The Books: Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader, ‘Distance,’ by Roger Angell

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On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!)

NEXT BOOK: Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader, by Roger Angell.

This long essay could be counted as a New Yorker profile of Bob Gibson, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1959 to 1975. Gibson was, famously, a very prickly individual with the press, and damn near unhittable as a pitcher. He had 17 strikeouts in a single World Series game. I am sure there are more fabulous stats out there, but I am not a sabermetrics aficionado (I wish I was – my brother and sister could rattle off a bunch of stats automatically). But the 17 strikeouts certainly sticks in the mind as an almost otherworldly accomplishment.

Gibson did not like talking with the press, or with members of other teams. Or even with members of his own team. He expressed discomfort with All-Star Games because he had to suddenly be teammates with guys he would pitch to a week later, and he didn’t want to be friends with them, he didn’t want to get close to them. He was an intimidating monster on the mound. Everyone talks about how frightening he was, and how scary/unforgettable it was to face off with him. I love his gravity-defying follow through. It’s like an attack.

BOb-Gibson-1968

Continuing on with his obsession with pitchers, Angell wanted to know more about Bob Gibson, as a player and a man. Gibson did not have a cozy relationship with the press. He would answer questions bluntly, without the ingratiating quality that many expected (and there was probably a lot of unconscious racism in the reaction to Gibson’s arrogant demeanor as well). At one press conference after a game, Gibson was asked if he was “surprised” that the pitch he threw at one point ended up closing out the inning – or something like that – and Gibson’s reply was: “I am never surprised by anything I do.”

Why a bunch of baseball writers would be shocked, SHOCKED, by a pitcher who had an arrogant personality, I don’t know.

Listen, this isn’t Sesame Street. This is competitive sports.

Baseball is a team sport, but being a pitcher is a different sort of position. It can be seen as a big mystery to those of us who do not pitch at a major league level (which means the most of us), but that’s why Angell is obsessed with it, especially those who are masters at it, like Bob Gibson. Angell wanted to get to the heart of this very “distant” man. What made him tick? How did HE think about pitching? How did HE analyze what he did?

It’s an extremely lengthy essay (written in 1980, when Gibson was retired and living back in his hometown of Omaha, where he owned a restaurant). Angell goes into Gibson’s career, the impressive stats, the crazy talent. He talks to teammates, to get a line on who he was as a pitcher, what it was that made him HIM. (And that’s part of the excerpt today. I love it when athletes talk about each other.) And then Angell went out to Omaha and spent a week with Bob Gibson, following him around, talking, observing.

It’s a glorious essay. Here’s just a short excerpt.

Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader, ‘Distance’, by Roger Angell

Joe Torre, the manager of the New York Mets, who played with Gibson from 1969 to 1974, is also a close friend. When I called on him late in June, in the clubhouse at Shea Stadium, and told him I was about to go west to visit Gibson, he beckoned me over to a framed photograph on one wall of his office. The picture shows the three friends posing beside a batting cage in their Cardinal uniforms, Torre, a heavy-faced man with dark eyebrows and a falsely menacing appearance, and McCarver, who has a cheerful, snub-nosed Irish look to him, are both grinning at the photographer, with their arms around the shoulders of Bob Gibson, who is between them; it’s impossible to tell if Gibson is smiling, though, because his back is turned to the camera. “That says it all,” Torre said. “He alienated a lot of people – most of all the press, who didn’t always know what to make of him. He has this great confidence in himself: ‘Hey, I’m me. Take me or leave me.’ There was never any selling of Bob Gibson. He’s an admirable man. On the mound, he had very tangible intangibles. He had that hunger, that killer instinct. He threw at a lot of batters but not nearly as many as you’ve heard. But he’d never deny it if you asked him. I think this is great. There’s no other sport except boxing that has such a hard one-on-one confrontation as you get when a pitcher and a hitter go up against each other. Any edge you can get on the hitter, any doubt you can put in his mind, you use. And Bob Gibson would never give up that edge. He was your enemy out there. I try to teach this to our pitchers. The more coldness, the more mystery about you, the more chance you have of getting them out.

“I played against him before I played with him, and either way he never talked to you. Never. I was on some All-Star teams with him, and even then he didn’t talk to you. There was one in Minnesota, when I was catching him and we were ahead 6-5, I think, in the ninth. I’m catching, and Tony Oliva, a great hitter, is leading off, and Gibby goes strike one, strike two. Now I want a fastball up and in, I think to myself, and maybe I should go out there and tell him this – tell him, whatever he does, not to throw it down and in to Oliva. So I go out and tell him, and Gibby just gives me that look of his. Doesn’t say a word. I go back and squat down and give him the signal – fastball up and in – and he throws it down and in, and Oliva hits it for a double to left center. To this day, I think Gibby did it on purpose. He didn’t want to be told anything. So then there’s an infield out, and then he strikes out the last two batters, of course, and we win. In the shower, I say, ‘Nice pitching,’ and he still doesn’t say anything to me. Ask him about it.”

Torre lit a long cigar, and said, “Quite a man. He can seem distant and uncaring to some people, but he’s not the cold person he’s been described as. There are no areas between us where he’s withdrawn. Things go deep with him. I miss talking with him during the season, and it’s my fault, because I’m always so damn busy. He doesn’t call me, because he never wants to make himself a pain in the ass to a friend. But he is my friend. The other day, I got a photograph of himself he’d sent me, and he’d signed it ‘Love, Bob.’ How many other ballplayers are going to do that? How many other friends?”

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