On August 4, 1971, Bob Gibson became the 66th player in the history of Major League Baseball to win 200 games in his career. The milestone performance came in front of a crowd of more than 27,000 at Busch Stadium, as the hurler with a warrior's mentality struck out nine, while giving up seven hits to the visiting San Francisco Giants, as he led the Birds to a 7-2 victory. The offensive highlight of the contest was Ted Kubiak's three run home run off of Gaylord Perry in the sixth. The big blast for the second baseman who had been traded to the Cardinals a week earlier put an exclamation point on a five run inning. Gibby did surrender a home run in the ninth, but quite frankly it did not matter, as he took care of business by helping the Cardinals add another digit to the win column.Gibson was just the second man to win 200 games as a Cardinal. The first was. Jesse Haines who forged out 210 wins over 18 big league seasons. The 1971 season was Gibby's 13th season in the big leagues, and he had quite a bit of gas left in the tank. The man who donned the number 45 surpassed Haines' total in '72 and he kept on adding to his own totals until the end of 1975 when he finished up his career as the franchise's all time wins leader with 245. When Gibson was inducted into the Hall of Fame he credited two of his managers for the wins, saying that Johnny Keane believed in him when no one else had, and Red Schoendienst who would leave him in there no matter what the score was. Gibson said jokingly "Red would leave me in there whether if the score was 20 to nothin. He figured I would hold them and we would get 21." Then with another chuckle he said "as a matter of fact he's responsible for me losing 170 ballgames or so."
Check out the box score here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN197108040.shtml
Stats of a legend:http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gibsobo01.shtml
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