Today's Nitty Gritty Card of the Day is card #320 from the 1965 Topps Baseball set featuring St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson. If you don't think Bob Gibson is Nitty Gritty you are gonna have some sore ribs cuz a brushback is coming! I have lucked into several Gibby cards of late and I plan to feature them all eventually so I won't get into too many of Hoot's amazing accolades as a player. His Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees in the 1964 World Series and there is a World Series subset (which I have completed!) in the '65 set which celebrates his postseason heroics. The back of this card mentions that Gibby won 2 games against NY in the series and also shows his complete stats up to that point. One thing I find interesting is Gibson didn't exactly put up huge numbers in the minors. Decent, but not indicative of what was to come from the most dominant right hander of his generation. After winning the Championship in '64 the Cards fell from grace a bit and finished in 7th place in 1965 with a record of 80-81. At 29 years of age Gibson was just hitting his stride. He won 20 games for the first time that year, was an All Star, won a Gold Glove and struck out 270 batters. What I found most interesting and perhaps most Nitty Gritty was his hitting that year. He batted .240 with 5 homers, 19 RBI and a couple of stolen bases.
Those are very respectable numbers for a pitcher, but if you compare him to his teammates in '65 his homerun total equaled the total of Dick Groat, Julian Javier and Mike Shannon. Those 3 combined for 1181 plate appearances and totalleed 5 homers betweeen them. Gibby hit 5 in just 119. Thats just awesome. More Gibby to come. I love this game, I love this hobby! 45 years LATER!
Today's Nitty Gritty Card of the Day is card #320 from the 1965 Topps Baseball set featuring St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson. If you don't think Bob Gibson is Nitty Gritty you are gonna have some sore ribs cuz a brushback is coming! I have lucked into several Gibby cards of late and I plan to feature them all eventually so I won't get into too many of Hoot's amazing accolades as a player. His Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees in the 1964 World Series and there is a World Series subset (which I have completed!) in the '65 set which celebrates his postseason heroics. The back of this card mentions that Gibby won 2 games against NY in the series and also shows his complete stats up to that point. One thing I find interesting is Gibson didn't exactly put up huge numbers in the minors. Decent, but not indicative of what was to come from the most dominant right hander of his generation. After winning the Championship in '64 the Cards fell from grace a bit and finished in 7th place in 1965 with a record of 80-81. At 29 years of age Gibson was just hitting his stride. He won 20 games for the first time that year, was an All Star, won a Gold Glove and struck out 270 batters. What I found most interesting and perhaps most Nitty Gritty was his hitting that year. He batted .240 with 5 homers, 19 RBI and a couple of stolen bases. 
That's ok CT. If we need a recap of Gibson's accolades, we can just tune in to the game of the week and listen to Tim McCarver for less than 10 minutes. In that short time, we will probably hear 3 Bob Gibson stories!
ReplyDeleteHow did I miss this post?
ReplyDeleteSweet Gibson card. That's one guy I'd like to have the complete PC for.