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Bob Gibson and his surprise pitch to Hank Aaron

Posted in Games, Hitters, Opponents, Pitchers on October 6, 2020| 6 Comments »

(Updated Feb. 21, 2023)

Hank Aaron was the recipient of a special delivery from Bob Gibson.

On July 28, 1970, Gibson threw a knuckleball in a game for the first time. The batter he threw it to was Aaron.

The unlikely pitch from a premier fastball pitcher to a premier fastball hitter occurred in a game between the Cardinals and Braves at Atlanta.

Mighty matchups

Aaron, 36, and Gibson, 34, still were at the top of their games in 1970. Aaron would finish the season with 38 home runs and 118 RBI. Gibson would finish at 23-7 and win his second National League Cy Young Award.

The two future Hall of Famers faced each other often. Aaron completed his career with 163 at-bats against Gibson. Only Billy Williams (174) batted more times versus Gibson.

Aaron batted .215 versus Gibson for his career. He had 35 hits, including eight home runs, and struck out 32 times. “Gibson was every bit as mean as (Don) Drysdale, and he threw harder,” Aaron said in his autobiography “I Had a Hammer.”

In his book, “Sixty Feet, Six Inches,” Gibson said, “There are very few guys who can consistently hit that 95 mph fastball that’s up above the belt. Hank Aaron could. Aaron swung down on the ball. He’d get backspin on it and hit line drives that would start off close to the ground and just keep going unless the fence got in the way.”

“I’d avoid throwing Hank Aaron a fastball over the plate if there was any possible way I could get around it,” Gibson said. “That man did not miss a fastball.”

In Gibson’s first two starts against the 1970 Braves, Aaron tagged him for five hits in eight at-bats.

Entering their third and final matchup of the season on a hot, humid night in Georgia, Gibson had a surprise for Hammerin’ Hank.

Ready or not

Before the game, Gibson told catcher Joe Torre he wanted to throw a knuckleball.

“I’ve been fooling around with that pitch on the sidelines for what, three, four years?” Gibson said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I figured I finally had enough guts to throw it in a game. I just wanted to see what would happen.”

In the first inning, the Braves had a runner on second, one out, and Aaron at the plate. When the count got to 2-and-2, Gibson decided to unveil the knuckleball.

“I got it over and it went down pretty good,” Gibson said.

Aaron swung at it and popped out to second baseman Julian Javier.

In his book, Gibson recalled, “As he ran back to the dugout, he yelled to me, ‘What the hell was that?’ I laughed and told him, all proud, ‘That was my knuckleball.’ ”

Gibson knew Aaron sometimes could be coaxed into chasing tantalizingly slow pitches. Five years earlier, in 1965, the Cardinals’ Curt Simmons threw a high, floating changeup to Aaron, who hit the ball over the wall but was called out by the umpire for stepping out of the batter’s box.

Gibson said he tried a knuckleball as a substitute for a changeup.

“Knuckleballs, incidentally, aren’t thrown with your knuckles,” Gibson said in his book. “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.”

Encore in ninth

Gibson retired 12 of the first 13 Braves batters, and the Cardinals built a 6-0 lead against Jim Nash and Bob Priddy.

According to the Atlanta Constitution, Braves manager Lum Harris said Gibson “was bringing it up there in a hurry. I wondered if we’d get any runs off him.”

In the sixth, Aaron drove in a run with a single and the Braves scored three times in the inning. “I pitched dumb,” Gibson said of his sixth-inning effort. “I just tried to get by on nothing but fastballs, and I was getting tired.”

The Braves added another run in the seventh, getting within two at 6-4.

In the ninth, the Braves brought in the master knuckleball specialist, 48-year-old Hoyt Wilhelm, to pitch, and he retired the Cardinals in order. “Old Hoyt was something,” Harris marveled.

After retiring Felix Millan in the bottom half of the inning, Gibson again faced Aaron, who popped out to second base for the third time in the game.

