by Bob Gibson
Sal’s advice was just right because, as far as I knew, there was only one guy who changed speeds with his knuckleball. That was Phil Niekro, and he was in the National League. Niekro had a little blooper knuckleball and a soft one and a hard one. That’s probably why he won more than three hundred games. The only knuckleballer within a hundred of him was his brother, Joe.
A few years ago, I started paying attention to Tim Wakefield of the Red Sox. Every pitch he throws is sixty-six, sixty-eight miles an hour. Against a speed like that, you have time to adjust. So when I faced a knuckleballer, I’d just stand there with the bat on my shoulder and not get into a hitting position until the guy released the ball. I always got a good home-run cut against knuckleballers. In fact, Wilbur Wood, a knuckleballer, is the pitcher I hit the most home runs off of.
Bob Gibson
Knuckleballs, incidentally, aren’t thrown with your knuckles. They’re thrown with your fingernails. The reason they call it a knuckleball is because that’s what the hitter sees when you dig your fingernails into the seam.
If I threw one—and I hardly ever did—I’d use it like a changeup. Our pitching coach my first year in St. Louis was Howard Pollet, and his best pitch had been a changeup. He wanted me to learn it and worked and worked with me. Told me I couldn’t pitch in the big leagues without a changeup. But I just didn’t have a good one. Every time I threw a changeup, somebody would whack it over some fence or in between the outfielders. Unfortunately, my knuckleball wasn’t much better.
I was afraid to use it in ballgames, but one day when Hank Aaron was batting I floated that baby up there—anything to avoid throwing Aaron a fastball—and he hit a ground ball to the second baseman. As he ran back to the dugout, he yelled to me, “What the hell was that?” I laughed and told him, all proud, that that was my knuckleball.
CHAPTER FOUR
CORNERS
Bob Gibson
Home plate is seventeen inches wide, and most of that is of no interest to the pitcher. When I concerned myself with the middle ten or twelve inches, it was only because I had a serious problem with the count and circumstance. In that case, the response would probably involve my best fastball and the upper portion of the strike zone.
Reggie Jackson
And see, that foot or so in the middle is what I had my eye on, although my hitting zone wouldn’t be exactly centered. Shift that region an inch or two toward the outside corner and now we’re in business.
Bob Gibson
The diameter of the baseball is a fraction less than three inches, so you could squeeze about six of them across the plate. But the strike zone is actually wider than that—or should be—because all a pitch has to do, to be a strike, is catch any portion of the plate with any portion of the ball. So, technically, if you divide the zone into slots the size of baseballs, you’ve got eight of them to work with, counting the two just touching the edges.
I’m satisfied to split those eight slots with the hitter. I’ll take the one farthest inside—make it one and a half—and about two and a half on the extreme outside. As long as I restrict myself to those areas, I figure we’re fighting the battle on my turf. If I venture into the fat territory toward the center, the home-plate advantage swings to the batter.
Reggie Jackson
That’s fair.
Bob Gibson
The average pitcher is going to put the ball where he wants it maybe fifty percent of the time. When I say where he wants it, I’m talking about close. Three inches. The width of the ball. That’s pretty close.
Unless you’ve pitched yourself into a bind and left no room for error, you’re always aiming for the corner or just off the corner. If you miss a couple inches either way, that’s okay. It’s still okay to miss by more than that off the plate, but it’s not okay to miss over the plate by more than that.
Reggie Jackson
I’d go to the plate expecting the pitcher to throw the ball within four to six inches of where he wants to. Six inches is a pretty good miss. A good control pitcher should be able to put it within a four-inch space most of the time—or even closer than that if you throw like Jamie Moyer does, with his fastball in the low eighties and his changeup in the mid-seventies.
A guy like Gibson could afford to miss his spot more than most pitchers, because he had enough speed to get away with it. On top of that, his control was good enough that you couldn’t count on him missing. It wasn’t the norm for him to miss, so it wasn’t that big a part of your approach as a hitter. But generally speaking, if a pitcher misses by more than four inches—and especially if he makes a habit out of missing by more than four inches—he can be hit out of the ballpark. Gibson could get away with being a little wild in the strike zone at times. Most pitchers can’t.
If I know a pitcher is wild in the strike zone, I’m going to be on him quick. I’m going to step on him right away, going to put a number on him immediately, going to be on him. That’s why some guys get hit even though they’re throwing the ball close to a hundred miles an hour. Hitters can expect them to miss in the strike zone, so they go up looking for that and ripping at it.
Bob Gibson
If you’re going to be wild, be wild outside the strike zone.
Reggie Jackson
I’d much rather that a pitcher be wild in the strike zone. If a guy’s all over the place, especially at ninety-five miles an hour, it puts a lot more uncertainty into a hitter’s head—emphasis on the head. Ouch! It makes me less likely to step into a pitch on the outside part of the plate.
