Whenever a major-league pitcher’s earned run average dips below 2.00 (Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes), Bob Gibson’s name surfaces. Gibson’s 1.12 ERA is among baseball’s unbreakable records. yet just one Bob Gibson statistic unlikely to be surpassed.
There are still people who remember his 1968, a year memorialized in the U.S. for many reasons, none which concern Gibson’s ERA. It was a season for the ages and Gibson, who played his entire 17-year career with the St. Louis Cardinals, was a pitcher for the ages.
Never was he better than in 1968. His ERA became a magic number. Any better ones came before the dead-ball era ended (1920), when among other things only one worn-out game ball was used. In the last 100 years, the closest anybody was to Gibson is Dwight Gooden (1.53) of the New York Mets. In layman’s terms, the difference is about 15 earned runs.
However, it was Walter Johnson’s dead-ball record (1.14) that meant more, because Johnson pitched 300-plus innings and Gibson hadn’t, until he threw a shutout in his final start. For context, if today’s starting pitchers reach 200 innings, they are considered remarkable. A handful have a shot at it this month. After what Gibson did in the ‘Year of the Pitcher,’ baseball changing the rules, enlarging the strike zone and lowering the mound.
Despite the conflicting ERA eras, plus the amalgamation of the Negro League statistics, Gibson’s is considered the best of all time. Yet he has many 1968 magic numbers. Like 13 shutouts (also 1968) — this season there have been 12 so far…in both leagues. Like 28 complete games, equalled by the pitching class of 2025…combined. Like 35 strikeouts in the World Series — in last year’s Series, New York’s Gerrit Cole logged the most innings, 12, and had the most strikeouts, 10.
Gibson’s career was filled with intensity that he attributed to being all about winning, all the time. He was a 100 per cent guy and often that meant not socializing with players on other teams, and snapping at those on his team. He confessed to being bad-mood dude before he pitched and for days after losses, with no interest in small talk. Raised in the (black) projects of Omaha, he had no tolerance for racism, even when others would have considered it mild. He later acknowledged he had earned his reputation.
Gibson had just three wins after 10 starts in his greatest season. Six days before it started, Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered. Two months later, so was Bobby Kennedy.
“It was an angry point in American history for black people,” Gibson wrote in his autobiography, Stranger To The Game. “Dr. King’s killing had jolted me. Kennedy’s infuriated me, and I pitched better angry.”
Gibson went 19-5 after that. He pitched 47 and 2/3 consecutive innings without giving up a run. At one point, his ERA was 1.01. He completed 80 per cent of his 35 starts, including three extra-inning games. His record was 22-9. He went to the World Series for the third time in five years, starting and finishing games 1, 4 and 7 for the third time.
The magic number, 1.12, was only part of Bob Gibson’s story.