“I got Aaron on that pop-up in the ninth on a knuckler,” Gibson told the Atlanta Constitution.

Torre said to the Post-Dispatch, “In the ninth, when Henry popped up, it looked as if he had a good ball to hit, but just when Henry got the bat around to where the pitch was, the ball sailed out. Henry never had a chance. All Henry said was, ‘Son of a bitch.’ ”

Gibson struck out the next batter, Rico Carty, to complete the game and earn the win, boosting his record to 13-5. His totals for the game: 9 innings, 12 hits, 4 runs, 1 walk, 7 strikeouts. Boxscore

“Twelve hits are a lot to give up and still win, but I’m not complaining,” said Gibson.

In his book, Gibson said he rarely threw another knuckleball.

“Every time I threw a changeup, somebody would whack it over some fence, or in between the outfielders,” Gibson said. “Unfortunately, my knuckleball wasn’t much better.”

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Demotion from Cardinals was blessing for Fred Norman

Posted in Pitchers, Trades on September 30, 2020| 4 Comments »

When Warren Spahn managed in the St. Louis system, he helped Fred Norman develop the skills to become a consistent winner in the big leagues, but it was the Reds, not the Cardinals, who benefited.

On Sept. 28, 1970, the Cardinals acquired Norman on waivers from the Dodgers. The move was made to get a jump on building a bullpen for the following season.

Norman looked good in spring training in 1971 and began the regular season as one of the Cardinals’ relievers. After a couple of rough outings, he was sent to their Tulsa farm club, where Spahn was the manager.

Norman was a left-handed pitcher and Spahn, the career leader in wins among left-handers, was an ideal mentor. As Tulsa manager, Spahn taught Norman how to become adept at throwing the screwball.

The results were impressive.

Rocket arm

Norman was born in San Antonio and grew up in Miami. He excelled in diving, but his best sport was baseball. Norman threw with uncommon speed for his size. Though listed at 5 feet 8, Norman admitted to Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News he was 5 feet 7. McCoy responded, “Make him stand on the tops of his toes and mark him down for 5 feet 6.”

“People always felt somebody my size couldn’t make it,” Norman said. “If you get people out, what does it matter if you’re 6 feet 7 or 5 feet 7?”

In three varsity seasons for Miami Jackson High School, Norman posted ERAs of 0.92, 0.82 and 0.87, according to the Miami Herald.

Norman and Steve Carlton opposed one another as high school pitchers in Miami. “Freddie struck me out with a nasty curve,” Carlton told The Sporting News.

Major-league scouts deemed Norman a top prospect. He said eight teams made offers. The best came from the Kansas City Athletics. He signed with them for $40,000 on June 10, 1961, the day after his high school graduation. He used the money to buy his parents a house.

“I thought I’d be with Kansas City forever,” Norman told the Dayton Daily News. “Little did I know.”

On the move

Norman, 18, reported to the Athletics’ Shreveport farm club and lost seven of eight decisions. “I knew nothing about pitching,” Norman said. “Rear back and throw. I was short on control and, frankly, I didn’t know what I was doing on the mound.”

The next year, 1962, Norman got called up to the Athletics in September and made two relief appearances. He struck out 258 batters in 198 innings for Binghamton in 1963, got brought up to the Athletics again in September and was 0-1 in two starts.

Norman said Athletics pitching instructor Bill Posedel, a former Cardinals coach, showed him the screwball, but before he could learn to master the pitch he was traded to the Cubs in December 1963 for outfielder Nelson Mathews, father of future Cardinals reliever T.J. Mathews.

Norman began the 1964 season in the Cubs’ rotation, but was 0-4 in five starts and got demoted.

The Cubs wouldn’t let Norman throw the screwball because “they thought it might hurt my arm,” he told The Sporting News, and he spent most of the next two seasons in the minors.

Traded to the Dodgers in April 1967, Norman’s arm ached from tendinitis and his career stalled.

