by Bob Gibson
Bob Gibson
One reason why they foul off that fastball is that the ball’s usually moving some way or another. It’s not just straight ninety-six. It’s dipping in, dipping out, cutting, sailing, depending on whether it’s a two-seam fastball or a four-seamer. That’s why they don’t quite hit it.
In the All-Star Game, 1965, I threw a high, four-seam fastball to Joe Pepitone and it sailed so much that Pepitone turned to Joe Torre, who was catching, and asked for another slider.
Reggie Jackson
The movement makes all the difference. I’d rather hit against ninety-seven straight than ninety-three with good sink.
Bob Gibson
I’d rather throw ninety-seven straight.
Reggie Jackson
That’s a Gibsonism. I like that.
But I think I could hit that if it was away from me. Toward the end of my career the velocity would have been harder for me to handle, but when I was young I could have hit it if they’d shot it out of a .30–06. It’s the same way with Allen, McCovey, Aaron, Mays, Frank Robinson, Manny Ramirez … When a hitter like that is in his prime, it doesn’t matter how hard you throw.
Nolan Ryan threw ninety-eight, a hundred miles an hour, maybe one-oh-one. His fastball was the standard, and I got a charge out of facing it. On two separate occasions, Nolan told me that he was just going to throw me fastballs and let’s see what happens. He’d walk right up between the mound and home plate, and in that Texas twang of his he’d say, “Reg, I want to see if you can hit my best fastball.” I had a big reputation, he had a big reputation, and we were friends; we had the same agent. He just wanted to see. He did it once when I was with the A’s and once when I was with the Yankees, both times when the game was in hand. I got a base hit the first time and lined out to left the second time. I hit the ball hard both times, but his version is different. In his, the first one was a bloop single. But that’s what makes a great story.
In my day, they didn’t have radar guns showing the speed of every pitch, but I could tell within a mile an hour or two. When a guy like Joba Chamberlain cuts the ball loose, you know it’s over ninety-five. It’s hard to differentiate ninety-nine from a hundred—it’s just like, whoa, what was that?!—but I’m sure I saw Ryan and Gossage touch a hundred. Sudden Sam McDowell. Joe Sparma for Detroit.
A hitter like me, if a guy can throw a hundred, you’re going to see it. And that is fun!
Bob Gibson
If I was about to pitch a game and somebody said to me, “You have your choice tonight: You can either give up five miles an hour of velocity or three inches of control,” I think I’d hold on to my speed.
Don’t get me wrong: I believe in spotting the ball. I wasn’t a good pitcher until I learned to do that. My whole pitching philosophy was based on keeping the ball away from the hitter’s strength. But throwing the ball ninety-five miles an hour is a gift. You can’t teach somebody to do that, and there’s no substitute for it.
Once you get up over about ninety-two or ninety-three, you’re reaching the point where you can get away with some things that you can’t get away with at eighty-nine …
Reggie Jackson
All right, we’re back on the same page now …
Bob Gibson
But like everything else, that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. If you’ve got a great seventy-five-mile-an-hour changeup, that could make an eighty-eight-mile-an-hour fastball play like a ninety-four-mile-an-hour fastball. It’s the same thing if your curveball’s so good that the hitters have to be watching for it. In cases like that, velocity is relative. But once you get up to ninety-five, there’s nothing relative about it. I’ll take my chances at ninety-five even if I miss the location. Missing your location at eighty-eight or ninety doesn’t work very well. You just don’t get away with it.
Reggie Jackson
As a hitter, I’d rather he had his best stuff than his best location.
To start with, if a guy throws eighty-seven, his best stuff isn’t necessarily that big of a deal. If he doesn’t have his location, he doesn’t have much of anything. I don’t mean to diminish a pitcher who has a lot of savvy and great changes of speed, or all kinds of breaking balls, or fabulous movement on his fastball; but it’s not often that somebody who’s missing his spots will beat you purely on the basis of stuff that tops out at eighty-seven miles an hour.
Now, with a pitcher like Ryan or Gibson or Koufax, or, these days, Jake Peavy, Brandon Webb, Johan Santana, Roy Halladay, or C. C. Sabathia, there are about three ways to consider this. If they have their best stuff and their best location, they’re going to shut you out or maybe no-hit you. If they have their best location but not their best stuff, their stuff is still more than good enough to beat you. Your best chance is if they’re off a bit with their location. That would mean they make mistakes. As hitters, that’s what we ask for.
I have to admit, though, that I once faced Jack Morris—Anaheim, 1984, late in my career, which makes a big difference—when he was throwing ninety-seven in the ninth inning. It didn’t matter where he threw that. You walk into Vida Blue when he’s throwing ninety-nine, that’s more than you want. That’s like asking for a scoop of ice cream and the guy sets down a whole gallon in front of you … Whoa! I didn’t want that much!
At least, not when I was approaching middle age.
