Change. Historians obsess over it. We haggle, debate, and argue over who and what causes social transformation. In lectures and books, historians most always focus upon elite actors, but we also understand that change comes from average folks. America’s Civil Rights narrative exemplifies this. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Diane Nash are household names, and rightfully so. But change also comes from below, and in terms of Civil Rights, two twenty-something kids, Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver, demonstrate that social transformations are also made by those from below. Today, Gibson and McCarver are well known. Both played Major League Baseball for the Saint Louis Cardinals, but in October nineteen sixty four, the duo was anything but famous. The celebrities were in the other dugout. They played for the New York Yankees. Yogi Berra was the manager. The likes of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were Yankees who were the greatest dynasty in American sports history. In the previous eighteen years, they had won fifteen American League Pennants and ten World Series. Beyond baseball, nineteen sixty four was a significant year. That year witnessed LBJ’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, the Americanization of the Vietnam War, and, of course, the nineteen sixty-four Civil Rights Act. The legislation forbade racial and gender discrimination in jobs and public accommodations. In effect, it ended Jim Crow racial segregation and legal discrimination based on race and gender. This law created modern America. Laws matter greatly, as do politics. The nineteen sixty-four Civil Rights Act transformed America. MLK marched for it, Congress passed it, and LBJ signed it into law. But in the nineteen sixty-four World Series, Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver revealed that integration was already underway, and forces beyond the law—the people—could promote it. The Saint Louis Cardinals were a most unlikely source of this change. Southern-style Jim Crow segregation was practiced in the city. Historically, the Cardinals were the team of the South. For generations, Southerners had listened to Cardinals games on the radio throughout the region. In nineteen fifty-three, however, Gussie Busch, the Anheuser-Busch magnate, purchased the team, and at his first spring training he asked, ‘Where are the Black players?’ Told that Saint Louis didn’t field African Americans, Busch replied, ‘How can it be the great American game if Blacks don’t play?’ Heck, we sell beer, everyone. A decade later, the Cardinals fielded a bevy of Black ballplayers, including Bill White, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, and Bob Gibson. But these players were more than stars in the field. They were leaders in the clubhouse. During the season, an interracial mix of players—Bill White, Ken Boyer, Bob Gibson, and Dick Groat—played bridge before every game. They set an example. The team leaders set a tone, but it was Gibson and McCarver who defined the team’s racial dynamos. Pitcher and catcher have a relationship, whether they want to or not. The African American Gibson was a fireballing righty whose pride and intensity and will to win came from a hardscrabble childhood filled with racial slights. In nineteen sixty-four, the twenty-nine-year-old had yet to fully channel his passion and skill. To do so, he depended upon his twenty-three-year-old teammate. To McCarver, implicit trust was necessary. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, McCarver is native regions’ prejudices. Years later, he said, ‘When I was signed by the Cardinals in the late fifties, I had never played against a Black man, much less with one.’ ‘I heard prejudice spoken around me all the time when I was a kid. It was a substantial thing to overcome.’ Early on, McCarver struggled. At the nineteen fifty-nine spring training, Gibson boarded the team bus and noticed the young Southern drinking in orange soda. Fully aware that McCarver would not want to share a drink with a Black man, Gibson asked, ‘Can I have a swig?’ Stunned, McCarver refused and mumbled, ‘I’ll save you some.’ Gibson was testing his teammate. By nineteen sixty-four, the catcher had earned Gibson’s professional respect, but the two—which surely surprised themselves more than anyone—had become best of friends, to be friend. Gibson was no small act, described by teammates as a Samurai warrior who happened to pitch. Gibson chose his friends not based on their ability on the ball field, but their soul. And McCarver and Gibson’s estimation had proven himself. He not only easily socialized with Black teammates, he learned how to manage the famously gruff and hard-driving Gibson. Gibson was the fiercest competitor of his generation on the mound. He glowered at opponents even when he dominated, which he often did. Gibson was in a bad mood in one game. McCarver went to the mound to confer with Gibson and recalled: ‘Gibson 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.’ But McCarver came to admire his friend’s passion. When the manager pressed McCarver for a mound visit, he would take one look at his glowering teammate and best friend and walk halfway to the mound in an attempt to appease both manager and pitcher. The team fed on Gibson’s intensity and dominance, even on days he did not pitch, and it was the Gibson-McCarver relationship which enabled to start a Shine and the clubhouse to hum. Gibson said of his teammate, ‘McCarver ultimately did one hundred and eighty turnabout in his racial attitude.’ ‘I have to give him a heck of a lot of credit. It was the first time I ever saw white man change before my eyes.’ McCarver always believed their team was successful because it came together years before they won. The nineteen sixty-four World Series was a clash of opposites. The Yankees versus Cardinals was a contest between East Coast versus the Midwest: power versus speed, an integrated team versus the basically all-White Yankees. The speedy Cardinals stole bases with their legs and hits with their gloves. They played with verve and daring. It was a new, faster game defined by Black and White. The Yankees were what they had been for half a century, sluggers who sought to pound their opponents into submission. The clash of opposites did not disappoint; the teams traded wins back and forth. In pivotal Game Five, Gibson pitch hen Heroict Gennings, but it was McCarver who won the game with a ten-inning home run. In the clubhouse, Gibson was photographed embracing and kissing McCarver on the cheek, flashing a rare smile. He told McCarver in earshot of reporters, ‘I love you.’ Two days later, Gibson pitched the penultimate Game Seven. The Cardinals jumped out to a six-to-nothing lead. Pitching on short rest, Gibson grunted with every pitch. From the seventh inning on, Mantle cut the lead to six to three. With the home run, it was seven to three. In the ninth, Gibson promptly gave up two homers to cut the lead seven to five. Bobby Richardson stepped to the plate. The Yankee second baseman had already set a series record with thirteen base hits. The Cardinals did not remove Gibson for someone in the bullpen, but Gibson retired Richardson, and the Cardinals won the game and the series. McCarver leaped into Gibson’s arms. The two embraced; in a sense, they never let go. Lifelong confidants, McCarver and Gibson remained incredibly close until Gibson’s death in twenty twenty. In February twenty twenty-three, McCarver also passed away. In nineteen sixty-four, forty-eight percent of Americans named baseball their favorite sport. Nearly one-third of all Americans watched the nineteen sixty-four World Series on television or listened via radio. They saw and heard what was possible in an integrated America. Black and White could not only work together, they could love one another, and in doing so, become the best versions of themselves.
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Jeff Bloodworth, who’s a professor of American history at Gannon University, and he is also a Jack Miller Center Fellow. And the Jack Miller Center is a nationwide network of scholars and teachers dedicated to educating the next generation about America’s founding principles and history. To learn more, visit Jackmillercenter.org. And what a scene! One-third of Americans saw. In nineteen sixty-four, the Civil Rights Act was just taking effect, leading the charge before it. Tim McCarver and Bob Gibson, by their example. Third of Americans watched that nineteen sixty-four World Series and watched this Black man and this White man work together, play together, and love each other. The story of Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver. The story of the nineteen sixty-four World Series here, and our American stories.
