Stranger to the Game: The Autobiography of Bob Gibson

Sporting News, The, Sept 12, 1994 by Steve Gietschier

Stranger to the Game: The Autobiography of Bob Gibson (By Bob Gibson with Lonnie Wheeler. 2.86 pp. Viking. $22.95).

Gibson and Wheeler have delivered just the kind of book one would expect from one of baseball's toughest competitors. It is a high, hard one, as intimidating as one of Gibson's fastballs, as uncompromising as one of his legendary sliders.

Ranging far beyond the ground covered in his earlier book, "From Ghetto to Glory" (1968), Gibson has given us his full life story augmented by Wheeler's careful collection of quotations from teammates and opponents. The book is particularly useful for its discussion of race relations and for Gibson's powerful assertion that baseball without pitching inside is not very competitive.

Readers too young to remember Gibson will gasp at his statistics: 17 years in the majors, all with the Cardinals; 251 victories; 3,117 strikeouts; a 2.91 ERA; one no-hitter; one National League MVP Award; two Cy Young Awards; 9 Gold Gloves; and a first-ballot election to the Hall of Fame.

In 1968, Gibson went 22-9, struck out 268 and compiled a 1. 12 ERA. Not coincidentally, baseball subsequently moved to lower the mound, cut the top a nd the bottom off the strike zone and made it narrower, too.

Gibson's complaint, voiced in full here, is that for the last 10 years there has been no job for him in baseball. He lays the blame for this on racism and on the widely held misperception that he is just a downright mean man. Prejudice deserves no slack, of course, but those who think Gibson is mean can perhaps be excused. After all, here is a pitcher who hit Tommie Agee in the head with the first pitch of spring training in 1968 and took more than 20 years to explain to his victim that "it simply got away from me."