In 1968, Norman’s manager at Albuquerque, former Cardinals pitcher Roger Craig, told him he needed to change his approach.

“Craig told me, ‘This is where you learn how to pitch,’ and that’s what happened,” Norman said to the Miami Herald. “I had to try to put the ball here and there.”

When the Dodgers assigned Norman to Spokane in 1969, “I thought about quitting,” Norman told the Dayton Daily News, “but Tom Lasorda was my manager and he saved my career. He believed in me and helped.”

Norman was 13-6 with a 2.62 ERA for Spokane in 1969, and the performance gave him a chance to earn a spot with the 1970 Dodgers.

Back in the bigs

At Dodgers spring training in 1970, Norman “looked as good as any pitcher we have,” manager Walter Alston told The Sporting News.

Norman, 27, made the Dodgers’ Opening Day roster as a reliever, appeared in 30 games during the 1970 season and was 2-0 with a save. After beating the Cubs on Aug. 14, Norman’s ERA was 3.74, but several poor outings followed and he was made available to the Cardinals.

Norman got into one game for the 1970 Cardinals, pitched a scoreless inning and headed into the off-season as a bullpen candidate for 1971.

Screwball mechanics

At Cardinals spring training in 1971, Norman competed with Frank Bertaina for a left-handed relief spot. Manager Red Schoendienst initially opted to keep Bertaina, but changed his mind. “Bertaina couldn’t get ready to pitch often enough” out of the bullpen, Schoendienst told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“You can give Norman the ball almost any day and know he’ll be ready to go out to the mound,” Schoendienst said to The Sporting News.

Norman made four appearances for the 1971 Cardinals, gave up five runs and was sent to Tulsa.

It didn’t take long for Spahn to show Norman how to make the screwball an effective pitch. In his first start for Tulsa, Norman pitched a four-hitter and struck out 15 Iowa batters.

“Spahn taught me the mechanical part of the screwball,” Norman told the Miami Herald. “He taught me the main release area.”

On June 5, 1971, Norman pitched a no-hitter against Indianapolis. He retired 24 batters in a row until Sonny Ruberto led off the ninth with a walk.

“Fred could pitch in the majors right now,” Spahn told The Sporting News. “He’s the stabilizer on my staff, the kind of a pitcher that when you put him out there, you know you’re going to get a good game.”

Said Norman, “Spahnie helped me with my screwball. It’s given me the other pitch I needed. It makes my fastball just that much more effective.”

On June 11, 1971, six days after his no-hitter, Norman was 6-1 with a 2.18 ERA for Tulsa when the Cardinals traded him and outfielder Leron Lee to the Padres for pitcher Al Santorini.

“I was going to a place, finally, that needed me, a place where I could start,” Norman said.

Two years later, in July 1973, the Reds acquired Norman. He achieved double-digit wins in all seven seasons with them and was a combined 24-11 in 1975-76 when they won World Series championships.

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Dizzy Dean dominated in first game for Cardinals

Posted in Games, Pitchers on September 27, 2020| 2 Comments »

In a preview of what was to come during a Hall of Fame career with the Cardinals, a confident Dizzy Dean dazzled in his debut game in the major leagues.

On Sept. 28, 1930, the last day of the regular season, Dean pitched a three-hitter in a 3-1 Cardinals triumph against the Pirates before an estimated 22,000 spectators at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. The game was completed in one hour, 22 minutes.

Dean’s dominant performance capped a glorious season for the Cardinals, who clinched the National League pennant two days earlier and were headed to the World Series to face the Athletics.

Red Smith of the St. Louis Star-Times noted, “Dean wrote a brilliant first chapter in the story of his major-league career … If a single performance in a single, meaningless game can be taken as a criterion, Dean is destined for stardom.”

