The Pecan Park Eagle

Hoyt WIlhelm
Knuckleballer
Hall of Fame

Baseball Super Fan
Autograph Collector

Bob Gibson
Fastballer
Hall of Fame

A very good friend told me a story yesterday about an experience he once had with Hall of Fame pitchers Hoyt Wilhelm and Bob Gibson during an appearance they were making in Houston. It was so funny that I couldn’t resist sharing it here with the part of the world that is our readership at The Pecan Park Eagle, but I also had to come up with a fair way to write the story that would both keep it fresh and also serve  the interest of protecting my friend’s identity, in the remote event that he might not want to be personally acknowledged as the baseball autograph super fan collector who set these whole chain of his real and my imagined conclusions into motion as to how this tale began and “might have” concluded.

Let’s just tag my anonymous baseball buddy with “Super Fan” and leave it to that anonymity forever. Only “Super Fan” is free to reveal his true identity on these public pages. I will never tell.

Here’s how it happened:

Once upon a time, Super Fan came unexpectedly upon two Hall of Fame pitchers, Hoyt Wilhelm and Bob Gibson, sitting happily together at a Houston public event. (I won’t even go so far as to say it was a baseball game – or even to reveal the name of the ballpark where the anonymous site chance meeting took place.)

Be that as it may, Super Fan was prepared, as per usual, for this sort of thing. He carried with him a brand new MLB baseball and a jet black permanent ink roller ball pen to get just the right kind of non-fading signatures of each man that he so coveted.

The Hall of Famers greeted Super Fan with understanding and respect for his interest in their signatures. Hoyt Wilhelm smiled and even reached out to take the pen and ball that Super Fan wanted to use in this exercise.

“Say, man,” Wilhelm suddenly uttered, as he rolled the ball on all stitched sides for a total look. “This is a dad gum  brand new baseball! – You don’t want me to sign a ball that doesn’t even look like it’s been used in a game, do you?”

“I kind of wanted you sign a fresh ball,” Super Fan tried to utter.

“Well, ‘fresh’ ain’t good enough for me,” Wilhelm cut in to say. “Any ball I sign has got to, at least, look like it’s seen some game action!”

Wham!

Before anything else could be said, Wilhelm had stood up and slammed the ball hard to the rough concrete floor in front of his seat and then caught the now baptized article on the first high bounce.

“There!” Wilhelm said, as he first observed and then showed the now rough two-inch skimmer streak that newly blessed the ball’s cover on the sweet spot.

“Now I can sign the thing!” Wilhelm added as he wrote his name over the tattered section and handed the ball to the now sinister-grinning and also standing Bob Gibson.

“Shoot, Wilhelm!” Gibson chuckled. “You’re a knuckleballer. You didn’t put any real game action on this ball at all. Let me show you what a Gibson fastball will do to bring out the game action life of this little old baseball!”

KA-BOOM!

Gibson hurled the baseball to the concrete in front of his space with the same kind of force he once used on the mound. It’s contact with the sidewalk-hard floor sounded like a mortal landing of such a pitch upon the head of an unfortunate batter. It bounced thirty feet high, but Gibson also caught his descending treasure on the one-bounce fly and then spent time admiring the gash that now stretched across another stitching as an imprint on two panels of the Super Fan baseball. Then he too signed the ball and returned it to Super Fan, as both Hall of Famers shook his hand and thanked him for his sincere interest in their autographs.

In his wrap up of the story, Super Fan told me: “I was lucky the ball survived as a recognizable relic with the signatures of those two great Hall of Fame pitchers.

“No,” I said to Super Fan, “you were lucky that Bob Gibson put the act to rest when he did!”

“What would you have done had Bob Gibson carried the cause of game-worthy appearances in this matter to the next level?”

“What if Gibson had kept the ball after he signed it and – then – made the following suggestion:

” ‘OK, Super Fan! Stand back over there about 60’6″ and lean your head forward! – After the next pitch, you will be able to tell your friends the ball was your prize for making the mistake of taking batting practice against Bob Gibson!’ ”

Super Fan laughed hard at my suggestion, but the look in his eyes (which I had to imagine since we were talking over the phone, but it’s one I have seen before in him in other matters of far-fetched possibility) told a slightly different story. His eyes said, his soul said, “I almost wish that Gibson had beaned me. – I’d be a different person today.”

Different person all right. A dead versus a live person.

I’m glad he didn’t bean you, Super Fan. Had he done so, I doubt you would have been around last night to tell me your very funny true story. And I would be forced to grieve the loss of your fun company.

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Bill McCurdy

Publisher, Editor, Writer

The Pecan Park Eagle

Houston, Texas