May 6, 1968: Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver duel for first time as Cardinals win in 11 innings

“Gibson and Seaver are magnificent,” exclaimed New York sportswriter Dick Young about the future Hall of Fame hurlers’ grueling extra-inning pitching duel in their first head-to-head matchup of their illustrious careers.1

“My arm doesn’t hurt half as much as it will tomorrow,” said St. Louis Cardinals ace and winning pitcher Bob Gibson, whose 11 innings against Tom Seaver’s New York Mets came just five days after he tossed a 12-inning complete-game victory over the Houston Astros. “But that’s the price you pay if you want to be a pitcher.”2

After his crushing 2-1 loss, second-year Mets pitcher Seaver was equally reflective. “I was frustrated after the game, but not during it,” he revealed. “If you let down mentally, even for one inning, they can kill you. A pitcher has to maintain his composure and retain control of the game.”3

Skipper Red Schoendienst’s reigning World Series champion Cardinals got off to a hot start in 1968, winning 12 of their first 16 games. They occupied first place (15-8) as they prepared for a three-game set against the Mets in the Gateway City.

While Schoendienst pointed to his team’s NL-leading batting average (.265) and sturdy pitching staff (2.74 ERA) as sources of confidence, his New York counterpart was exasperated with his ninth-place club (9-12).4 “The mistakes are killing us,” declared Gil Hodges, whose Mets had committed 24 errors in 21 games and were coming off one-run losses to the Chicago Cubs in both games of a doubleheader the day before at Shea Stadium.5 The “greatest 10th-place [sic] pitching staff in baseball history,” quipped Young,6 leading the NL with an eye-popping 1.74 team ERA, was offset by the league’s worst offense, batting just .203.

The 32-year-old Gibson was coming off a celebrated performance in the 1967 World Series, proving that he had fully recovered from his midseason broken ankle suffered from a comebacker off Roberto Clemente’s bat. Three straight complete-game victories against the Boston Red Sox, the latter two on three days’ rest, including the clincher in Game Seven, established Gibson as baseball’s most celebrated big-game hurler and resulted in his second World Series MVP award in four years.

He entered this contest with a 2-1 record and a 1.43 ERA (44 innings) in 1968 but was tired and stiff. “After 179 pitches,” said Gibson about his extra-inning win in Houston, “your arm doesn’t feel too good.”7 In his pregame warm-up for his start against Seaver and the Mets, Gibson noticed that his arm did not respond to his normal routine. “I had my arm under a heat lamp for 20 minutes before the game, trying to get it loosened up,” he revealed.8

Seaver’s 1967 rookie season evoked hope and elevated expectations for the Mets, who had finished in the NL cellar every season since their inception in 1962. They repeated that with Seaver, too, but he set team records with 16 wins, a 2.76 ERA, 18 complete games, and 170 strikeouts and became the first Rookie of the Year Award winner in franchise history. The 23-year-old entered this game with a 1-1 record and 1.71 ERA (in 42⅓ innings), but had not completed any of his five starts.

On a cool Monday evening with temperatures around 60 degrees and dropping, a modest crowd of 12,741 filed into Busch Stadium for the 8 P.M. start time.9

As overpowering as Gibson and Seaver pitched, two Mets miscues played a decisive role in the game. The first came in the bottom of the second. The Cardinals’ Tim McCarver led off with a single. Mike Shannon followed with a routine grounder to first base and a “force out appeared certain,” opined Cardinals beat writer Neal Russo.10 Fielding the ball, Ed Kranepool “cock[ed] his arm and stop[ped],” reported Young.11 Kranepool was unsure if shortstop Bud Harrelson was covering second base. Off-balance, he finally fired the ball “which [hit] the dirt and skip[ped] off Harrelson’s chest.”12 Julián Javier’s single drove in McCarver and sent Shannon to third, where he was left stranded. The run was unearned.

Seaver cruised after the second inning, holding the Cardinals hitless in the next seven innings and yielding just a walk.

Gibson held the Mets hitless in 10 of the 11 innings of his masterpiece. After retiring nine straight batters to start the game, he yielded singles to Harrelson and Ken Boswell to start the fourth. The third straight single, by Art Shamsky, drove in Harrelson to tie the game.

A passed ball put both baserunners in scoring position. Gibson was scuffling, but the second Mets miscue rescued the St. Louis ace from trouble. Ron Swoboda lofted a fly ball, which seemed deep enough in center field to score Boswell, but Curt Flood “seem[ed] to hesitate as if bluffing, then fire[d],” wrote Dick Young in the Daily News.13 Boswell “looked like a cinch to score,” reported the Post-Dispatch’s Neal Russo.14 Inexplicably, the rookie slid around McCarver, missed home plate, and then “half-jump[ed], half [threw] his body” toward home plate (observed Young) and was tagged out by McCarver.

