Posted on 05/13/2019 9:12:55 AM PDT by Rummyfan
I agree......Gibson was a great pitcher and all my post meant was to convey that the 68 tigers won it via Mickey Lolich.........and to point out that the greatest pitcher of 1968 is now a career felon..........A piece of shit who should never belong in the hall of fame despite his career.........
Gibson is a class guy and deserves every accolade he receives...........
Maybe in today's game, where starters going past seven innings (Scherzer tied for the lead in complete games in the National League last season, with 2!) is rare, Scherzer is the closest there is.
I grew up watching Mickey polish dismantle Gibson’s cards in 1968 and Denny McClain winning !30! games.
The late great Sparky Anderson once sagely said, “There are a lot of pitchers in the big leagues but not nearly enough big league pitchers.”
And Lolich... I think he trained on Stroh’s LOL! Those were the old days....
Bttt.
5.56mm
Since you brought up the 1968 World Series, he lost the 7th game to Mickey Lolich 4-1.
I was trying to figure out why a higher mound favors the pitcher. The best I could do was that, in basic physics, the ball will drop about 3 feet in 60.5 feet when thrown 90-100 mph.
90 mph = 132 ft/sec.
Ball reaches the plate in 0.4-0.5 sec.
1/2*(32 ft/s^2)*(0.45)^2 = 3.36 ft.
at 100 mph it’s 2.72 ft.
at 80 mph, it’s 4.25 ft.
A slower ball is less likely to result in a homer. If you throw a ball against a brick wall hard, it will come back hard; if just lobbed, it will come back soft.
Now Bob Gibson threw plenty of fastballs, so I’m sure there’s something wrong with my reasoning. Maybe it’s just that with the higher mound, there’s greater room for error with the strike zone??
Hi scrabblehack-
My understanding is that the angle of the pitch coming from a higher mound was more intimidating from a taller pitcher. The mound was reduced 5 inches (from 15” to 10”) and the strike zone was made smaller (from the batter’s armpits to the top of the letters). Imagine a scowling, overhand pitcher being on a higher level throwing down to the batter. Randy Johnson at 6’10” intimidated many a batter. Then, also, the strike zone caused many high strikes. Mr. Zip was a college basketball player too, and signed a contract with the Harlem Globetrotters. That was one of the only games in town for a player of color with skills in the 1950s. Word on the street is that his fastball was equalled by his slider. He has currently taken Jack Flaherty under his tutelage and talked to JF about the mental side of the game. I am told that Gibby sees much of himself in the tenaciousness, quick work, no nonsense approach to pitching. Gibson will never miss a game that Flaherty is scheduled to pitch. BTW, Flaherty is scheduled to throw against the Atlanta Braves tomorrow night. Gibson is/was an American story of prevailing over much adversity. He had pneumonia and asthma as a child that made him a late bloomer. Then, he had to deal with lingering racial tensions. Just a few of my random thoughts. After the mound was lowered, he never got the same results. Personally, I think the smaller strike zone was the greater impact on baseball. The removing 6-8 inches from the top of the zone gave only a small area for strikes. Batters weren’t having to protect a larger area.
Blue eye!
Yes. When men took pride in finishing something they started, even if it took the supreme effort.
Can you imagine the whining from American males if WW2 happened today? Pajama Boy would be hiding under his mother’s couch and the other SJWs would be tweeting all day how triggered they were.
So a really fast arm would get even more of an advantage.
I agree it was for the optics of not having some intimidating pitcher peering down at you from Mt. Olympus.
Seems to have worked.
1968 was the year of the pitcher.
They've never been that dominant again.
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