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"I just wanted to meet Gibson and get his autograph," Horton says. "I waited for him, and introduced myself and asked him for his autograph, and he was going to do it.
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"First, though, he asked me what position I played. I told him, and, well, I won't tell you what he said. I went back to our clubhouse and told Gates Brown about it, and Gates laughed and said, 'You never should have made the bus trip.' "
There was a method to Gibby's madness, as the autograph-less Horton would see a few years later. It was Horton's Tigers who faced the Cardinals in the '68 World Series as Gibson was finishing his legendary season. And it was in Game 1 when Gibson set a World Series record by striking out 17 Tigers. It is a record that still stands, and you can only wonder what the Tigers' scouting report was going into the Series on Gibson following that regular season.
"We really didn't have a great scouting report on him," Hall of Famer Kaline says. "We knew exactly what he was, a fastball-slider pitcher with great control. We knew he would try to be intimidating and brush you back.
"I'm glad I didn't have to face him much through my career, I'll tell you that."
Kaline fanned three times in Game 1, and Horton twice.
"He was untouchable," says Horton, whose second whiff was Gibson's record-setting 17th. "He got me for No. 17 looking. I'll never forget it. I can shut my eyes and see it now. A slider. He had me set up to put me away with his best pitch, and it came at me hard and dipped. It froze me in my tracks."
Though Gibson won Games 1 and 4, he was the losing pitcher in Game 7 as the Tigers edged St. Louis. The final score of the final game was 4-1, another clue into how Gibson could lose nine games in '68 with that 1.12 ERA. Though the Cards did rank fourth in the NL in runs scored, sometimes Ferguson Jenkins, Juan Marichal or Tom Seaver simply would shut them down.
Torre smiles as he recalls the times after he joined the Cards in '69 that Gibson would be involved in a taut pitcher's duel and, while the Cardinals were hitting (or trying to), Gibson would rage at them in the dugout, yelling "I'm sick of you a--holes" and storm away, into the clubhouse.
"Then we'd score and he'd come back into the dugout and say, 'That's my team,' " Torre says.
For a pitcher or hitter, it usually was -- and still is -- impossible to live up to Gibson's accomplishments and expectations.
"Gibson could have pitched from underneath the mound, he was so good," says Boston legend Johnny Pesky, who was long since retired when Gibson was dominating but closely watched him from afar, especially in the 1967 Cardinals-Red Sox World Series.
Torre, meanwhile, tells of managing the Atlanta Braves in 1982, when Gibson was his pitching coach and the club's playoff race went to the final day of the season. Owner Ted Turner was with the Braves in San Diego that day as the team was attempting to hold off Los Angeles for the NL West title.
"We didn't have batting practice that day, and I was sitting in the clubhouse," Torre says. "I remember telling Gibby, 'If I had one wish, it's that I could hand you the ball today.'
"He didn't say anything, and pretty soon Ted walked in and I said, 'I was just telling Bob that if I had one wish today ... ' and you could see the wheels turning. Ted asked, 'Can we? Can we?' "
You can still see the wheels turning today, in the minds of Gibson's peers like Torre, Kaline and Horton, who flash through mental images from a distant time, and on the faces of modern players such as Martin, Glavine and Maddux who play a completely different game in a completely different era.
Forty years later, that 1.12 still hangs up there like a neon light, one of baseball's greatest feats ... and in some ways today, one of the game's greatest mysteries.
