To some extent, that’s a product of strength, which, to an extent, is a product of size. Pitchers like Carlos Zambrano and C. C. Sabathia produce a lot of power on the mound, and their big bodies have a lot to do with it. Tim Lincecum is just the opposite. But they all have arm speed. You look at Joba Chamberlain’s arm speed, especially when he wants to crank it up, and there’s just more of it than most guys have.

  The characteristic that all these guys have in common, for certain, is that they’re good athletes.

  Bob Gibson

  Physically, there wasn’t any particular thing that gave me an advantage, although I do have one odd feature. My fingers are symmetrical. My forefinger and little finger are the same length and my two middle fingers are the same length. The only other person I know who has fingers like that is my son, Christopher. That’s how I knew he was mine.

  My forefinger is a little shorter than normal, and maybe, because of that, the ball came out of my hand in a way that made it sail, like a cut fastball. I didn’t have to try to throw a cutter; it just acted that way. But if you went around cutting a quarter of an inch off everybody’s forefinger, I don’t think you’d create a class of Hall of Fame pitchers. It’s just something strange about me.

  Reggie Jackson

  My distinction was that, physically, I was unusually muscular for a ballplayer. I watch myself on tape and I look stiff. I always thought I’d appear more fluid than I did. But my strength was a big part of who I was as a hitter. I never had to worry about pulling the ball to right field, because I knew that if I put the barrel on it and got it in the air, I could hit it out of any part of the park. Strength is also what helped me generate bat speed at the last instant and catch up with balls that seemed to be past me already—maybe even flick them over the fence. There were plenty of times when I surprised myself and wondered how I hit that pitch. The answer is strength—along with God-given talent.

  Of course, this was before steroids and really before ballplayers did much weight training. In baseball, lifting weights had been frowned upon for a long time, because they thought it would make you too tight, that your muscles wouldn’t have the elasticity you needed to play the game. There were just a few who believed in it, and I was one.

  I always worked out—it was a way of life for me, and still is—but I was also naturally thick through the chest, arms, and thighs. My biceps were seventeen inches, the same as Sonny Liston’s. My legs gave me a great power base—you generate power from the ground up—but they were so tight that they gave me a lot of hamstring trouble. Make sure you stretch.

  Bob Gibson

  I didn’t do any weight training, but I got plenty of work on my legs from pushing off the mound the way I did; and my right arm—especially my forearm—got hard and tight from throwing sliders. The inside of my forearm, right below my elbow, was always sore. One time it got so hard in there that I went to see the doctor. He tried to give me a shot to loosen it up and broke the needle.

  He said, “That’s really hard in there.”

  I said, “I know, Doc. That’s why I’m getting a shot.”

  Bob Gibson

  My power came from my motion, and for the most part my motion came from my legs. I’m sure the spring in my legs showed up in my fastball. You build up torque from the waist down. That’s probably why all the cartilage in my knees was torn up by the time I was through—and well before. It was all that twisting.

  I had a violent delivery. I jumped at the hitter. If they would have let me, I’d have loved to back up and run up over the mound, like jai alai, like Happy Gilmore hitting a drive. I wanted everything to be moving that way when I let go of the ball. Everything. I wanted to be a gathering storm and blow that fastball in there with all the force and fury I could muster up.

  Jim Bunning’s motion looked as much like mine as anybody I’ve seen. He used to fly around, too. But other than that, there was really no similarity in the way he threw and the way I threw. His arm angle was lower than mine. For me, dropping the arm angle was a bad habit I had to avoid. When I dropped lower than three-quarters, the ball would tend to shoot up in the strike zone because I didn’t get on top of it to drive it down. I liked throwing high fastballs, but those weren’t my best fastballs. Every once in a while, I’d raise my angle and come from over the top, but I’m not sure that I ever threw a strike that way. It was always high. So I stayed three-quarters.

  Reggie Jackson

  There aren’t many Juan Marichals out there who can throw every pitch from every angle, thank goodness.

  These days, there aren’t many pitchers who have a lot going on in their windups, either.

  Bob Gibson

  I have to wonder whether, if I pitched today, they’d try to simplify and quiet down my motion. I’m pretty sure they’d have gotten to me early in my career, when I didn’t have much idea of where the ball was going. I can just hear it: “Well, you know, it’s no surprise that you were a little wild out there. If you would find your balance point and slow everything down a little bit …”

  They’d have also told me—and I heard this more than a few times—that I wasn’t in any position to field the ball after my delivery because I was falling off the mound and wheeling toward first base. Well, maybe I wasn’t, but I was a good fielder because I was quick and had body control; I was a basketball player. Somehow, I won nine straight Gold Gloves being out of position.

  In order to end up in perfect position to field the ball, I would have had to take away from my velocity. I’d rather have the velocity and then have to recover afterwards. Getting the hitter out is more important to me than trying to snag a ball coming back up the middle.

