by Bob Gibson
He said, “Yep.”
I said, “If you came inside on me, I’d be out there.”
He said, “Well, then I guess we’d roll in the dirt, wouldn’t we?”
Bob Gibson
There are several ways in which a hitter lays claims to his territory at the plate. To some extent, his stance will let you know where he wants the ball. His history tells you a lot. And of course his stride.
Every hitter has an area where he wants to operate, just like every pitcher has one. If I want to throw the ball outside and Ryan Howard wants it on the inside corner to pull, I do my thing and he does his and everything’s lollipops and rainbows. At least for me. The conflict arises if both parties are interested in the same turf.
Some pitchers are quick to defer. If they see that a batter is setting himself up to hit the ball away, they’ll keep it on the inside corner. That’s the modern style. It’s also the passive style.
What made me an aggressive pitcher was not simply that I would bring the ball farther inside, as a general practice, but that I was insistent on having that outside corner. I expected the batter to defer to me, not vice versa. And to arrange that, I might have to miss the inside corner to an extent that could sting a little.
Another way to put it is that the inside fastball was the hand grenade I used for blowing the enemy out of his foxhole.
Reggie Jackson
Gibson felt about pitching the way I felt about hitting. You have to take what’s rightfully yours. He was the most feared pitcher out there because he’d do whatever he had to do to win.
Bob Gibson
It didn’t matter who was up there. Bill White was one of my best friends in baseball, but he was also an uncompromising pull hitter. He’d wade into anything, and I told him, when we were teammates in St. Louis, that if he ever did that to me he’d be hearing from my representative.
He got traded to the Phillies in 1966, and the very first pitch I threw him was on the outside corner. And sure enough, he reached out there and pulled it foul down the first-base line. The next pitch hit him in the elbow.
He told me I was crazy, but what’s crazy about doing what you said you’d do? Doing what you have to do? He got over it. It didn’t hurt our friendship a bit.
Reggie Jackson
In those days, you got drilled for a reason. We expected it and respected it.
The game has changed in that regard, but at least some of the unwritten rules have stood the test of time. If you hit a home run and strut around the bases when you’re up 8–0, or when you’re down 8–0, you’re asking for it. If you steal a base with a big lead and you’re not in Fenway Park, where no lead is big enough, there will be consequences. If a guy slides too hard, or calls too much attention to himself, or if he’s guilty of certain antics that aren’t “kosher”—aren’t part of the game or don’t fit in with how a player should act socially on a ballfield—he pays the price. Even his teammates will tell him, “Hey man, you should have seen that coming. Look what you did. You showed this guy up. You showed their team up. You’re going to hear a little chin music.” You pay for your “shows.”
I was a player who liked to savor some of my home runs. At the same time, I realized that pitchers didn’t always appreciate that. I’m pretty sure John Denny didn’t when he was pitching for Cleveland. I once hit a long one against him in Yankee Stadium and checked it out for a couple seconds. By the time I started running around the bases, there was Denny walking after me, screaming at me. He caught up at home plate and they had to pull us apart.
Ordinarily, though, a pitcher would share his feelings by sending me a message the next time I came up. So be it.
Bob Gibson
And so it would be.
Reggie Jackson
A lot of times when you get hit, it’s protocol. Or, with somebody like Bob, it might just be the pitcher trying to get into your head, trying to make sure you understand that he’s the one with the baseball. He’s going to make you stand back, move your feet, stay where you belong.
All the great pitchers—even the ones today—will do that. They have to. They’ll knock you down to make you respect them.
Bob Gibson
I wasn’t in the business of hurting people, and when it happened I felt badly. But it happened, and I couldn’t allow myself to feel badly enough that I’d give in to a hitter. I’d feel worse about that.
For a few years after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, they played in the Coliseum, where the left-field fence was only 251 feet away. They put up a high screen, but that fence was still a target. Duke Snider was a left-handed hitter and he didn’t go to left field very often, but one day I threw him a ball away and he just stepped in and stroked it over that screen. At least he didn’t try to pull it. I wasn’t all that upset until the next time he came up, when I threw him a ball farther away and he hit it over that screen again, only this time foul.
When he leaned into the next pitch, it broke his elbow. I wasn’t trying to hit him. I was trying to get him off the plate. Anyway, I went over and apologized after the game. He said, “Yeah, I know.”
That’s how baseball was played. There was a mutual understanding. It was understood, also, that you weren’t trying to hurt anybody too much.
Most pitchers try not to hit a guy in the head. That’s just something you don’t do.
Reggie Jackson
It’s generally agreed that if a pitcher is going to hit someone, he hits him in a big-muscle part of the body—the back or the butt or the side. Hitting somebody in the ribs and hitting somebody in the head are two entirely different discussions.