Bob Gibson
The only trouble with being wild out of the strike zone is that it puts you behind in the count. There’s a domino effect. If you’re behind in the count, you can’t afford to work the corners quite as adamantly. And if you’re bringing the ball in over the plate, you really can’t afford to miss and bring it in too far.
That’s a bad position to be in if you don’t have good command. You’re going to miss. You just have to hope you don’t miss in the wrong spot. If you’re wild, you have to be lucky.
Reggie Jackson
I was watching one of our young Yankee pitchers, and he was missing the target sometimes by two and three feet. Jorge Posada was setting up outside, and he was missing inside in the dirt. Now, that is not good. He was knocked out of the game the next inning.
Bob Gibson
I’ve done that. I’ve missed by three feet. You have some days, man, when you do that. You just can’t have too many of them.
On those days you think, damn, how can I miss by that far? There are reasons for it. You may be opening up a little bit too soon. Your arm might be dragging. You might not be releasing the ball at the right point. You know what you’re doing wrong—afterwards.
Reggie Jackson
If you catch a Gibson or Seaver or today’s Halladay on a day like that, you’d better jump on it. If you catch them in an inning like that, you’d better jump on it.
Bob Gibson
Most starting pitchers—good pitchers or not-so-good pitchers—are the most vulnerable early, because they don’t quite have their control yet. They haven’t found that spot where they want their foot to hit or haven’t gotten comfortable on the rubber or just haven’t figured out how their body’s functioning that day. They don’t have full command of the mound yet, and consequently they don’t have full command of the ball yet. In the first inning, I’m a lot more apt to throw a fastball out over the plate than I will be later.
Sometimes I was locked in by the first inning, but not too often. There were times when I’d come in from the bullpen and tell my teammates, “Guys, you’re going to have to get a whole bunch of runs today, because I wasn’t throwing squat down there.” Then I’d walk out to the mound and the ball would go right where I wanted it to go and I’d pitch a one-hitter for seven innings. I don’t know if it’s adrenaline or what. It’s just that foot coming down in the same spot every time.
Most of the time, though, I tried to survive the first couple inning
s by just throwing hard, overpowering the batter, because I wasn’t sharp yet. Then, around the third inning, you don’t have to overpower him because you’re boom, boom, boom—right on the spot.
Reggie Jackson
A pitcher can get along fine with a hard, moving fastball in a good location. When he can add to that—with either stuff or control—he’s something special.
Some guys could dot an i with a slider. Ferguson Jenkins could do that. Mickey Lolich had a slider like that. Steve Carlton. Ron Guidry. Sparky Lyle would come into a game and throw twenty-five pitches and twenty-four of them would be sliders. And they were right where he wanted them.
You don’t expect a curveball to be as precise, but I’ve seen pitchers who could locate their curves as well as other pitchers could spot their fastballs. Those are folks like Koufax—after he settled down—or Blyleven or Camilo Pascual. David Wells could locate a breaking ball. A guy like Seaver didn’t have to. He had enough mustard that he could make you sit on that, then come with a curveball and say, “Here, hit this.”
Gibson didn’t even fool with it.
Bob Gibson
For most pitchers, control isn’t quite as precise as you might think. I didn’t even try to throw to the catcher’s mitt. I picked out a square between the catcher’s knees and shoulders and focused on that. That’s why, for me, the toughest pitch to locate was the backdoor slider to left-handers—because there was nothing to aim at. If you can pull it off, that’s an outstanding pitch.
The location that really matters is the corner, and the control that really matters is the ability to put the ball there. To me, the corner starts at the corner and extends about the width of the baseball beyond that. Of course, a lot of it depends on the umpire; and the rest depends on what the hitter is willing to swing at. The two of those go hand in hand. Umpires don’t seem to call those strikes on the corner as much as they used to, and consequently the hitters are less compelled to swing at them. When the pitcher is forced to move the ball over the plate, that results in home runs and other bad stuff.
Control pitchers like Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are more likely to get the corners called than most other pitchers. They’ve earned the benefit of the doubt because they’re always there, always in the same spot. I’d estimate that Maddux and Glavine are within two inches of their target ninety percent of the time. With that consistency, they’ve carved out strike zones that might extend an inch or two beyond the plate. And when the ball is an inch or two off the plate, in a good spot, the hitters can’t center it on the bat. No way. They’ll moan and complain about the calls, but they know what’s in store. It’s always there, and it’s usually going to be a strike.
And if it’s not a strike, it’s still a damn good pitch.
Bob Gibson
In all the years I pitched, nobody ever made an issue when I threw the ball a few inches off the outside corner. So why all the fuss when I missed that much inside?
I promise you, I spent a lot more time outside than inside. It’s where I made my living. The importance of pitching outside was the main reason I ever pitched inside. You can’t do one without establishing the other.
Reggie Jackson
As much as I preferred the ball away, I’d have to prove to a Gibson that I could hit him away before he’d change his approach. Hoot, Seaver, Maddux, Roger Clemens—the great ones are on their own programs until you give them a reason not to be. I’d have to hurt him a couple times before one of those guys would say, well, hell, let’s try something else.