  Reggie Jackson

  Put it this way. As a hitter, I’d have liked it very much if Bob Gibson had slowed down or cut back on his delivery. And it’s not just the velocity he gained from it. It’s also the motion itself. A hitter tries to get in sync with a pitcher’s motion. When he’s rocking, I’m rocking. I’ll start getting into my swing before the ball is actually delivered.

  If the motion is harder to time, that’s an advantage for the pitcher.

  Bob Gibson

  I like the idea of having a lot going on in your windup, and the hitters trying to figure out where the ball’s coming from and when it’s coming. Man, with a big windup the hitter sees all this stuff going on in front of him, knees and elbows, the hat flying off, all this crazy whirling motion, the ball’s moving from high to low, from side to side, the glove flashes out there, and then boom! Here it comes at ninety-five miles an hour.

  For the first half of my career, I was doing all this off a fifteen-inch mound. It was a little different when they lowered it down to ten in 1969. The pitcher shrank by five inches. Now couple that with the fact that, gradually, big windups and motions have almost become a thing of the past, and you can see that a pitcher is not quite the formidable figure he used to be out there.

  Dontrell
e Willis is one of the few who still uses an elaborate windup, and he was devastating for a while, before he lost some of his stuff. I have a hard time understanding why so few pitchers do that anymore. Somebody started a trend and this is how it ended up.

  Now everything’s all sedate. The gurus thought that pitchers could have better control if they minimized their motions, and everybody bought into it. Somebody told the pitchers they could throw just as hard without the windup. Maybe some guys can. I’m sure this is the best thing for a lot of guys, but I’m not buying that it’s best for practically everybody.

  If I were pitching today, I’d still wind up and fly around. Personally, I’d rather have the batter look for the ball. If you start with a calm little windup, the hitter sees the ball all the way; or at least he sees the release point where it’s coming from.

  And that’s not the entire issue. The most important thing, to me, is that I felt I threw harder when I wound up. It was more of an effort to throw that hard from the stretch, when you’re trying to generate power from a dead standstill. That’s got to take a little bit away. Does it take a lot? I don’t know. But I know that, if you’re trying to maintain velocity, it takes a lot more out of you, which can’t be good for your control. It’s a double-edged deal, because when you’re throwing from the stretch, or without much of a windup, you absolutely have to locate the ball better.

  It really all depends on what kind of stuff the pitcher has. If you’re throwing ninety-five, the velocity is a little more important than the location. But if you’re throwing ninety, you’d better put that ball exactly where you want it. So I can see the value of restricting your motion, exchanging velocity for control, if you’re not that hard of a thrower. The difference between eighty-eight and ninety-one is not that significant. At that speed, I’d better damn sure have good control. Now, if the windup can increase your fastball from ninety-one to ninety-four or ninety-five, that’s a different thing. At ninety-five, my control doesn’t have to be quite as fine.

  But if you don’t feel comfortable, don’t do it.

  Reggie Jackson

  Some pitchers have clean, smooth windups that look really nice, but instead of all the extra business taking place on the mound and creating a distraction, the ball’s just coming out right there where the hitter can keep his eye on it.

  Think about how they pitch in batting practice. The batting-practice pitcher wants the hitter to get a good look at the ball, so he’ll hold it up for the guy to see and just take one step and throw it from right out in front of the batter’s face. A lot of the pitchers today do it almost the same way.

  Back in the day, Marichal had that big foot sticking in your face, and he’d change his angles and make you look so bad it just took the spirit right out of you. Luis Tiant had all that twisting and turning and looking this way and that—whatever he could come up with to throw you off. El Duque is a throwback with that big ol’ funny-looking leg kick of his. Those guys are all classic examples of how a pitcher’s motion can have a lot to do with his success.

  Bob Gibson

  Warren Spahn won 363 games with a big fancy windup that involved a lot of arm and leg action. With the Cardinals, we had a relief pitcher, Bob Humphreys, who might not have made it to the big leagues if he hadn’t had a gimmick in his windup, and he lasted nine years. He’d vary the number of times he pumped his arms before every pitch. We called him Double Pump. We could have called him Triple Pump.

  Most pitching coaches today tell you that the more gyrations you go through on the mound, the greater your chance for error. I can’t argue with that. Sometimes when I leapt at the hitter, I’d leap a little too far and the ball would get away from me. You might kick your leg too high and lose balance. It is a matter of balance. Mostly, you’ve got to balance whether you want that extra control or that extra confusion and velocity.

  And you know where I stand on that one. But that’s just me.

  Reggie Jackson

  At least with Bob you could pretty much count on the ball coming from three-quarters. He wasn’t going to change much out there from pitch to pitch.