I was never afraid that a pitcher might hurt me, and never felt that anybody was trying to. That doesn’t mean you’re unaware of what could happen. You just can’t let fear take you over in the batter’s box. That can be a challenge when you’re up against a guy who throws about ninety-five and has a reputation for being wild; or toward the end of the season, after call-ups, when you’re standing in against a young pitcher just up from the minor leagues who’s a hard thrower and doesn’t have any idea where the ball’s going. Then, yes, fear will try to creep in. But if you let it govern you, you’re not going to be a good hitter. You have to go to the plate fearless.
The time you have to really focus on suppressing that fear is after you’ve been hit. I was thrown at fairly frequently in my career, but the most frightening was in 1976, my year in Baltimore, when Dock Ellis tried to hit me in the head and succeeded.
Bob Gibson
When I said most pitchers won’t throw at your head, I wasn’t talking about Dock Ellis.
Reggie Jackson
I’d been yelling at him from the dugout, so I knew I had something coming. But I had no idea he was going to hit me in the head. The three or four other times I was hit in the head during my career, I was protected by my helmet. That time, I took it in the face.
I missed a couple of games afterwards. On the day I was going to play again, against Detroit, I made a point of getting to the ballpark at one o’clock so that I could have the batting-practice pitcher throw balls at me. If you do get hit in the head, you’re very conscious of it the next time you’re in the batter’s box. Don’t let anybody tell you differently. I was uncomfortable.
Luckily, the first time I came up that night the pitcher, Dave Lemanczyk, threw me a fastball down the middle of the plate and I hit a home run. I was fine from then on.
Bob Gibson
If I wanted to plunk a batter, I would throw at his ribs, just slightly behind him. Batters usually have a tendency to step back a little bit when they see the ball coming their way, and if you throw just behind them it’ll hit them in the side or maybe in the back.
In my view, when batters get hit in the head it’s basically their fault. First of all, they’re not expecting a pitch in there—which is especially the case these days—and aren’t protecting themselves like they should. A lot of guys get lost in the confrontation and don’t prepare themselves, me
ntally, for the ball coming inside. The head should be the easiest thing to move.
Reggie Jackson
There’s a way to get out of the way, to avoid getting hit in the head. Most players, the first thing they do is duck down rather than turn away. Don’t do that. Turn your face away from the ball and let the helmet protect you. Turn your back toward the pitcher. Don’t try to duck and run. That’s when you get hit.
Willie Mays was one of the hardest guys to hit because he did it right. He turned away. You couldn’t hit Willie.
Bob Gibson
I certainly couldn’t. I don’t think I ever hit him. But I don’t think I ever threw at Willie, either. There was no need.
It probably traced back to a little episode we had my rookie season. Bill White had been with the Giants before he got traded to the Cardinals, so he was friends with Willie and took me to Willie’s house in San Francisco when we played there. I was standing behind Bill when Willie opened the door, and I was wearing my glasses, like I always did off the field. I’m sure Willie had never seen me with them on. Anyway, he’s got this loud, high-pitched voice, and when he opened the door he looked around and asked Bill, “Who’s that?”
Bill said, “That’s Gibson.”
And Willie said, “Gibson! You wear glasses? Man, you’re gonna kill somebody out there!”
After that, I never had to bother too much with Willie.
Reggie Jackson
If you are thrown at, it’s not like you don’t have any recourse. I went to the mound six or seven times.
There was a game against the Twins, in 1969, when I hit two home runs against Dave Boswell, then came up against a rookie named Dick Woodson. The rookie made me duck twice. After the second one, I headed out and tackled him.
Bob Gibson
And then the Oakland pitcher would’ve had to knock down one of the Twins. It goes back and forth like that. Retaliation.
That was about the only reason I ever used for actually throwing at somebody. Bear in mind, I make a distinction between throwing at a batter and what I did to Duke Snider, for instance. I didn’t knock a guy down just because he hit a home run off of me. I may have looked at him in an angry way, like, “Damn, I can’t believe I screwed up and laid one in for you like that.” But I was mad at myself, not him. Those were usually my mistakes. The guy hit a home run because I made a bad pitch.
You shouldn’t knock a guy down because you made a bad pitch. That’s on you. Make a better pitch.
Reggie Jackson
I truly wish it had been left like it was in the old days, when retaliation was accepted as part of the sport. I wish the game could manage itself. But it all went over the top, and baseball has seen the need to step in.
Bob Gibson
Lou Brock and Curt Flood got hit all the time, so I’d have no choice but to retaliate. The fact is, I hated it.
Brock, especially, made it tough on me, because he was a nuisance to pitchers with his bunting and his stealing, and he got them riled up. We’d be up ten runs with two outs, and he’d steal third base because the third baseman was playing back. Then they’d hit him. I’d say, “Damn it, Lou, now I’ve got to knock somebody down.” He got me in a lot of trouble because I was obligated to protect him. He’d say, “I didn’t ask you to do that,” but it didn’t matter. I had to. It was my job.
