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How many men become so good that a sport changes its rules as a result? In most of our lifetimes, we've seen only two: The NCAA banned dunking for a time in reaction to Lew Alcindor's dominance while at UCLA, and baseball lowered the mound from 15 inches to 10 after Gibson's extraordinary season of 1968.
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"He ruined it for all of us," two-time NL Cy Young winner Tom Glavine complains in sort of a half-joke, half-truth.
"They don't make many rules changes in this league," Torre says. "The NFL, the NBA, hockey ... they're changing rules all the time. Players get bigger, they widen the key or change the three-point line.
"But when they decided to lower the mound ... it changed the game. And it drove away some sinkerball pitchers."
And it left Glavine and his colleagues today dreaming of what it might be like to work atop a mound that must have seemed like a skyscraper, a full 50 percent higher than today's bump.
"Those numbers are so removed from what today's game is," Glavine says of Gibson's 1.12 and 300-plus innings pitched. "It's impossible to imagine how good he really was.
"Unfortunately, some of us didn't get to see him in his prime. And the ramifications of what he did are bad for the rest of us, with the mound lowered. How many times do you see one guy in his sport cause a change in the rules?"
Not that Glavine, good-natured or not, is the only Cy Young winner bitter about how baseball has skewed everything toward the hitters -- lower mounds, designated hitter, smaller strike zone -- since Gibson's dominance.
Four-time Cy Young winner Greg Maddux grins when told of his ex-teammate's reaction, then goes sarcastic in imagining the immediate reaction to Gibson's season: "Oh, no, we can't have this. Let's lower the mound. Somebody might do it again."
Thing is, even in the old era of the higher mound, Gibson's season pretty much was unparalleled: His 1.12 ERA is the fourth-lowest in history and, of the 40 lowest single-season ERA's only Gibson's came after 1920.
Forty years later, it remains a stunning number that never fails to stir the imaginations of today's generation.
"You talk about hitters hitting .400," Maddux says. "A 1.12 ERA would be like a hitter maybe hitting .430.
"That's just not realistic. If it happens, it would be extremely magical. It would be a combination of unbelievable pitching over six months and catching a few breaks along the way."
Maddux knows a few things about that: His 1.56 ERA in 1994 is the second-lowest since Gibson's (the Mets' Dwight Gooden finished at 1.53 in 1985). Typically humble, though, Maddux quickly places an asterisk, so to speak, on his 1.56.
"It was a strike-shortened season," he says modestly.
Now beginning his 23rd season in the majors, the fact that Maddux somehow has never met Gibson probably is a testament to the fact that Maddux is remarkably ego-free despite his highly decorated career -- if you didn't know him or what he has done, you'd be hard-pressed to pick him out of a clubhouse lineup, he's so quiet and humble -- and Gibson doesn't exactly have the reputation of being a people person.
"Nice guy," says Hall of Famer Al Kaline, who faced Gibson in the '68 World Series. "Great guy. I've gotten to know him over the years. But he was one of those kinds of guys who just didn't talk to you back then."
You've no doubt heard the legendary stories of Gibson snarling at hitters. Here are two more:
Torre, who would become a teammate and good friend of Gibson's after going to St. Louis in a trade before the 1969 season, still talks about the time he was catching for the NL All-Star team in Minnesota in 1965. And because Torre was wearing a Milwaukee Braves uniform at the time, Gibson wouldn't talk to him.
"I went out to the mound during the game to make a point about something, and he just looked at me," Torre says.
And as a wide-eyed rookie in the mid-1960s -- 1964 or 1965, he thinks -- Detroit outfielder Willie Horton recalls riding the team bus to St. Petersburg, Fla., during spring training hoping to meet the Cardinals' legend. Understand, Horton had just played a Grapefruit League game in Winter Haven the day before and wasn't even scheduled to play in St. Pete.