  Bob Gibson

  Once in a while, against right-handers, just to give a little different look, I’d drop down and throw a slurve—a slower slider or a faster curveball, whichever you wanted to call it. It was really too big to be a regular slider, and not as crisp. And I was careful about keeping it away. But that thing would flash down across the batters’ knees and you could almost hear them curse.

  I wouldn’t do it for Willie Mays, because you have a better chance of making a mistake with a pitch like that. I’d throw it to somebody like Dick Stuart, where if I missed I’d have a better chance of getting away with it. You pick your spots.

  Reggie Jackson

  When you’ve got a big-time power pitcher who suddenly throws in the kitchen sink like that, you do a double take and hope it’s out of the strike zone.

  Bob Gibson

  I also tinkered a bit with where I stood on the rubber. You’re always looking for an advantage, so you always tinker. I felt the most comfortable standing on the right corner of the rubber, where a right-handed hitter might have to look over his shoulder a little bit instead of straight-on. But once in a while I’d move to the other side if I was pitching to a left-hander. It’s not easy for a hitter to make adjustments every time he goes to the plate.

  What I really liked, though, was when the other pitcher used the left side. That way, my foot wasn’t landing in the same hole where his foot was landing. It can throw you off, maybe buckle your ankle, if the other guy makes a hole that’s just a few inches from where yours is. That’s why you’ll occasionally see the grounds crew out there filling in a hole. You can also have that problem next to the rubber if the other pitcher sets up in the general vicinity of where you do and scrapes out a little hill that tilts your foot.

  I started with my foot on the rubber, and then when I wound up I’d pick it up and turn it sideways against the rubber. If you happen to put your foot down a couple inches in front of the rubber, the umpire’s not going to see that. Nobody’s actually looking for it, but sometimes somebody in the other dugout will notice it and go “Hey! What’d he just do there?!” Spahn would do that. He’d get two strikes on somebody and want to get the ball up there just a little bit quicker, and he’d step several inches in front of that rubber. We’d holler, and while we’re hollering, whoosh, the ball would shoot in there for strike three. The umpire’s going to watch for it now, but Spahn wouldn’t do it again for a long time, when everybody had forgotten about it.

  There’s a lot of stuff that goes into 363 wins.

  Reggie Jackson

  There are also a lot of pitches, and a lot of innings, that go into that. Spahn had almost four hundred complete games. Gaylord Perry had more than three hundred. Gibson had 255. There’s no current player in the top hundred in that category. Greg Maddux has the most, with just over a hundred.

  The emphasis on relief pitchers and pitch counts has quite a bit to do with that, obviously. But it’s interesting that all the pitchers who threw the most complete games and the most innings come from the age of bigger windups. Of the top ten all-time in innings pitched, six guys—Phil Niekro, Ryan, Perry, Don Sutton, Spahn, and Carlton—come from my day and Bob’s. They were all in the game by the time I got there in 1967; and Spahn was already out of it, thank goodness.

  Bob Gibson

  It’s not just windups. The whole delivery has been streamlined and homogenized. There’s a concerted emphasis these days on protecting the pitcher, and part of that involves fussing over his mechanics.

  Mechanics are good. But people come up with all kinds of reasons why some pitchers last and others break down, and I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to pinpoint the reasons why. We’re all different. Our bodies are different, they can withstand different things, and in my opinion none of that stuff is worth a crap. If you try to teach one person to do something the way another person does it, you’
re usually walking down the wrong road.

  In the end, we’re all fundamentally similar, even if we arrive at our release points by different routes. It’s the same with hitting. One guy—remember Dick McAuliffe?—will set up with an open stance and Stan Musial will twist around so he has to peek over his shoulder; a hitter like Richie Hebner will hold his bat flat and down below his waist and Craig Counsell will swirl it up above his helmet, high as he can go; Pete Rose and Jeff Bagwell batted out of a crouch and Eric Davis stood straight up. But when the barrel addresses the ball, they all end up in roughly the same position. Likewise, if you took a picture of every major-league pitcher just as he’s letting go of the ball, you’d see that the arm angle might differ but there isn’t much variation in body position. There aren’t a lot of different ways to throw ninety-three miles an hour.

  The fact is, some of us are going to break down and some aren’t, regardless of the mechanics. There’s not a recipe for it. Some guys appear to be straining their arms when they throw, and people today will watch and say, well, that’s no good, he’s going to hurt his arm for sure. Maybe. But let’s just see. Don’t try to head things off. We don’t know. Maybe he’s got an unorthodox way of throwing that will last forever. Maybe it would strain my arm to throw that way, but unless he’s having some problems, why mess with it?

  If he starts to have arm trouble, maybe then we can break down his mechanics and suggest this or that to ease the problem. Is that going to cure it? We don’t know. But unless it’s broken, don’t try to fix it. You just can’t predict it.