In the same year Bob Gibson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, he was fired by the Mets.
Rather than close the door to baseball jobs, the dismissal gave Gibson a chance to explore other possibilities. Those options included:
_ Working for Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
_ Replacing Dave Duncan as pitching coach of an American League team.
_ Reuniting with Joe Torre as pitching coach of a National League team.
New games
After pitching his last game for the Cardinals in 1975, Gibson went home to Omaha. He had investments in a bank and a radio station, and opened a restaurant near the campus of Creighton University, his alma mater. Gibson’s only connection to baseball was some television broadcasting for ABC and HBO.
In his book “Stranger to the Game,” Gibson said he was offered the job of pitching coach on the staff of Giants manager Joe Altobelli when Herm Starrette left to join the Phillies after the 1978 season. Gibson said he declined because he was preoccupied with opening his restaurant.
(The Giants hired Larry Shepard, former Pirates manager and Reds pitching coach. If Gibson had taken the job, one of the pitchers he’d have coached on the 1979 Giants was Vida Blue. As intriguing as that is to consider, it turned out for the best that Gibson turned down the Giants. Altobelli was fired before the completion of the 1979 season.)
Later, Gibson was interested in returning to the Cardinals organization as manager of their Class AAA farm club. In 1980, the Omaha World-Herald reported, “If Hal Lanier had not returned this year as manager of Springfield in the American Association, the job might have gone to Bob Gibson.”
A. Ray Smith, owner of the farm club, said he “had a deal with Gibson … we had an agreement” if the job became available, according to the Omaha newspaper.
Instead, Gibson made his return to baseball with the Mets, who were managed by friend and former teammate Joe Torre. On Oct. 23, 1980, the Mets announced Gibson was joining Torre’s coaching staff. The Mets had a pitching coach, Rube Walker. In his autobiography, Gibson said Torre told him his job was to be an “attitude coach.”
“Rube is a fine, settling influence on the pitchers,” Torre told The Sporting News. “They have great respect for him, but he can carry them just so far. Maybe Gibson can carry them the rest of the way. Maybe he can light a fire in some of them.”
Gibson said to The Sporting News, “You can’t teach competitiveness, but you can work on attitude. If you can improve a player’s attitude, he may become more competitive.”
In and out
In January 1981, three months after the Mets hired him, Gibson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first appearance on the ballot. He got 84 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America. Two other first-time candidates _ Harmon Killebrew (59.6 percent) and Juan Marichal (58.1 percent) _ failed to get enough support. Others falling short included Don Drysdale (60.6 percent), Red Schoendienst (41.4 percent) and Orlando Cepeda (19.2 percent).
The 1981 Mets were a bad team (41-62) in a strike-shortened season. The pitching staff Gibson worked with included two fading Cy Young Award winners (Randy Jones and Mike Marshall), a future Cy Young Award winner (Mike Scott), a closer nearing his peak (Neil Allen) and a future closer (Jeff Reardon).
In his autobiography, Gibson said, “As it turned out, my role became largely one of a counselor for the likes of our two talented relief pitchers, Neil Allen and Jeff Reardon, both of whom were having difficulty dealing with their identities on the team as well as their working relationship with each other. Reardon thought he was deserving of Allen’s role as closer.”
In his book “Chasing the Dream,” Torre said, “Gibby had tremendous knowledge to give pitchers but was willing to share it only with people who sincerely wanted to listen. A lot of pitchers don’t think they need help, and Bob was turned off by those types and wouldn’t hesitate to show them his gruff side.”
When the season ended, Torre and his coaches were fired.
Torre said in his autobiography that Gibson “took it much harder than I did … The rejection devastated him.”
Decisions, decisions
Bill Bergesch, who signed Gibson for the Cardinals in 1957, was vice president of baseball operations for the Yankees in 1981. When the Mets fired Gibson, Bergesch offered him a job in player development for the Yankees. In his autobiography, Gibson said the job was to be minor-league pitching coordinator.
Meanwhile, Cleveland Indians pitching coach Dave Duncan left for Seattle to become pitching coach of the Mariners for manager Rene Lachemann. The Indians inquired about the availability of Gibson for manager Dave Garcia’s staff, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. According to The Sporting News, Gibson was offered the job.
Of the two opportunities, the Yankees tempted Gibson the most because of Bergesch’s association with the club, Gibson said in his autobiography. Bergesch told Gibson he had a standing offer to work for the Yankees, Newsday reported.
Instead, when the Braves named Joe Torre their manager, Gibson accepted his offer to join the coaching staff. In his autobiography, Torre said the deal was sealed when the Braves agreed to Gibson’s demand for a two-year contract.
Gibson told Newsday he took the job in order to add more major-league service time toward his pension plan.
