July 8, 1975: Giants hit Bob Gibson hard in final start of his career

The career of the greatest pitcher in St. Louis Cardinals history was winding down in the summer of 1975. Bob Gibson had twice won the National League Cy Young Award and once was Most Valuable Player. Three times he pitched complete games in the Game Seven of the World Series, winning two of them.1

Gibson had pitched 240 innings in 1974, his 16th season in the major leagues. The Cardinals were in contention for the NL East Division title until the final day of the regular season. When he signed his 1975 contract, he announced it would be his last year.2 The 39-year-old Gibson was St. Louis’s Opening Day starter for the ninth straight year and gave up five runs in eight innings in a loss to the Montreal Expos. He stayed in the rotation through the end of May before being demoted to the bullpen by manager Red Schoendienst. He was nursing a sore shoulder and pitched only one game in relief, his first since 1965, before going back to a starting role in late June.3

Gibson gave up seven runs in seven innings in a loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on July 3, dropping his record to 2-7 with his ERA rising to 5.02. The Cardinals were in fourth place in the NL East, double-digit games behind the first-place Pittsburgh Pirates.

Five days later Gibson prepared to face the San Francisco Giants on a hot Tuesday night before a light crowd4 at Busch Stadium. The Giants were also struggling, having fallen 15½ games back of the division-leading Cincinnati Reds in the NL West. Gibson displayed his usual intensity warming up in the bullpen down the right-field line, snarling at some kids who were calling out to him and trying to get his attention.5

He got in trouble immediately as Von Joshua sliced the second pitch of the game for a double to left. With two out, Willie Montañez lined a single to center, and Joshua scored to give the Giants a 1-0 lead. Gibson retired the next seven batters, getting three strikeouts in the second and third, but gave up three hits and a walk in the fourth. He still came out of that inning unscathed – helped when first baseman Ron Fairly hustled in on Chris Speier’s popped-up sacrifice attempt, caught the ball and threw to second baseman Ted Sizemore covering first for a double play6 – as San Francisco left the bases loaded.

Meanwhile, San Francisco rookie southpaw Pete Falcone was keeping the Cardinals from scoring. The 21-year-old Falcone said he watched Gibson on television while growing up in Brooklyn. “He was unbelievable,” said Falcone, adding that he was in awe “just being on the same field with Gibson.”7 Falcone was appearing in his 16th game of the season, all starting assignments, and he came into the game with a 6-6 record and a 3.72 ERA.

Falcone had been dinged for three runs in 4 2/3 innings in his last outing, a loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 3. Against the Cardinals, he was in a jam early, giving up a leadoff single to Lou Brock, who stole second – his 35th steal of the season – and was sacrificed to third by Sizemore. But Luis Meléndez fouled out, and Ted Simmons walked and was forced out at second by Buddy Bradford.

Fairly, who had made his big-league debut in September 1958, a season before Gibson, started the St. Louis second by getting hit by a pitch but was wiped out when Ken Reitz grounded into a double play. In the fourth, Simmons singled but was cut down on a strike-’em-out throw-’em-out double play as Bradford swung through a 3-and-2 pitch.

It was still a one-run game when Gibson returned to the mound in the fifth. With one out, Joshua beat out an infield hit to second and made it all the way to third on Sizemore’s overthrow to first. Derrel Thomas singled Joshua home. Bobby Murcer, who had come to the Giants for Bobby Bonds in a blockbuster one-for-one trade with the New York Yankees during the 1974-75 offseason, homered to right, his 10th home run of the season and the 150th of his career. It was a 4-0 game. Montañez followed with a long fly that was caught by Brock in left. Gibson finished the inning by getting Speier to pop out and walked off the mound.

The Cardinals pinch-hit for Gibson in the last of the fifth, and Ron Bryant8 – traded from the Giants two months earlier9 – took the mound for St. Louis in the sixth. The Giants made their cushion bigger when Gary Thomasson, Steve Ontiveros, and Dave Rader began the sixth with singles to score another run for a 5-0 lead.

Falcone looked as though he’d have no trouble in the sixth when he retired Brock and Sizemore, the latter on a foul pop that catcher Rader caught and then fell into the first-base dugout. A brief delay ensued as Rader was shaken up.

The Cardinals followed with their most substantial rally of the game. Meléndez singled. Falcone walked Simmons on five pitches and Bradford on four,10 and fell behind 3-and-1 to Fairly, who celebrated his 37th birthday four days after the game.

In the lefty-on-lefty matchup, Fairly won the battle with a fly to right that hit the yellow line on the top of the fence, good for a grand slam – the seventh of Fairly’s career – to make it a 5-4 game.

That was as close as the Cardinals got, though. Randy Moffitt relieved and retired Reitz to end the inning. Moffitt allowed a leadoff single to pinch-hitter Willie Davis in the seventh. Another pinch-hitter, Bake McBride, sacrificed, and Davis beat the throw to second. Brock put down another sacrifice to move the runners to second and third, but Sizemore grounded back to Moffitt with the runners holding, and Meléndez grounded out to Ontiveros at third.