Fast rise

A right-hander who was pitching semipro baseball in San Antonio, Dean, 20, signed with the Cardinals before the start of the 1930 season and was assigned to the minors. He was an immediate success, earning 25 wins. Dean was 17-8 for St. Joseph (Mo.) of the Western League and 8-2 for Houston of the Texas League.

The Cardinals called up Dean on Sept. 7, 1930, and he joined them for their final road trip of the season to New York, Boston, Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

Dean watched from the bench as the Cardinals won 12 of 15 games on the trip and took command of the pennant race.

Returning to St. Louis to complete the season with a series versus the Pirates, the Cardinals clinched the pennant with a win on Sept. 26, giving them a three-game lead over the second-place Cubs with two to play.

On the last day of the regular season, Sunday, Sept. 28, Cardinals manager Gabby Street gave the start to Dean, who’d been pestering him for a chance to pitch since joining the club three weeks earlier.

Speed and poise

For his debut, Dean wore cleats borrowed from pitcher Burleigh Grimes because he’d misplaced his own, according to the biography “Diz” by author Robert Gregory.

Dean was matched against Pirates starter Larry French, who’d defeated the Cardinals three times in 1930. The Pirates’ lineup featured two future Hall of Famers, Pie Traynor and Paul Waner.

In the first inning, two of the first three batters, Gus Dugas and George Grantham, reached on walks and Traynor drove in Dugas with a single.

Dean settled down and the Cardinals came back with two runs in the third. Dean contributed to the rally with a single and scored from third on a forceout.

Traynor got a leadoff single in the fourth but the Pirates didn’t get another hit, their last, until Ben Sankey singled in the seventh.

“All the time he was beating the Pirates’ ears, he was complaining his fastball wasn’t working,” Cardinals pitcher Bill Hallahan told the Star-Times.

Said Burleigh Grimes: “He was as unconcerned as if he was tossing rocks at a mud turtle on a log in the Meramec River.”

In the eighth inning, Grimes said, Dean “turned to me and said, ‘The Cardinals’ business office thinks I’m a dumb guy. My salary stops today and (traveling secretary) Clarence Lloyd had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to make the trip to Philadelphia for the World Series. He said the club would pay my expenses. I asked him would I draw dough for going and he said no. He thought he could put that over on me. I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”

Star quality

Throughout the game, Dean had the crowd “showering him with applause as he gyrated deceptively, flaunting a triple windup,” the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported. “Besides poise, he had tremendous speed, a fast curve and, lo and behold for a youngster, a change of pace which he employed smartly.”

In the Star-Times, Red Smith wrote, Dean “showed burning speed, a wide, sweeping curve, a clever change of pace and, best of all, unusual control for a rookie.”

Describing Dean as a “tall, gangling youth with large hands that dangle from grotesquely long arms,” Smith observed, “He wheels his right arm around his head like the lash of a whip, then throws with a sweeping sidearm motion, baffling to the batter and amusing to the crowd.”

“That delivery may earn him the name of Dizzy,” Smith concluded, “but it seems likely, too, to earn him the title of star.”

The Cardinals extended their lead to 3-1 with a run in the sixth and Dean did the rest, shutting down the Pirates. Boxscore

According to Red Smith, manager Gabby Street called Dean “the nearest thing to Walter Johnson I ever saw.”

Burleigh Grimes, like Walter Johnson, a future Hall of Famer, said of Dean, “I’ll predict that two years from now that kid will be the sensation of the National League.”

Rather than accept the Cardinals’ invitation to travel with them to Philadelphia for the start of the World Series, Dean headed home to San Antonio. On the way there, he stopped at St. Joseph, Mo., and told friends, “I was fed up on baseball, so I didn’t go to the World Series. I just told (club executive) Branch Rickey I’d wait until next year and then win three games in the first Series I ever attended.”

After spending the 1931 season in the minors at Houston, winning 26 games, Dean stuck with the Cardinals in 1932. As Grimes predicted, two years after Dean made his Cardinals debut, he was a sensation in 1932, leading National League pitchers in strikeouts.

