Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
If I keep talking, I'm going to cry. And as you know, I never cry.
By Micah Mertes
Sixty years ago — on Oct. 15, 1964 — Bob Gibson led the St. Louis Cardinals to victory in a seven-game World Series against the New York Yankees. Gibson was declared the MVP, setting a World Series record of 31 strikeouts in the 27 innings he played.
It was one of the greatest moments of one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball. And for Gibson, Creighton Class of 1957, it would launch a lifetime's worth of cities, states and dignitaries naming days after him.
Without question, no Creighton alumnus has had more days named after him than Bob Gibson. Perhaps no Nebraskan has. In fact, no matter what day it is, there's about a 1 in 50 chance that it's Bob Gibson Day.
Because, and this cannot be overstated, Gibson was incredible. Especially on baseball’s biggest stage.
Gibson’s one of only four players ever to win two World Series MVP awards (1964 and 1967). No one has struck out more batters in a World Series game (17) or in a full series (35) than Gibson — records he set in the 1968 Fall Classic. Oh, and he hit two career World Series home runs.
The following is a comprehensive history of every day the first member of the Creighton Athletics Hall of Fame could call his very own.
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Bob Gibson Day No. 1
Oct. 16, 1964
Declared by: Creighton and the City of Omaha
Following Gibson's Game 7 win the day prior, Creighton and Omaha welcomed their hometown hero with a parade in his honor and a reception on the Douglas County courthouse lawn, where Mayor James Dworak presented Gibson with a key to the city.
Rev. H.W. Linn, SJ, Creighton President, told the large gathering that Gibson was “the hero not only of St. Louis but especially of Omaha.”
Gibson and his family were welcomed the moment they stepped off their return flight at Eppley Airfield. Bouquets of 31 roses, one for each of Gibson's record 31 strikeouts, were presented to his wife, Charline, and mother, Victoria Bolden.
Children from every school along North 24th Street between downtown and Ames Avenue lined the parade route, holding signs that read "Welcome Home, Champ!" and "Lake School is Proud!"
At the ceremony, Gibson said, “Omaha has always been very good to me. Nothing could be as exciting as the last pitch I threw in the World Series, but I think this tops it."
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Bob Gibson Day No. 2
Oct. 17, 1967
Declared by: the Omaha Chamber of Commerce and State of Nebraska
A few days after Gibson led the Cardinals to their second World Series win in four years (this one against the Red Sox), the series MVP was honored at a special sports luncheon in Omaha's Civic Auditorium Arena, where Gov. Norbert T. Tiemann proclaimed it Bob Gibson Day before appointing the St. Louis pitcher as "Honorary Governor" for the day (or a week, accounts vary). More than 1,400 guests attended the event, including Fr. Linn and legendary broadcaster Harry Caray.
At the luncheon, Gibson took time to autograph a few baseballs, including one for a cancer patient undergoing treatments at a local hospital.
"This is the reason right here why I'm proud to say I'm from Omaha," Gibson said at the event.
The luncheon concluded a hectic series of events for Gibson.
On Thursday, Oct. 12, he and the Cardinals won Game 7 of the World Series.
On Friday, Oct. 13, he returned to his West Omaha home for the first time in eight months. It was about 10 p.m., but the house was hard to miss that night. As he got closer, he found his home bathed in floodlights, decorated with a "Welcome Home, Bob" banner and surrounded by friends, family and neighbors gathered in his lawn and driveway.
On Sunday, Oct. 15, Gibson flew to New York, where he made a guest appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
On Monday, Oct. 16, he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and flew back to Omaha that night, dead tired after a 3 a.m. landing at Eppley.
On Tuesday, Oct. 17 (Bob Gibson Day No. 2), Gibson visited five Omaha schools before and after the luncheon: the Near North Side schools Kellom School (his grammar school), Horace Mann Junior High and Lake School, as well as Omaha Tech and, finally, Creighton University.
Gibson urged the students to stay in school and said that he wouldn't have been able to develop his athletic skills if not for his time at Creighton (where he also played basketball).
By the end of Bob Gibson Day, its namesake was "mentally and physically exhausted" and ready for some downtime. "I'm going into hiding, and I don't know how long I'll stay in hiding," he told The World-Herald. He planned to hide out at home and do as little as possible.
"I haven't mowed a lawn in a long time," he said in the same World-Herald interview. "Though I'm not about to take the job away from my wife."
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Bob Gibson Day No. 3
Sept. 1, 1975
Declared by: the St. Louis Cardinals, Major League Baseball, Omaha, St. Louis, Nebraska, Missouri
Shortly before he turned 40, Gibson announced he would retire at the end of the 1975 season. For his farewell, the Cardinals hosted a Bob Gibson Day for their longtime star pitcher, held ahead of the Cardinals vs. Cubs game in Busch Stadium (which ended with a 6-3 Cards victory).
