Bob Gibson threw only two basic pitches.

It was all he needed.

In 1968, Bob Gibson allowed zero runs or one run 24 times in 34 starts. Malcolm Emmons/US Presswire

Throwing only a blazing fastball and a knee-buckling slider, Gibson made hitters look foolish time and again through power and guile. Gibson didn't just dominate at his peak. He made hitters pray for a swift, easy death.

And never did they pray as much as in 1968.

Ask most historians to name the most important season in Major League Baseball history, and you'll get a lightning-quick response: 1947. That year, Jackie Robinson didn't just break the color barrier and end decades of African-American players being excluded from the game. He did so in style, running away with the Rookie of the Year award that's now named in his honor, flirting with MVP honors and leading the Dodgers to just their second National League pennant in 27 years.

Fixating on 1947 ignores one of the greatest accomplishments in baseball history: On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's "unbreakable" career home run record. Aaron's historic homer came after receiving thousands of angry letters and taunts from baseball fans, many of them threatening his life. Though the big homer came at the start of the season, 1974 became something of a coronation for Aaron, a tribute to both his ability and his courage under fire, just as Robinson had shown a generation earlier.

Yet as great as 1947 and 1974 were for Robinson and Aaron, in between the two lies one of the most amazing performances in the annals of the game. Nineteen sixty-eight was The Year of the Pitcher. And in the Year of the Pitcher, Bob Gibson was the Pitcher of the Year.

Gibson's numbers make the case for one of the greatest seasons ever produced by a starting pitcher. His 1.12 ERA for the St. Louis Cardinals ranks as the third-best mark since 1900, the lowest figure in a season not played in the Deadball era. At a time when complete games were dwindling, Gibson completed 28 of his 34 starts, 13 of them for shutouts. Adjust his accomplishments for the much lower offensive numbers of that season, and Gibson's ERA+ (earned run average normalized against league-wide offensive levels) still ranks sixth among all seasons after 1900, trailing the likes of Walter Johnson, Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez.

Forty years later, that 1.12 ERA has retained its place among baseball's immortal numbers. But the statistics alone don't tell the whole story. Dig into the box against Gibson, and he'd stuff a fastball in your ear. Sometimes he'd knock a hitter down for apparently no reason. Then a minute later, teammates would remember. Oh yeah, that guy hit a homer off Gibson a month ago.