Dean proved to be a good predictor, too. In his first World Series, in 1934, he didn’t win three games, but he did win two, including a shutout in the decisive Game 7, against the Tigers.

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How Steve Carlton avoided losing 20 for Cardinals

Posted in Games, Pitchers on September 24, 2020| 2 Comments »

In his last appearance of the 1970 season, Steve Carlton survived a beanball battle and avoided becoming the first Cardinals pitcher in 50 years to lose 20 games.

On Sept. 26, 1970, Carlton pitched a three-hitter and got the win in a 7-2 Cardinals triumph versus the Expos at Montreal. A left-hander and future Hall of Famer, Carlton finished 10-19 in 1970.

The last Cardinals pitcher with 20 losses in a season was another future Hall of Famer, Jesse Haines, who was 13-20 in 1920.

No Cardinals left-hander has had a 20-loss season.

The most losses by a Cardinals pitcher in one season is 25. Stoney McGlynn was 14-25 for the 1907 Cardinals and Bugs Raymond was 15-25 for the 1908 Cardinals.

Head games

Carlton reported late to spring training in 1970 because of a contract dispute and struggled throughout most of the regular season. He was 1-2 in April and 1-4 May. Carlton didn’t have a winning record in any of the first five months of the season and entered September at 7-18.

After winning two of three decisions in September, Carlton went into his last start looking to end on a positive note against the Expos, who had beaten him twice during the season.

He was matched against Expos starter Bill Stoneman, who had angered the Cardinals by throwing at them.

On Aug. 9, Stoneman threw a pitch close to the head of the Cardinals’ Richie Allen. Cardinals pitcher Jerry Reuss retaliated by plunking Stoneman with a pitch on the peak of his batting helmet. Boxscore

A month later, on Sept. 5, Stoneman hit the Cardinals’ Joe Torre with a pitch. Boxscore

Stoneman hit 14 batters with pitches, the most in the major leagues in 1970. Expos manager Gene Mauch claimed the reason Stoneman hit so many was because the batters leaned in toward the plate in anticipation of his breaking pitches, The Sporting News reported.

Law and order

Trouble started early in the late September showdown between Carlton and Stoneman.

In the second inning, Stoneman hit Jose Cruz with a pitch.

Carlton retaliated by brushing back Stoneman with a pitch in the third. “You can’t let a pitcher go after your hitters,” Carlton told The Sporting News. “I’ve got to protect my guys.”

Hoping to defuse the tension, umpires issued an warning to both teams. Mauch stormed onto the field, objecting to the warning, and was ejected.

In the fourth, a defiant Stoneman hit Torre with a pitch and was ejected.

“That guy throws at six or seven guys every game,” Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst told the Montreal Gazette. “That’s his best pitch.”

Expos catcher John Bateman, miffed about the ejections of Mauch and Stoneman, expressed his frustrations to the umpires in the fifth inning and was tossed, too.

Win some, lose some

The Cardinals broke a 1-1 tie with three runs in the eighth. Torre hit a two-run triple against Dan McGinn and Ted Simmons drove in Torre with a single versus Claude Raymond.

In the ninth, Carlton was hit in the rump by a pitch from Mike Wegener. “I don’t understand him hitting me,” Carlton said. “I thought everything was settled by that time.”

Players from both teams swarmed onto the field, but “nobody swung. They just jabbered and looked tough,” the Montreal Gazette reported.

After the Cardinals scored three times in the top of the ninth, the Expos added a run in the bottom half of the inning on a leadoff home run by Gary Sutherland before Carlton retired the next three batters, completing the win. Boxscore

Though he avoided a 20-loss season for the Cardinals, Carlton wasn’t so fortunate three years later with the Phillies. In 1973, Carlton lost six of his last eight decisions and finished with a record of 13-20. The 20th loss came against the Cardinals at St. Louis. Boxscore

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Flint Rhem to Cardinals: Kidnappers made me do it

Posted in Games, Pitchers on September 21, 2020| 6 Comments »

Flint Rhem was a Cardinals pitcher with an addiction to alcohol and a fiction writer’s imagination.

