Bob Gibson

"When a hitter like Pete LaCock hits a grand slam off you, it’s time to hang them up."

"Robert, the scales must be balanced no matter how long it takes."

"In a world filled with hate, prejudice and protest, I find that I too am filled with hate, prejudice and protest. I hate phonies. I am prejudiced against all those who have contempt for me because my face is black and all those who accept me only because of my ability to throw a baseball. I am not proud of that ability. It is not something I earned or acquired or bought. It is a gift."

"People make it sound like it was easy, like all I had to do was stare at a hitter or throw inside and they’d wilt. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t easy. There wasn’t anything easy about it."

"I’m proud of that fact that whatever I did, I did it my way."

"I guess I was never much in awe of anybody. I think you have to have that attitude if you're going to go far in this game."

"I've played a couple of hundred games of tic-tac-toe with my little daughter and she hasn't beaten me yet. I've always had to win. I've got to win."

"Is that all I did?...Hit batters? Is that really all they remember?...I wasn’t trying to intimidate anybody — are you kidding me? I was just trying to survive, man."

"I wasn’t mean. I don’t buy into any of it. You hear people talk about this glare that I had. You know, I’ve been wearing glasses for almost 60 years. I wasn’t glaring...I just couldn’t see the catcher’s signals. I was just trying to see. That’s all. But people turn everything into something else."

"People don’t know what it was like to be a young black pitcher in those days."

"Hank Aaron could hit God’s fastball."

"Gibson was so mean, he’d knock you down and then meet you at home plate to see if you wanted to make something of it."

"The only people I ever felt intimidated by in my whole life were Bob Gibson and my daddy."

"I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the plate where I belonged and that the only thing I knew about pitching was that I couldn’t hit it."

"Don’t dig in against Gibson, he’ll knock you down. He’d knock down his own grandmother. Don’t stare at him. Don’t smile at him. Don’t talk to him. He doesn’t like it. If you happen to hit a home run, don’t run too slow and don’t run too fast. And if he hits you, don’t charge the mound. He’s a Golden Glove boxer."

"Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher in baseball. He is always pitching when the other team doesn't score any runs."

"Children whose fathers are not old enough to have seen him pitch, still come up to Gibson to say he’s their favorite pitcher, not because of his 3,117 career strikeouts or his 1.12 ERA in 1968 or his unrelenting brilliance in the World Series. No, it’s because he was mean, tough, a symbol of badass."

"He hated everyone. He even hated Santa Claus."

"Bob wasn’t unfriendly when he was playing. I’d say it was more like hateful."