Bob Gibson
Even to me, as a pitcher holding a bat, if you throw me eighty-seven over the plate, I’ll hit it, and there’s a pretty good chance I’ll hit it hard. If you don’t throw very hard, location really matters. But that extra five miles an hour means an awful lot.
It doesn’t mean you can miss your spots all night long and get away with it; but it means you might get away with it, often as not, if you don’t push your luck. It means you’ve got a little extra margin for error. Velocity can make up for a whole bunch of mistakes.
I’ll take the speed any day.
Bob Gibson
When I first started out, I thought my slider was my curveball. That was the only breaking pitch I had, so I just assumed it was a curveball. I didn’t find out until I was in Triple-A that I didn’t have a curveball. Johnny Keane, our manager, asked me to throw one, so I did, and he informed me, no, that’s a slider.
The spin is different. You have to get on top of a curveball, and it usually has a bigger break than a slider, and isn’t thrown as hard. A slider’s a tighter pitch, and a lot easier to locate than a curve. When I developed the ability to spot the slider, I became a much better pitcher. I never developed the ability to do that with a curveball; and anyway, I didn’t have much of a curveball to do it with.
Reggie Jackson
From the batter’s box, it’s hard to identify a good slider because it gets on you so fast and it’s got a little short break on it. A bad slider has a hump in it.
Some guys say you can spot a slider by seeing a little red dot on the ball. That dot is the seams spinning together in a vortex. To me, it looks like a circle. When that vortex appears big in front of your eyes, you can pick up the slider early and send it on its way.
Bob Gibson
When you see the circle, or a big dot, it’s not a good slider. It’s just spinning, not biting. On a good, tight slider, you’ll see a little bitty dot as the ball moves away from you.
I have to say, my slider was nasty. They could look for it and couldn’t hit it.
Reggie Jackson
Amen. Big slider. Big, hard slider. Ouch!
Bob Gibson
Actually, I had two sliders. Other pitchers might grip them differently, but I held both of them between the seams, parallel to the seams at the closest point, with my fingers together and my thumb on the seam below.
My main slider was my hardest one, and it would just break abruptly and mostly downward.
Reggie Jackson
Electric slider.
Bob Gibson
And I had one where I’d twist my wrist a little more and give it a bigger break. That one didn’t ha
ve the speed or suddenness of the first one, and I didn’t throw it very often to left-handers; but if I got it where I was supposed to get it, a right-handed batter wasn’t going to do anything with it.
The problem comes when your slider stays flat. You never want a horizontal slider. They can get the big part of the bat on that thing. It’s the darting action that fools the hitter and makes him miss.
Reggie Jackson
I’ll never forget that slider against Detroit in the World Series, the one that struck out seventeen.
Bob Gibson
I had a big slider that day.
Reggie Jackson
No sh—… shoot! Hard. Hard! With a slider that hard, even if you pick up the red circle, which I doubt you could, it gets in on the left-hander’s hands so fast that he can’t do anything with it, and it darts away from a right-hander’s bat. That’s the ultimate strikeout pitch.
Bob Gibson
I’m pretty sure batters didn’t go up against me thinking slider speed. They missed the slider too far to be looking for it.
They’d be crazy to look for slider speed off me. You do that, you’re not going to hit my fastball, which in my prime I’d estimate at ninety-five to ninety-seven. I’d say my slider was about ninety-two.
Reggie Jackson
J. R. Richard threw a slider at about that speed, maybe even harder, and he’s another guy that you’d have to be looking fastball. That’s a deadly combination. If a pitcher like that comes with anything other than the fastball, it’s got to be a mistake for you to hit it square and fair.
Bob Gibson
I said that I’d show that inside slider to guys like Reggie who don’t like hard stuff on their hands, but I’d make damn sure I didn’t leave it over the plate. In fact, I’d come in tight to most left-handers. But not down and in, which is where sliders tend to be.
The bottom line was that I just didn’t throw as many sliders to lefties, which is probably why I fared so much better against right-handers in general. But even against righties, I was reluctant to come inside with a slider. Once in a while, I’d do it with the thought that they’d quit on it before it came in to catch the corner. Never twice in a row, though.
After I learned how to pitch, it got to where I could backdoor a slider to a left-handed hitter. It was a matter of starting it so far outside that the hitter would give up on it, and then it would slip in and catch the outside corner. Whoops, that’s a strike. Eventually, the backdoor slider was the one I was most likely to throw a lefty. Very seldom will a left-handed hitter swing at that pitch, as long as it’s kept on the corner.
There was also a backup slider that I learned from Bob Purkey, but I rarely threw that sucker on purpose. Purkey was a veteran who had a little bit of everything, including a knuckleball and a slider that would look normal but hold its line or even back up a little like a screwball. I’d done it accidentally a few times, and Purkey explained to me that it would happen if I overthrew my slider. He showed me how to do it purposely by raising your arm a little too high and then throwing it like mad, as hard as you can. Sometimes you’ll send up a hanging slider so bad, so far up in the strike zone, that the hitter can’t get to it. This is sort of like that. Hitters will pick up the spin—especially in day games—and that’s what sells it to them as a traditional slider. If you start it out over the plate, a left-handed hitter thinks it’s going to break in for a ball, and it just floats away from him while he stands there wondering what happened. Purkey had it perfected, but it takes a lot of guts to throw something that stays over the plate and doesn’t really do much. The vast majority of the time, I wasn’t that courageous. It’s not a pitch that children should try at home.