During the National League pennant race in September 1930, Rhem went missing for about 24 hours before his scheduled start for the Cardinals against the Dodgers at Brooklyn.

When he eventually showed up at the team hotel in Manhattan, Rhem told Cardinals manager Gabby Street he’d been kidnapped by two men who didn’t want him to face the Dodgers, held at gunpoint and forced to drink to excess.

Rhem had gone on a binge, all right, but neither the Cardinals nor the newspapers bought his tall tale of a kidnap.

Though he did miss his start against the Dodgers, Rhem recovered to win his next two starts and help the Cardinals clinch the pennant.

Back in business

After splitting a doubleheader with the Braves at Boston on Sept. 14, the 1930 Cardinals were in second place in the National League heading into a three-game series with the first-place Dodgers at Brooklyn.

Rhem was the Cardinals’ choice to start Game 2 of the series. A right-hander, Rhem, 29, had won his last six decisions and was 10-8 for the season.

Rhem’s status as a valued starter represented quite a comeback. A year earlier, Rhem’s career was headed in the wrong direction. Though he was a 20-game winner for the 1926 World Series champion Cardinals and an 11-game winner when the club won another pennant in 1928, Rhem got in trouble with management because of his drinking, the St. Louis Star-Times reported, and was banished to the minors in 1929.

When Gabby Street replaced Bill McKechnie as manager for 1930, Rhem pledged to stay sober and was given a chance for redemption. He appeared to be succeeding until the setback in September.

Flush with cash

Before the Cardinals left Boston and headed to Brooklyn, Rhem won $200 on a horse race, Cardinals players told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The windfall might have had something to do with what happened next.

The Cardinals had a day off in New York on Monday, Sept. 15, before opening the series against the Dodgers on Tuesday, Sept. 16.

Rhem failed to show in the Cardinals’ clubhouse at Ebbets Field for the Sept. 16 game, the Star-Times reported. When his room at the Alamac Hotel on Broadway and 71st Street in Manhattan was checked, it was discovered it hadn’t been occupied. No one knew where he went.

The Cardinals won the series opener, 1-0 in 10 innings, behind the shutout pitching of Bill Hallahan and moved into a first-place tie with the Dodgers. Boxscore

That night, Rhem, who was supposed to start the next day, arrived at the hotel “in a condition unbecoming a major-league player,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

“He came wandering back, babbling a weird tale of how he had been kidnapped,” the Star-Times reported.

Spinning a yarn

Rhem said he was standing outside the hotel on Sept. 15 when two men approached, thrust revolvers into his ribs and motioned for him to get into a waiting taxi, the Daily Eagle reported.

Rhem said the men told him, “Get in there. We are going to get you drunk so you won’t be able to pitch against our (Dodgers).”

According to the Daily Eagle, Rhem said he was driven to a “log cabin” in the Bronx. The version Rhem told the St. Louis Globe-Democrat was he was taken to a roadhouse.

Rhem said the men forced him to drink straight alcohol all night on Sept. 15 and all day on Sept. 16, the Post-Dispatch reported.

Rhem said the men drove him back to within a few blocks of the hotel when they were satisfied he was too inebriated to pitch the next day.

Asked by the Daily Eagle for his reaction to Rhem’s story, Cardinals executive Branch Rickey replied, “Bunk.”

Forgive us our trespasses

According to the Globe-Democrat, Rhem told manager Gabby Street, “What could I do? They just made me go along with them.”

According to the Star-Times, Street responded, “It isn’t so much that you let me down and let the St. Louis ballclub down, but you let 24 of your pals down. That’s what’s rotten … For heaven’s sake, Flint, straighten up and be a man.”