Roughly 50,000 fans showed up that day, the largest crowd Busch Stadium had yet seen and the fourth-largest crowd for any regular-season game in the MLB.
Dignitaries included ... baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, brewing magnate August Busch Jr., St. Louis mayor John H. Poelker, Missouri governor Christopher Bond, Nebraska governor J. James Exon and Omaha mayor Ed Zorinsky.
Zorinksy presented Gibson with the proclamation declaring Sept. 1 Bob Gibson Day in Omaha, while Exon gave him a custom license plate reading "STL 45." (Gibson's uniform number 45 was retired at the ceremony.)
The license plate would go on Gibson's retirement gift from the Cardinals: a $30,000 motor home. The Cardinals also gave Gibson's mother a solid-gold necklace with the number 45 made of diamonds, while a group of boy and girl scouts formed “251” in the outfield to celebrate Gibson's number of victories with the Cardinals.
Fellow Omaha native President Gerald Ford sent Gibson a telegram ahead of the ceremony, which read: "Your two Cy Young awards, your 17 strikeouts in a World Series game*, your 13 shutouts* and 1.12 earned run average* present a picture of overall pitching excellence which is unsurpassed in our time." (*In the 1968 season, the "Year of the Pitcher.")
When he took the mic at Busch Stadium, Gibson told the crowd he was a little nervous. “In fact, I don't think I was ever this nervous, even in a World Series game."
He said of all his accomplishments, one of his proudest was this: "I can honestly say that I don't think I ever cheated any fan from coming to the park and paying for what he paid to see."
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Bob Gibson Day No. 4
Feb. 15, 1981
Declared by: the City of Omaha, the Nebraska Legislature
Gibson was named to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981 — only the 11th player to achieve the honor in the first year of eligibility — and the City of Omaha celebrated his career with a large crowd in the Civic Auditorium Arena.
For the first time in the history of Bob Gibson Days, this Bob Gibson Day was codified by a state's lawmaking body. The Nebraska Legislature passed a 34-0 resolution proclaiming Feb. 15 Bob Gibson Day. The officialness of the proclamation makes this Bob Gibson Day, perhaps, the most Bob Gibson Day of them all.
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Bob Gibson Day No. 5
April 18, 1998
Declared by: the St. Louis Cardinals
Ahead of a game against the Phillies, the Cardinals honored Gibson and five other former team members with bronze statues in front of Busch Stadium.
Gibson's statue (3 feet tall on a 3-foot pedestal) was unveiled and later installed that summer to honor the anniversary of his career-peak 1968 season.
And because there were only four Bob Gibson Days at this point, the Cardinals decided (oh why not?) to declare April 18 as another one. The team's organization also created 25 bronze 1-foot statues of Gibson sold for $5,000 a piece, with proceeds going to charity.
"All my life, I wanted to be a Cardinal," Gibson said at a news conference. "After this, no matter what happens, I always will be."
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Bob Gibson Day No. 6
June 9, 1999
Declared by: the City of Omaha
This Bob Gibson Day came with a whole street, as the City Council unveiled "Bob Gibson Boulevard."
Formerly Deer Park Boulevard, Bob Gibson Boulevard runs between 10th and 13th Streets, north of what used to be Rosenblatt Stadium. Today, the street leads drivers to the Henry Doorly Zoo.
"If I keep talking, I'm going to cry," Gibson said at the street’s dedication. "And as you know, I never cry. You never think of having a street named after you, especially when you're still alive."
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Bob Gibson Day No. 7
April 11, 2013
Declared by: Gov. Dave Heineman
At a special ceremony at the main gate of Werner Park in Papillion, Gibson's former teammates Joe Torre, Bill White, and Tim McCarver, baseball commissioner Bud Selig, and Gov. Heineman unveiled a statue of Gibson.
Ceremony guest Warren Buffett joked that "a statue of a terrified batter" might have been more fitting.
Gibson said he didn't enjoy the process of making the statue, which required him to lie on a table at artist Littleton Alston's studio and put his face in clay for hours on end, with “two straws sticking out of my nose, not a lot of fun."
"To know that there is something of you that will be there long after you're gone is kind of frightening," Gibson said at the ceremony. "But it shows that a lot of people cared, too."
Gibson told the crowd that "from the projects to today, my steppingstone was the opportunity to go to Creighton. I was trying to get into Indiana, but they had their quota (he signaled with quote signs), but Creighton gave me a scholarship. And after four years of baseball and basketball, they taught me to be a decent human being, and hopefully I am one."
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Of everything that's been written and said about Bob Gibson, one of the best accounts is Jon Bois' Bob Gibson segment in The Bob Emergency, a stats-obsessed documentary series about athletes named Bob. You can watch it here.