Reggie Jackson
Hank Bauer, who was our manager in Oakland in 1969, gave me a talk after a game in which the Royals had struck me out two or three times with breaking and off-speed pitches out of the strike zone. He mentioned to me the need to understand the strike zone and lay off of balls that aren’t in it. That’s not so hard to do with fastballs, but it’s a little different when the pitch is darting, dipping, and off-speed.
Before a pitch is halfway to home plate, you need to recognize whether it’s going to be a strike or not and what it’s going to do. You’ve already started moving toward the ball as if it’s going to be a strike, and there’s a critical instant when you have to commit yourself one way or the other. If the ball’s got a hump coming out of the pitcher’s hand, it’s going to be a breaking ball. But there are some guys—Koufax, Ryan, Bert Blyleven—with stuff so good that the breaking ball is coming on the same plane as the fastball, without a hump. Then it fools you. You can’t move. You break your bat. You look funny. All because you couldn’t recognize the pitch soon enough.
Bob Gibson
When I changed speeds on my slider, I was able to get away with something you’re really not supposed to do. I actually slowed my arm motion down a little. That’s against the book, and understandably so. Everything—fastball, breaking ball, changeup—is supposed to be thrown with the same motion. If you alter your delivery, the hitter doesn’t have to wait until the ball is halfway there to figure out what’s coming. But I got away with the changeup slider, because the difference in speed was so different from my other stuff, and it was so unexpected coming from me.
Normally, you throw a slider with a stiffer wrist than a curve-ball. It’s still wrist action, but you just kind of cut through the ball to effect a quick, tight break. You give a little twist like you’re turning a doorknob, about a ninety-degree turn. If you use a bigger twist, more like a one-to-seven move—pulling the ball down more—the slider’s going to be bigger and slower, between a slider and a curve. That was my changeup slider. A slurve, I guess you’d call it, with both horizontal and vertical break.
Reggie Jackson
I’d have handled that pitch better after I was about thirty.
Bob Gibson
I’d keep it high, especially to a left-handed hitter. I prefer the slider high.
These days, you see right-handed pitchers throwing a lot of low inside sliders to left-handed hitters. I watched when the Reds brought up Jay Bruce, a good-looking left-handed hitter, and for a couple weeks he was clobbering everything in sight. Then they started throwing him that inside slider that would break down toward his shoes and he’d be practically falling over whaling at it. Time after time. That’s great for the pitcher, but it’s not going to work for very long. A hitter like Bruce will adjust to that, and a few of those pitches will end up in the right-field stands; and then he won’t see much of that pitch anymore. Down and in is not a good pitch. You can get guys to chase those if the pitch is off the plate, but if you make a mistake they’ll murder it. They just drop the bat on it.
The only time I’d throw down and in to a right-hander was when I wanted a double-play ball. The only time. I’d throw a two-seamer and hope they hit it on the ground.
Reggie Jackson
And no doubt they did, more often than not, because they were so excited to see a strike on the inside part of the plate.
Bob Gibson
When Mike Shannon was moved in from the outfield and started playing third base for us, he said to me, “I want you to move me around depending on who’s hitting.”
I said, “Mike, you’re never going to get the ball unless it’s a double-play situation.”
Sure enough, a situation came up with a man on first and a right-handed hitter at the plate. I went down and in, and the guy hit it right to Shannon for a nice double play. After the inning, he came over and sat down next to me in the dugout, all perplexed, and asked, “How do you know when they’re going to hit the ball to me?”
I said, “I’m smart, Mike.”
Reggie Jackson
About the time I figured out when to look for slider speed and when to sit on the fastball, pitchers started throwing the split-finger. That was something more to think about.
Bob Gibson
The split-fingered fastball
is really difficult to recognize, because it looks like a fastball and all of a sudden the bottom drops out. You’ll see guys swing at it when it’s in the dirt because they think it’s just a low fastball, probably a two-seamer.
Reggie Jackson
I think there are more checked swings in the game today than there were when we played, because of the split-finger.
Bob Gibson
You throw the split-finger with the index finger and middle finger in a V-shape grip, holding the ball along the seams at the widest point. You need big hands, or long fingers, to do it right.
The two-seamer is a totally different pitch. It’s just a sinking fastball—not that nasty thing that Bruce Sutter made so popular. You hold a two-seam fastball along the seams where they come together at the narrowest point.
Reggie Jackson
One of the things that makes hitting so hard is that pitchers have the advantage of being able to come up with new stuff. They can create, innovate, invent. All we can do is react.
