The Hammock Papers: Happy Birthday, Gibby.

28 May 2012

Happy Birthday, Gibby.

My all-time favorite Tiger, Kirk Gibson, was born on this date in 1957.

The Detroit Athletic Club remembers Gibby's dinger off of Gossage in the 1984 World Series ...

Gossage had faced Gibson late in Game Four the day before, coaxing Gibby into a harmless popout. The Tigers won that game, and now they were trying to tack on some insurance runs late in Game Five on a Sunday evening at Tiger Stadium. Gossage walked Marty Castillo to start the 8th. Whitaker followed with a bunt that was misplayed by the Padre infield. Runners were now on first and second. Sparky asked Trammell, despite his hot-hitting, to bunt the runners over, which he did. That put runners at second and third with first base open and Gibson coming to the plate. San Diego manager Dick Williams instructed Gossage to walk Gibson to set up a double play situation and force at any base. But Goose, recalling his tremendous success against Gibson in the past, motioned that he didn’t want to issue the free pass. Williams trotted out to the dugout, and after a discussion on the mound that included much of the Padre infield, Gossage won the argument. He would get to face Gibson.

Famously, an isolated camera and microphone documented Sparky Anderson’s reaction to the scenario. The gum-chewing Tiger manager was amazed that Williams was swayed by Gossage. “No sonofabitch is going to tell me what to do, I can guarantee you that,” Sparky said to coach Roger Craig as he witnessed Williams go to the mound to debate with Gossage.

But Gossage did persuade Williams and he was allowed to pitch to Gibson. Pitch one was deposited into the right field upper deck by a powerful swing from Gibson’s bat. It was the first home run Gibson hit off Gossage, the pitcher who had welcomed him to the big leagues by striking him out in his first at-bat, and who had manhandled the Detroit hitter for so long.

Detroit fans don’t need me to tell them what happened next. Gibson pounced around the bases, fists in the air, while the Tiger Stadium crowd shook the old ballpark with their approval. Everyone knew that the Tigers would be World Champions. They’d really known it since April, but the World Series was the final chapter. Gibson’s blast off Gossage was the exclamation point. He would never get another hit off the Goose, but it didn’t matter. He’d won the most important battle.

Read the rest here.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL