RetroSimba

(Updated Sept. 15, 2025)

On the night he pitched an immaculate inning, the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson also was perfect at the plate.

An immaculate inning is defined as using the minimum number of pitches, nine, to strike out the minimum number of batters, three.

On May 12, 1969, Gibson faced three Dodgers batters in the seventh inning and struck out each on three pitches. He also produced three singles and a walk in four plate appearances, scored a run and stole a base in the Cardinals’ 6-2 victory at St. Louis.

“Gibson did everything but put in AstroTurf,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch marveled.

9 perfect pitches

Gibson, 33, achieved his feat versus the trio of Len Gabrielson, Paul Popovich and John Miller. Gabrielson, a left-handed batter, and Popovich, a switch-hitter batting left, both struck out swinging. Miller, a right-handed batter substituting for starting pitcher Claude Osteen, struck out looking.

“I was throwing hard. All were good pitches,” Gibson said to the Post-Dispatch. “Good and low, most of them. Right on the corners. I don’t do that. Not nine straight pitches.”

Cardinals catcher Joe Torre said, “I’d just like to know what that Miller kid was thinking when Gibson shook me off twice on an 0-and-2 pitch. He shook me off a slider and then he shook off a curve. Then I called for a fastball and that’s what Gibson wanted. The kid took it.”

Gibson pitched a seven-hitter, fanned six and “proved he is just as good as ever _ and that’s almost as good as a pitcher can be,” the Los Angeles Times declared.

He told the Post-Dispatch he ached after throwing 123 pitches and the pain “starts here _ at the tip of my fingers _ and works up the arm and then into the shoulder and around down my side and all the way down to here _ my toes.”

In a 2014 interview with Cardinals Yearbook, Torre said, “Gibson was tough to catch because he never threw the ball straight. Throwing hard is one thing, but having the ball move all over the place was something else. Gibby probably beat up your thumb more than anybody because he could sail it, cut it, sink it … He could do a lot of stuff, but everything was power, power, power.”

Another Cardinals catcher, Tim McCarver, said of Gibson in the book “Few and Chosen,” “I always felt he could throw any pitch at any time to a right-handed hitter with William Tell accuracy … He could throw the ball within two baseball widths of the outside corner, with movement and at 95 mph. I never caught anybody else like that”

Hit and run

Gibson made the Dodgers hurt for intentionally walking Steve Huntz, batting .083, to load the bases with two outs in the fourth. Gibson followed by drilling a two-run single, extending the Cardinals’ lead to 3-0. In the seventh, Gibson scored on Julian Javier’s two-run single against Alan Foster.

With the Cardinals ahead, 6-2, in the eighth, Gibson worked a one-out walk from former teammate Pete Mikkelsen and swiped second. It was his second stolen base of the season and one of five steals for Gibson in 1969. He had 13 stolen bases in his Cardinals career. Boxscore