His death comes on the 52nd anniversary of perhaps his greatest game, a record 17 strikeout out performance in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series, nevertheless losing to the Detroit Tigers in a 4-3 match something that always irked him.

Outside of the outstanding Stan Musial, Gibson is the only other Cardinal, to play his whole career with the team.

The Gibson Style of Winning

Gibson disdained conversations with opposing players, even at All-Star Games. He bristled at reporters’ questions he considered silly. And he was feared for his high, inside fastballs that set batters up for pitches on the outside corner.

“Bob wasn’t just unfriendly when he pitched,” Joe Torre, a Cardinals teammate and New York Yankee Manager, told the sportswriter Roger Kahn in an article for The New York Times before Gibson’s induction into the Hall of Fame. “I’d say it was more like hate.”

“My thing was winning,” Gibson said in his autobiography, “Stranger to the Game,” written with Lonnie Wheeler and published in 1994. “I didn’t see how being pleasant or amiable had anything to do with winning, so I wasn’t pleasant on the mound and I wasn’t amiable off it.”

“For my money, the most intimidating, arrogant pitcher ever to kick up dirt on a mound is Bob Gibson,” Tim McCarver, the Cardinals’ catcher and a longtime broadcaster, recalled in his 1987 memoir, “Oh, Baby, I Love It!” (written with Ray Robinson).

“If you ever saw Gibson work,” McCarver continued, “you’d never forget his style: his cap pulled down low over his eyes, the ball gripped — almost mashed — behind his right hip, the eyes smoldering at each batter almost accusingly.”

Omaha born and bred

Pack Robert Gibson was born on Nov. 9, 1935, in Omaha, the youngest of seven children, and growing up in a housing project there.

His father, Pack Gibson, died a few months before his birth; his mother, Victoria, worked in a laundry but Gibson was born with lots of health problems – childhood asthma and rickets, a vitamin D deficiency cured by lots of sunshine and a good diet ¹ and why milk, highly recommend for children’s growing bones, is fortified with vitamins A & D cheap and necessary supplements, for rickets can leave the child with bowed legs and sometimes a curvature of the spine.

His elder brother Josh, was a graduate of Creighton University in Omaha, and became his mentor introducing him to first to basketball: Bob played with the Harlem Globetrotters for a bit. Seeing Bob had talent, Josh then coached him baseball, a good move but with Jackie Robinson ² another one that is still at the classic site in the big league, Josh saw that it was baseball was where the possibilities lay. It was a good move, as Bob was signed right after graduation with the Cardinal’s minor league organization in 1957.

Gibson helped pitch the Cardinals to the National League pennant in 1964, when they surged past the collapsing Philadelphia Phillies. Then, in what was a remarkable test of stamina, Bob beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series, pitching on two days’ rest. It was his second victory in the Series, and nabbed him M.V.P. – the Most Valuable Player.

I have rectified Gibson to 03 Scorpio 28, “a youth handling a candle” showing Bob’s enthusiasm and inner vision of what his overall place in the scheme of things, and how he needed to make that happen. It gets the keyword of Self-Reliance. His midheaven is 15 Leo 05 “a pageant” or his dream to exhibit his abilities for all to see, summed up in this quote,

“I never hit batters for the sake of hitting them,” he said. “In my day, pitching tight was a fundamental element of strategy. It was a matter of doing what was necessary to get the batter out; and if that made me mean, then I guess I was mean.”

Pitching tight was the tactic of pitching as close to the player as possible. It meant Gibson often hit the player, and in one case batter, Don Kessinger, got so angry about the possible injury that he ran out to the mound, then 26 inches high unlike today’s eleven, bat in hand and threatened him in return. The rules changed after that explosive encounter.

Still waters run deep

Gibson has a grand trine in water – Pluto to the Sun to Saturn – that would have given a stern sense of self and no oppositions though the grid shows one but that is out of quadrature, thus making him a Splay. That is unusual as typically Splays are well liked and popular and Gibson was neither, even among his team mates though they did have respect (Sun trine Saturn) for him. Perhaps the overall esteem of his abilities is the key in this chart.

His Pluto in the ninth, shows that despite his teammates not being close to Bob, he was a crowd favorite because he was a winning pitcher. Square to his Moon, this does support that he was a “fearsome” player using that as another weapon in his armour to scare the batter.

He was not the first to use that as a tactic — the great Ty Cobb was so successful with that, papers wrote he slid into bases with his cleats sharpened to hurt the baseman. Cobb like Gibson thought that great, it made it easier to steal. Baseball isn’t all physical prowess — mental intimidation is another good ploy.

With no interceptions in his map, Gibson was fully manifest – he was what he was, and damn proud of it too (Lord of his chart, second house, Mars).

Footnotes:

• 1
  and why milk, highly recommend for children’s growing bones, is fortified with vitamins A & D cheap and necessary supplements, for rickets can leave the child with bowed legs and sometimes a curvature of the spine.
• 2
  another one that is still at the classic site