SIXTY FEET, SIX INCHES
SIXTY FEET, SIX INCHES
A Hall of Fame Pitcher and a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk About How the Game Is Played
For 15 years, from the mid-1960s to the late ’70s, two players dominated October baseball. The first was Bob Gibson, perhaps the most imposing pitcher in the game’s history. In 1964, working on two days’ rest for the St. Louis Cardinals, he helped to end the Yankee dynasty of Mantle and Berra by pitching all of Game 7 of the World Series. Three years later, he beat the Boston Red Sox three times in one World Series. The next year, he set a Series record by striking out 17 Detroit Tigers in one game.
After Gibson retired, he was soon replaced on the October stage by a player who eventually took that month as his moniker:Reggie Jackson, Mr. October. Today, fans tend to recall his three home runs, in three straight at-bats, against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1977. Gibson and Jackson weren’t just great players. They were clutch players.
The question of clutchness may be the biggest flash point in baseball’s current ideological war. To traditionalists, clutchness is a self-evident concept that is at the game’s core. Just look at Jeter compared with Alex Rodriguez, a notorious choker in previous playoffs. It was about mental makeup.
Mays made his spectacular, game-saving catch in the 1954 Series. But he was also a mediocre hitter in his Series appearances. Even Gibson and Jackson found their clutch powers wanting in some of their biggest moments. Jackson struck out against a young Bob Welch to end a game in the 1978 Series.
The book is an edited transcript of a series of conversations between Gibson and Jackson, overseen by Lonnie Wheeler, the collaborator on Gibson’s autobiography, “Stranger to the Game.” Gibson and Jackson were part of the generation of black players, between Jackie Robinson and Jeter, who were accepted without being fully so. Gibson tells the story of an off-season barnstorming tour through the Southwest, in which the all-black Willie Mays All-Stars played the all-white Harmon Killebrew All-Stars.
Jackson, meanwhile, is the upbeat, ego-driven celebrity New York remembers. Gibson and Jackson fail, unfortunately, to teach us much about the game they clearly know so well.
The book often feels like a counterreformation project from 2003, just after Michael Lewis told the story of baseball’s rising generation of analysts. The Red Sox have won two World Series, thanks partly to their focus on analysis, and the Tampa Bay Rays - with an owner who once worked for Goldman Sachs - won the American League pennant last season despite a meager payroll. Of course a scouting report can’t tell a player how to hit the ball. You could find the book hare.
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