John Curtis took the mound in the top of the eighth. San Francisco got an insurance run on consecutive one-out singles by Moffitt, Joshua, and Thomas. St. Louis had baserunners in both of the final two innings, but left-hander Gary Lavelle came out of the bullpen to strand two Cardinals in the eighth and one in the ninth, picking up his fourth save in the 6-4 win.

After the game, Schoendienst suggested that it could be Gibson’s last time as a starter. “I can’t say that I would start him in his next turn,” the 52-year-old manager said of his former Cardinals teammate.11 He didn’t. Gibson’s 482nd career start – as of 2025, still the most in franchise history – was his last.

The loss dropped St. Louis to 39-43, in fourth place in the NL East, 11 games behind the Pirates. The Cardinals improved and got into the race in August, climbing as close as two games behind Pittsburgh before falling back. They finished at 82-80, tied for third place with the New York Mets, 10½ games out of first.

Gibson’s relief pitching helped during the surge. After his loss to the Giants, he didn’t pitch again until July 27. He flashed some of his former magic, relieving starter John Denny with no out, runners on second and third in the fourth inning and the Cardinals holding a 6-4 lead over Philadelphia. Both runners scored (both on outs) to tie the game. Gibson finished the fourth and pitched another three scoreless innings, getting the 251st and final win of his Hall of Fame career. He had another scoreless outing a few days later, pitching 3 2/3 innings against the Chicago Cubs and getting a save. He got another save August 13, striking out three Houston Astros in the last of the 11th to preserve a 4-3 win.

In September St. Louis sportswriter Neal Russo wrote that Gibson had accepted his bullpen role, unlike when he had been briefly demoted in June. “Gibby had been especially miffed since the first time he was pulled from the starting rotation this year. He felt upset primarily because some of the other starters were not doing well at the time. But after being set down a second time, he did not grumble. He noted then that the starting crew had jelled.”12

Gibson pitched in his final game on September 3, against the Cubs again, and this one did not go as well. He came into a tie game in the seventh inning and gave up five runs, the last ones being on a two-out grand-slam by Pete LaCock. He then covered first base on a grounder to first to retire Don Kessinger, his final batter.

Two days before that, the Cardinals had held Bob Gibson Day. Speaking before the game, Gibson said, “One thing that I’ve always been proud of is the fact that I’ve never intentionally cheated anyone out of what they paid their money to come and see.

“But most of all, I’m proud of the fact that whatever I did, I did it my way.”13

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Bob Gibson, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1975/B07080SLN1975.htm

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN197507080.shtml

Notes

1 Gibson was the National League Most Valuable Player in 1968 and the NL Cy Young Award recipient in 1968 and 1970. He pitched the seventh games of the 1964, 1967, and 1968 World Series. He was the winning pitcher in 1964 and 1967 and the losing pitcher in 1968.

2 Neal Russo, “Gibson Decides ’75 Season Will Be His Last One,” The Sporting News, February 15, 1975: 35.

3 Russo, “Reed Credits Defense for Rapid Card Start,” The Sporting News, July 5, 1975: 15.

4 The attendance was reported as 15,926.

5 Memory of the author.

6 Author’s scorebook; Russo, “Cards Come Fairly Close to Giants,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 1975: Harry Mitauer, “Cards Waste Fairly’s Slam as Gibson Again Fails, 6-4,” St. Louis Globe Democrat, July 9, 1975.

7 Bucky Walter, “Awed Falcone Trips Hero,” San Francisco Examiner, July 9, 1975: 47

8 Bryant had produced a 2.90 earned-run average in 1972 and followed that with 24 wins for the Giants the next season, but an injury in a swimming pool accident during spring training in 1974 derailed his career. He announced his retirement prior to the 1975 season but asked to be reinstated and was traded to St. Louis on May 9. Because he had been on the voluntarily retired list, he wasn’t eligible to pitch for the Cardinals until June 6. Like Gibson, Bryant’s last season in the majors was 1975. He was released by the Cardinals at the end of July and pitched in the minors with the Dodgers and Giants organizations in 1976. Pat Frizzell, “Famished Bear Prowls Giant Comeback Trail,” The Sporting News, April 5, 1975: 41; Frizzell, “Bryant Drops Bomb, Strolls into Giant Sunset, The Sporting News, April 19, 1975, p. 10. “Cards Get Bryant,” San Francisco Examiner, May 10, 1975: 25.

9 After spending the first seven seasons of his career with the Giants, Bryant was traded for Larry Herndon and Tony Gonzalez on May 9.

10 Pitch counts are from the author’s scorebook.

11 Russo, “Cards Come Fairly Close to Giants.” Schoendienst and Gibson were teammates in St. Louis from 1961 through 1963.

12 Neal Russo, “Fireman Gibby Fans New Life Into Birds,” The Sporting News, August 30, 1975: 9.

13 Neal Russo, “Gibby Smells the Roses on His Final Stroll,” The Sporting News, September 20, 1975: 6.