Boswell told reporters that he thought he had the throw beaten and didn’t need to “crash” into the catcher.15 The Mets coaching staff, however, was livid after the game. “In that situation,” declared Hodges, “you can’t go around the catcher.”16 Added coach Eddie Yost, who like his manager debuted in the big leagues as a teenager in the 1940s: “There has to be a collision.”17

McCarver seemed equally perplexed by Boswell’s slide. “I didn’t think I had a chance to get Boswell,” admitted the two-time All-Star. “Flood double-hitched and his throw tailed off toward the third base line. I had to go up the line to get it.”18

Gibson retired 22 of the next 23 batters he faced, yielding only a seventh-inning walk to Swoboda. The pitcher changed tactics after the fifth inning. “I had gone more to my breaking pitches,” he said. “You don’t strike out many with the fastball because the batters are looking for [it].”19 After striking out just two batters through five frames, he finished with 11 strikeouts. It was the first of 11 times in 34 starts in the 1968 season that Gibson reached double digits in strikeouts.

In the bottom of the 10th, Shannon led off with a single and moved up on Javier’s sacrifice. Dave Ricketts, pinch-hitting for Dick Schofield, grounded to Harrelson, who tossed to third base to force Shannon. Had Shannon not been retired for the second out, John Edwards would have pinch-hit for Gibson, revealed Schoendienst.20 Seaver fanned Gibson to end the 10th.

After Gibson’s ninth one-two-three inning in the 11th, Seaver took the mound in the 11th for the first time in his 41 career starts. Three starts earlier, Seaver had tossed 10 scoreless innings, yielding just two hits against the Astros in the Astrodome in an eventual 1-0 Mets loss in 24 innings. Lou Brock, hitting just .238 entering the game, tripled to center. Blessed with impeccable control, Seaver was forced to play the percentages and issued intentional walks to Flood and Roger Maris to load the bases with no outs.

To the plate came reigning NL MVP Orlando Cepeda, who discarded his usual 39-ounce bat in favor of a lighter 36-ouncer for this at-bat. “I was a little late with my swings,” explained Cepeda as the reason for the switch.21 On what he thought was the same kind of pitch he had popped up to right field in the ninth, the future Hall of Famer singled to the same area, driving in Brock for a 2-1 St. Louis victory in 2 hours and 10 minutes.22 The Cardinals improved their record to 10-1 at Busch Stadium.

Aside from exhaustion, Gibson seemed relieved, perhaps even surprised, that he finished the game. “I got away with some bad pitches,” he said. “I threw a hanging curve to Ed Kranepool.”23 He referred to Kranepool’s seventh-inning fly ball to deep center that Flood caught on the run, with Swoboda on base via a walk. Gibson tossed 109 pitches – 70 less than his outing against the Astros – and yielded just three hits and a walk.

In an era when pitch counts were not strictly tabulated, Cardinals beat writer Neal Russo opined that “normal for [Gibson] is about 125 pitches for a 9 inning game.”24 Schoendienst squeezed every pitch he could get out of Gibson during their successive pennants (1967-1968) and was well aware that the team’s success relied on his ace hurler more than anyone else. “Gibson’s arm can only take so much,” said the skipper. “He can’t pitch forever. I can’t let him throw his arm out.”25

Gibson’s 1968 campaign in the “Year of the Pitcher” has since attained almost mythical status – 22 wins, 13 shutouts, and a 1.12 ERA. In a year filled with exceptional performances, his duel with Seaver might have been his best game of the year, and according to one metric (Bill James’s Game Score), it was.26

It was a heartbreaking loss for Seaver, who tossed 120 pitches.27 “I was tired, but I got a couple of pop-ups in the ninth and I pitched well in the tenth,” he said. “So I thought I might have something.”28 Seaver finished with a six-hitter and three walks (two intentional) and fanned six.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Harrison Golden and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, SABR.org, and the following:

Joseph Durso, “Seaver Is Beaten by Cards,” New York Times, May 7, 1968: 56.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN196805060.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1968/B05060SLN1968.htm

Notes

1 Dick Young, “Cards Nip Mets, 2-1, in 11th, as Mets Slide Into Cellar,” New York Daily News, May, 1968: 58.

2 Neal Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 1968: 1B.

3 Charlie Barouh (Associated Press), “Cards Edge Mets 2-1 in 11 Innings,” Jefferson City (Missouri) Post-Tribune, May 7, 1968: 10.

4 All team batting and pitching statistic through games on May 5, 1968, are from “NL Averages,” The Sporting News, May 18, 1968: 24.

5 Young.

6 Young.

7 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

8 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

9 “Storm System Heading Toward Bi-State Area,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 1968: 2A.

10 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

11 Young.

12 Young.

13 Young.

14 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

15 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

16 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

17 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

18 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

19 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

20 Neal Russo, “Briles Will Toil Silently,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 1968: B2.

21 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

22 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

23 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets”

24 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

25 Russo, “Gibby’s Aches Pain Mets.”

26 Bill James’s Game Score measures a pitcher’s performance. In this game, Gibson had a game score of 97. 50 is considered an “average” game; 40 is considered “replacement level.” For more on Game Score and how it is calculated, see “Game Score, MLB.com, accessed October 29, 2024, https://www.mlb.com/glossary/advanced-stats/game-score.

27 Charlie Barouh (Associated Press), “Cards Edge Mets 2-1 in 11 Innings.”

28 Russo, “Briles Will Toil Silently.”