“I do want to work in player development,” Gibson said to Newsday, “but I need three years (in uniform in the majors) to get 20 years on my pension. I figured this is the time.”
Torre also hired Rube Walker for the Braves coaching staff, but, unlike with the Mets, Gibson was named pitching coach and Walker took a secondary role. “We divided up the duties to everybody’s satisfaction,” Gibson said in his autobiography. “Mine included being a lieutenant, more or less, to Torre.”
How it went
Gibson was a soap opera fan _ his favorites were “All My Children” and “Ryan’s Hope,” according to Newsday’s Marty Noble _ but it’s hard to imagine he would have liked being caught in the drama involving the Yankees had he gone there.
The 1982 Yankees used five pitching coaches. When the season began, Jeff Torborg and Jerry Walker shared the role. Stan Williams took over in April, then Clyde King succeeded Williams in June. A month later, Sammy Ellis replaced King. Ellis had been pitching coach at the Yankees’ Columbus farm club. If Gibson had been employed by the Yankees, it’s easy to imagine him being included in the shuffle of pitching coaches.
The 1982 Cleveland Indians went with Mel Queen as the replacement for Dave Duncan as pitching coach and he worked with a staff that included a pair of former Cardinals pitchers, John Denny and Lary Sorensen.
With Torre and Gibson, the Braves won a division title in 1982 but were ousted by the Cardinals in the National League Championship Series.
The good times didn’t last long. After the 1984 season, Torre was fired by club owner Ted Turner and so was Gibson. They were reunited in 1995 when Torre managed the Cardinals and added Gibson to the coaching staff as his assistant, but it was not a good year for them. Torre was fired in June, the Cardinals finished 62-81 and Gibson never coached again.
RetroSimba 
Sounds like Bob had a rough go. I always thought of him as “underrated” if that’s even possible. It seems like there is more jibber-jabber about Koufax and Ryan even though Bob has got to be top 10 all time. I once waited for Ryan in the press box in Round Rock, TX to get his autograph and he never showed, so screw that guy. :)
The card you included was drawn by a wonderful artist whose name escapes me. I follow him on bookface and I enjoy his work very much. In fact, I use his Muhammad Ali as a screen saver.
another one of my brain farts: Rube Walker got me to thinking about the awesome movie “Mask” with Cher and Sam Elliot. (who is from….ahem…Sacramento) Anyway, there is a funny scene where the main character is trying to collect the 1955 Dodgers team set and he needs a Rube Walker so he kind of rips off his buddy by trading a Steve Garvey for the card he needed. Good stuff.
Thank you for supplying the image used in this piece, Gary. It’s splendid. If you want to come back and add the name of the artist to the comments section, please do. The artist deserves the recognition.
That Rube Walker story in “Mask” made me smile. I didn’t know about that.
Also didn’t know Sam Elliott was born and raised in Sacramento before moving to Portland as he entered high school. In 2006, the Sacramento Bee interviewed Elliott about his Sacramento days. The newspaper noted, “He has good memories of his Sacramento boyhood, of growing up in the Hollywood Park neighborhood, riding his bike around town, spending time with his dad in the mountains, and escaping the city’s summer heat in a Franklin Boulevard movie theater.”
Sam Elliott first resided on Wentworth Avenue and then Stacia Way. He attended Joaquin Miller Junior High School (now Leonardo Da Vinci School).
“I remember riding my bike to William Land Park all the time and riding over to the Sacramento River to fish,” he told the newspaper.
Sam Elliot’s mother was a Texas state diving champion in high school.
The artist’s name is Arthur K. Miller and his work is just dazzling!
link: http://artofthegame.com/
Thanks for the name and the link, Gary.
Not every former player is going to have success as a coach. Especially if that retired player is a hard nosed, old school, super competitive individual who gets voted into the Hall of Fame. Something else to take into consideration in regards to Bob Gibson is that during his playing days, he was his own worst critic. No coach was as hard and demanding on Bob Gibson as he was on himself. Expecting the same from a younger generation of players is only asking for trouble. There really are some things that you can’t teach. Either you have it, or you don’t.
On the field, Bob Gibson was all about winning, and he found that focus, for a variety of reasons, wasn’t shared by all when he coached.
In his autobiography, Gibson said when he joined the Mets, general manager Frank Cashen “advised Joe Torre and me to concern ourselves less with the (1981) pennant races and more with the future of the club … Cashen’s order was particularly confusing to me (because) I was there to teach winning.”
When he joined the Braves, Gibson said in “Stranger to the Game,” he determined the players “were sorely lacking a sense of competitiveness.”
“Losing didn’t seem to bother the Braves,” Gibson said. “With the pitchers, the indifference toward winning showed up in the fact that so few of them would pitch with pain. My job was to point out the difference between pain, which can be pitched with, and injury, which can’t.”