There was the day in 1967, for example, when we scored seven runs in the bottom of the first inning against Milt Pappas and then Don Nottebart came on in relief for Cincinnati. The next time Brock stepped up to bat, Nottebart hit him. And then he threw at Lou on first base. Threw the ball right at his head while he was over there taking his lead. Nottebart didn’t like Brock very well, for whatever reason. Well, I guess we all knew the reason. Anyway, Tony Perez was the first man up for the Reds the next inning, so I buzzed one back against the screen, about three feet over his helmet. Just wanted to let them know. Right away, Perez started woofing at me. Woof, woof, woof. He made such a fuss that I thought, well, hell, I can get closer than that. So on the next pitch he went down, and his hat went up, and the ball went in between. I yelled in to him, “That was a knockdown.”
Perez eventually flied out, and on his way back to the dugout he jogged past the mound and said something in English. I could understand his Spanish better than his English. He kept walking and talking, and I told him, “If you’ve got something to say, don’t run away!” Then I went over to meet him. The guys from both benches trotted out onto the field at that point, but we were getting along okay until a big relief pitcher named Bob Lee came charging out of the Reds’ bullpen. We fought for twelve minutes, but it seemed like fifteen rounds. I hit Perez over by the Reds’ dugout, and Tommy Helms came up behind me and I happened to catch him out of the corner of my eye and took a swing, and he went head over heels. Then I jumped on Pete Rose and was pounding on him when a couple guys—it might have been Perez and Helms—piled on top of me. It’s not real smart to fight in the other team’s dugout, but I didn’t mind; I grew up in the projects. It was quite a melee, though. There were policemen out there with billy clubs. An old cop tried to break us up in the dugout and Dave Bristol, the Reds’ manager, fractured the poor guy’s jaw. Half the players on the Cincinnati team had to be treated for cuts and bruises. I came out of it all right and ended up pitching into the eighth inning.
For the most part, though—and this was why I had to respond to Perez’s yapping—hitters in those days didn’t dispute our right to come inside. In all my seventeen years, nobody ever charged the mound against me.
If they had, I’d told my guys not to come running in to help right away but to stand back and watch, and if it looked like he was kicking my butt, then run over and help.
Reggie Jackson
I recognized that the pitcher had to protect his turf, but I also reserved the right to fight for mine. I particularly objected when a pitcher threw at me for merely doing my job, which was hitting the ball out of the park.
In August of 1971, I hit a couple home runs against the Red Sox on a Saturday and we had a doubleheader Sunday. In the first game, Roger Moret hit me in the arm. In the second game, Sonny Siebert knocked me down. I charged the mound. In retrospect, that might have been a little hair trigger, since Siebert kept the ball well below my head. But I was young and full of piss and vinegar, so I went out there and got corralled by the Red Sox. I said, okay, it’s cool. So they let me go and I started up again. I don’t know who I punched, and I don’t know who punched me, but I remember that big George Scott—one of my favorite people in the world—had me wrapped up in a bearhug. Somehow, I managed to stay in the game. In fact, I ended up winning it in the bottom of the ninth inning with an inside-the-park home run off of Siebert. I got fined, played the next day, and that was that.
Bob Gibson
Fights don’t carry over. It’s just the heat of the moment. What carries over is when you don’t fight and it just simmers.
Here’s an example. John Milner was a pretty good left-handed hitter for the Mets and Pirates, and a guy who would dive over the plate to reach the outside corner. To let him know what I thought about that, I went inside and hit him in the body during spring training. A few months later, around midseason, we were playing the Mets and Seaver threw at me three straight times. I yelled out something about him having better control than that, and he yelled back something about me having better control than that, too. He was remembering what I did to Milner back in March.
Reggie Jackson
I could never wait that long for my revenge. In 1981, I had a good series in Minnesota, and one of the Twins’ pitchers, John Verhoeven, knocked me down. Then I hit a home run and made a point of walking halfway to first base on my way around. In the newspaper the following morning, Verhoeven said something like, “The next time Reggie Jackson does that, I’m going to hit him in the head.” So I went to the ballpark at two o’clock that afternoon, walked into the Twins’ clubhouse, and sat in his chair. I mean, I was absolutely nuts when I d
id that. Finally our manager, Gene Michael, came over and got me, and he and a few others ushered me out of there before Verhoeven showed up. They said, “Reggie, you’re out of your mind.” Looking back, I can’t believe I did that. But I’m kind of glad I did—for the sake of the story, if nothing else.
Bob Gibson
I don’t believe I ever announced ahead of time that I was going to hit a batter.
Reggie Jackson
There’s no need if you already have a reputation. That changes everything.
Everybody knew Gibson’s reputation. He started the All-Star Game in 1972 and I batted third for the American League, so I faced him in the first inning. It was common knowledge that Hoot didn’t like to be bothered with All-Star Games because they got in the way of the job he was trying to do for the Cardinals. So he always wanted to get out of there as quickly as he could, and wasn’t in the best temperament. Well, he hung me a slider and I hit it off the fence in right center. As I pulled in at second base, he was staring at me.
I wouldn’t look back at him. Would not look back. I just kept my helmet down over my eyes and minded my own business. I was scared to death.
Bob Gibson
I don’t remember staring. I do remember that double.