Bob Gibson
I start with the fact that a hitter can’t square a pitch on the outside corner. Period.
Unless he cheats. What I mean is, unless he leans in and dives at that outside corner. Obviously, I can’t let him do that, because that’s where I’m trying to pitch. So if he tries it, I have to stand him up a little bit. Think of the hitter as a dog with an electronic collar—you just administer a slight correction, as they call it, if he tries to get out of his yard. Throw the ball inside so he can’t wander into the wrong area. Don’t let him lean where he shouldn’t be leaning. If you throw it inside and he’s still leaning, it usually hits him. Or, the way I look at it, the batter hits himself. Ouch! Jump back!
Roberto Clemente was a diver. For a great ballplayer, though, I found Clemente to be comparatively easy to pitch to. First off, he was a right-hander, and right-handers generally didn’t give me a lot of trouble as long as I kept the ball where I wanted it. With Clemente, I would just throw it down and away, down and away, and he couldn’t do anything with it. So he’d get frustrated and start jumping out at the ball. Then I’d knock him down, tick him off. Not trying to hit him or anything. All I was trying to do was make him mad. When he was mad, he’d swing at everything. I’d put him on the ground, and he’d pop up determined to kill me.
Some guys—Frank Robinson—were dangerous doing that, but Clemente was only dangerous in that situation if you screwed up unnecessarily. He’d just hack at the ball. Down and away, down and away, down and away. Not up and away. That was the mistake I didn’t want to make against Clemente. And no strikes inside if I could help it.
It worked pretty well until he broke my leg with a line drive in 1967.
Reggie Jackson
I’m sure he’d say he wasn’t trying to hit you.
Bob Gibson
They pitch a little differently today than we did. You hear all the time that today’s pitchers are afraid to come inside, but that’s not what I see. They throw inside. But not the way I did. Not the way Don Drysdale did. They pitch inside because they’re unable to take away the outside.
These days, pitching inside means working the inside part of the plate. In our day, pitching inside meant pitching inside. Off the plate. At least, that’s what I meant by it. I wasn’t throwing for inside strikes so much as I was throwing to set up my outside strikes.
The pitchers today seem to think that hitters can hit the ball on the outside corner as well as they can hit the ball on the inside corner. I don’t believe that. When you see guys belting walk-off home runs in the ninth inning, not many of them are to the opposite field. The great majority are pulled, because the pitchers are coming right into the hitters’ power. I guarantee that most of the home runs today are coming on pitches over the inside part of the plate. You see little-bitty second basemen hitting forty home runs because the pitchers pitch inside but don’t have the will or the control—either one—to get the ball as far inside as it needs to be. That wasn’t going to happen to me.
My general plan was to stay on the outside corner and break up the pattern now and then by coming inside to drive the batter away from the plate. That’s the way the old-timers did it. That’s part of the reason why Nolan Ryan became so popular when he was in his forties—because he pitched the hard-nosed, old-fashioned way. You don’t see that style anymore. The game itself has discouraged it. Nowadays, hitters can get away with leaning over the plate because the umpires protect them. So a lot of pitchers stay in, in, in—by today’s standards, not mine—then go away, then back in.
That’s the opposite of what I did. The outside corner was my bread and butter.
Reggie Jackson
For those reasons, I suspect that, if I played today, I’d have less trouble with pitches in on me. They wouldn’t be as far in. Today’s pitchers would be more likely to leave the ball out over the plate.
Bob Gibson
You should pitch with the conviction that you’re going to do your business in a certain region of the plate, and then ensure that the hitter doesn’t encroach upon that area. You’ll make mistakes and he’s going to get there once in a while, but you can’t allow him to constantly, or comfortably, look for the ball in a certain spot—much less in the spot that you’ve staked out. Make an honest man of him.
But be realistic about it. I hear a lot about pitchers owning the inside corner. No pitcher owns the inside corner. If you’re going to own anything on the plate, it’s going to be the ou
tside corner. The reason’s obvious: Most hitters like the ball from the middle in, so they can turn their hips and yank it into the seats and get on SportsCenter and make a lot of money. So you pitch them away. It’s pretty simple stuff, and hard to beat if you back it up with the force of your convictions. If the guy starts looking for the ball away in a manner that’s disrespectful of what you’re trying to do—if he chooses to venture out there aggressively, without any apparent concern for the consequences—there should be a pretty good chance he’ll get hit.
When I was pitching, the hitters knew that. It’s just the way it was. Not because I was throwing at them, but because I was trying to keep them off the outside corner.
Of course, when you do that, they call you a headhunter.
Reggie Jackson
I met Bob in Los Angeles at the Martin Luther King game, and went over to introduce myself. I’m Reggie, you’re Bob, yada yada. And then I said, “I understand you like to come inside on guys.”