Gibson also said, “There were times in 1982 when I realized how much the players had changed in the short time since I had retired and how inattentive they had become to the ways of winning.”
It must be tough to be a pitcher and the team keeps replacing the pitching coach with a new one….different philosophies and what not which I would think would mess up the pitcher. It takes time to win the trust of someone. I assume it’s the same with pitcher and coach.
Kind of off topic, but I met this guy Julien Tucker who had a minor league career as a pitcher with a bunch of teams. He told me that too many pitching coaches and their different advice confused him and that the only one that helped him was Jim Hickey because he let him be himself.
Thanks for those insights, Steve. I think you are correct about what happens when a player has too many different coaches. It can hurt hitters as well as pitchers. In researching a piece on Andres Galarraga, I learned that in a six-year span (1987 to 1992) he had six different hitting coaches. He went from being a .300 hitter to a .219 hitter, in part, because some of those coaches wanted him to pull the ball for more power rather than go with his natural swing, which was to hit to center and right-center. It wasn’t until Don Baylor became his hitting coach with the Cardinals (and restored his natural swing) that Galarraga got straightened out and revived his career.
I had a ton of fun looking up the playing career of Julien Tucker. He must really love the game because he sure pitched in a lot of places as a pro. He would be a terrific source of anecdotes for you. Some of the things I learned about Julien Tucker:
_ His manager with the 1994 Auburn (N.Y.) Astros was Manny Acta, who went on to manage the Washington Nationals and Cleveland Indians.
_ His manager with the 1997 Kissimmee (Fla.) Cobras was former Cardinals and Expos catcher John Tamargo, and Tucker’s teammates there included Lance Berkman, Julio Lugo, and pitchers Freddy Garcia and Wade Miller.
_ His teammate with the 1998 Birmingham (Ala.) Barons was pitcher Jim Abbott.
_ Among his other managers were two former big-league sluggers: Darrell Evans with the 2000 Aberdeen (Md.) Arsenal and Joe Ferguson with the 2003 Capitales de Quebec.
Here is a link to the career stats of Julien Tucker on baseball-reference.com: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=tucker002jul
I never knew about Galarraga’s prolonged struggles at the plate.
Thanks for the link to Julien Tucker. I met him when he was a pitcher for Concordia University here in Montreal. After all those years in the minors he returned to school and was still eligible to play.
Now I realize why the Mets crashed and burned this year. No attitude coach!
Hah! Good one, Ken.
Doubtful that Gibson would have had any influence on Vida Blue, especially at that stage of Vida’s life, if you get me. But anyway, in the ‘79 home opener, the Giants won on a 9th inning home run by Tamargo, hitting for Blue.
Thanks for mentioning John Tamargo hitting a walkoff home run in the 1979 Giants home opener. I had fun looking that up.
With the score tied at 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth at Candlestick Park, the Giants had none on and two outs when Willie McCovey pinch-hit for shortstop Roger Metzger and singled versus reliever John D’Acquisto. Tamargo then batted for Vida Blue. Tamargo had a total of one home run in the majors but he drove a 1-and-1 pitch from D’Acquisto into the first row of the orange football bleachers in right-center for a two-run homer, sending the crowd of 56,196 into a frenzy.
Asked whether he was thinking of hitting a home run, Tamargo replied to the San Francisco Examiner, “I’m not that good.”
D’Acquisto told the Examiner, “I played with John in St. Louis (in 1977). He caught me a couple of games in spring training. I didn’t consider him any home run threat … but as hard as I throw I turned him into a home run hitter. It was a low fastball.”
Here is the box score: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1979/B04100SFN1979.htm
Two months later, Tamargo was traded to the Expos for a player to be named (Joe Pettini).
Tamargo hit four home runs in the majors and two were walkoffs. The other came for the Expos against the Cardinals. On Sept. 29, 1980, with the score tied and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Tamargo batted for pitcher Woodie Fryman and hit a three-run home run versus George Frazier, lifting the Expos to victory.
RETROSIMBA, IS THE CHARLIE PEETE BOOK TITLED “CARDINAL DREAMS” STILL SET FOR A MARCH 5, 2024 PUBLICATION DATE BY YOUR FRIEND, THE AUTHOR, DANNY SPEWAK? I NEED 2 COPIES. THANK YOU
Donn, yes, the Charlie Peete book by Danny Spewak still has a publication date of March 5, 2024. I will post an interview with Danny Spewak about the book on my RetroSimba site on March 1. It will include a link to order the book.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE QUICK REPLY. I HAVE THE ORIGINAL 3 DAYS OF OMAHA WORLD HERALD NEWSPAPERS THAT TELL ALL ABOUT PEETE’S TRAGIC PLANE CRASH AND HIS FUNERAL. REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS BOOK. TAKE CARE AND STAY SAFE AND WELL