Admonished, Rhem was sent to bed and the Cardinals instructed the hotel to prohibit telephone calls to and from his room, the Post-Dispatch reported.

Street decided no disciplinary action would be taken because Rhem had stayed out of trouble since Street became manager. “He has been hewing to the line all summer,” Street told the Globe-Democrat.

Red Smith of the Star-Times was less forgiving. He described Rhem as being “coddled and pampered” and concluded, “Rhem, who apparently cares more for the bright lights than he does for the Cardinals’ chances of entering the World Series, will, for the time being, go unpunished for quitting cold on his manager and comrades just when they needed him most.”

Rhem’s antics brought to mind his former Cardinals teammate, Grover Cleveland Alexander, another pitcher whose drinking got him into trouble.

Making amends

With Rhem unavailable, Syl Johnson got the start in the second game of the series on Sept. 17, limited the Dodgers to three runs in seven innings, and enabled the Cardinals to come back for a 5-3 victory. Boxscore

According to the Daily Eagle, Rhem sat glumly in the corner of the locker room and “kept his head down while he dressed.”

The next day, Sept. 18, Rhem pitched batting practice before the series finale, the New York Daily News reported. Behind the pitching of Burleigh Grimes, the Cardinals completed a series sweep with a 4-3 victory and moved two games ahead of the Dodgers with nine to play.

Rhem delivered in the stretch, making two starts against the Phillies and winning both. The wins gave him eight in a row and a record of 12-8.

The Cardinals won seven of their last nine and clinched the pennant. In the World Series against the Athletics, Rhem started Game 2 versus the Athletics and lost.

Rhem pitched in 10 seasons for the Cardinals and was 81-63.

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The first duel between Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers on September 6, 2020| 5 Comments »

(Updated April 26, 2024)

Bob Gibson of the Cardinals and Tom Seaver of the Mets opposed one another 11 times in the regular season and the results paralleled the paths of their careers.

Seaver was the winning pitcher in six of the matchups, Gibson was the winning pitcher three times, and twice their duels ended in no decisions.

The first win for Seaver vs. Gibson came in 1969, a year when he paced the Mets to an improbable World Series title, and the other five occurred in the 1970s, when Seaver was in his prime.

Gibson’s wins versus Seaver came in a three-year stretch, 1968-70, when he twice won the National League Cy Young Award.

From 1971, the year Gibson turned 36, to 1975, Seaver won five decisions in a row versus Gibson.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Seaver is the only pitcher to beat Gibson three times in one season. Seaver did it in 1971.

In Gibson’s three wins versus Seaver, the Mets scored a total of four runs.

In Seaver’s six wins versus Gibson, the Cardinals scored a total of seven runs.

Gibson told the Post-Dispatch in 1975, “I could beat him, but that was when I was giving up only one or two runs a game. Later, when I started giving up more runs, he was a tough guy to beat because he wasn’t giving up that many.”

In 2021, catcher Ted Simmons said to the Baseball Hall of Fame yearbook, “Gibson was the best pitcher I ever caught. Seaver was the best pitcher I ever faced, and that’s because I never had to face Gibson.”

Simmons also told the Post-Dispatch in 1976, “Jim Palmer and Nolan Ryan may throw as hard, but as far as total command of what he’s doing, nobody is better than Seaver.”

The first matchup of Gibson versus Seaver may have been the best.

Pair of aces

In 1967, Seaver’s rookie season, he faced the Cardinals once, a start versus Al Jackson.

Seaver’s second career start against the Cardinals came on May 6, 1968, a Monday night in St. Louis, versus Gibson.

Seaver, 23, was making his sixth start of the season and was 1-1 with a 1.71 ERA. He went eight innings in his previous start May 1, a no-decision versus the Phillies.

Gibson, 32, was making his sixth start of the season and was 2-1 with a 1.43 ERA. He went 12 innings in his previous start May 1, a win versus the Astros. “I made 179 pitches in that game, and after 179 pitches, your arm doesn’t feel too good for a while,” Gibson told the Post-Dispatch.

Before his start against Seaver and the Mets, Gibson said, “I had my arm under a heat lamp for 20 minutes, trying to get it loosened up.”

Costly mistake

The Cardinals went ahead, 1-0, with an unearned run against Seaver in the second inning. After Tim McCarver led off with a single, Mike Shannon grounded to first baseman Ed Kranepool, who fielded the ball and turned to throw to second base for what seemed like a certain forceout.

Kranepool cocked his arm but stopped, unsure whether shortstop Bud Harrelson would get to the bag in time to take the throw. When he finally made the throw, Kranepool was off balance. The ball skipped along the ground and bounced off Harrelson’s chest for an error. Julian Javier followed with a single to right, scoring McCarver from second.

The Mets got three hits in the game against Gibson and all came in the fourth inning.

Harrelson led off with a single and advanced to third on Ken Boswell’s single. Art Shamsky lined a hit to left, driving in Harrelson and tying the score at 1-1. With Ron Swoboda at the plate, an inside pitch got away from McCarver, the catcher, for a passed ball, allowing Boswell to move to third and Shamsky to second with none out.

Wrong route

Swoboda hit a fly ball to center. Curt Flood ran forward and made the catch, but as Boswell tagged at third, Flood hesitated before making a throw. “Boswell looked like a cinch to score,” the Post-Dispatch reported.

“I didn’t think we had a chance to get Boswell,” McCarver said.

Flood’s throw tailed toward the third-base line, and McCarver went up the line to retrieve the ball. Boswell beat the throw “by plenty,” the New York Daily News reported, but McCarver was “blocking the line without the ball.”

Instead of barreling into McCarver in a straight path to the plate, Boswell slid wide around the catcher and reached for the plate with his hand.

Boswell touched nothing but dirt. As the ball reached McCarver, he wheeled around and tagged out Boswell to complete a double play. Instead of a 2-1 lead for the Mets, the score remained tied.

Dick Young of the New York Daily News described Boswell’s play at the plate as a “chicken slide.”

“He should have scored easily with the lead run,” Young wrote. “He should have bowled over McCarver.”

Mets manager Gil Hodges told the Post-Dispatch, “In that situation, you can’t go around the catcher. You have to hit him.”

In control

From then on, Gibson and Seaver settled into a groove.

Gibson allowed one base runner after the fourth inning. After Swoboda walked with one out in the seventh, Gibson retired 14 batters in a row.

Seaver held the Cardinals hitless from the third through ninth innings. After Shannon walked in the fourth, Seaver retired 17 in a row until Shannon got an infield hit in the 10th.

As the game entered the 11th, Gibson and Seaver were approaching their limits.

Joe Hoerner was ready in the Cardinals’ bullpen and would have come into the game if it went to a 12th inning. “I can’t let (Gibson) throw his arm out,” manager Red Schoendienst said.

Seaver told the Post-Dispatch the 11th inning would have been his last, too.

Cream of the crop

It took a couple of future Hall of Famers, Lou Brock and Orlando Cepeda, to settle the duel between future Hall of Famers Gibson and Seaver.

Brock led off the bottom of the 11th with a drive to the wall in left-center for a triple. Seaver gave intentional walks to Flood and Roger Maris, loading the bases in hope of a forceout or double play.

Cepeda foiled the strategy, lining Seaver’s first pitch to right for a single to drive in Brock and give the Cardinals and Gibson a 2-1 victory. Boxscore

The win improved Gibson’s career mark against the Mets to 18-3.

“My arm doesn’t hurt half as much as it will tomorrow,” Gibson said, “but that’s the price you have to pay if you want to be a pitcher.”

The 11-inning game was played in a snappy 2:10.

“They don’t fritter around,” Dick Young wrote of Gibson and Seaver. “They get the ball and fire.”

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