Q: Did you ever have arm surgery? Did you ever need it?

A: I never had surgery, but my arm hurt all the time. All the time. I can’t even straighten it out. I’ve got to think we pitched with stuff that these guys would sit out with now, which I don’t blame them for. They take better care of pitchers now than they did us.

We took Darvon. And they said when your arm was hurt, to ‘throw it out.’ They weren’t as smart about it as they are now. The doctors know what you should not do. We didn’t know that. The doctors never did either.

But I didn’t like to miss a start. My goal was to win 20 ballgames. I don’t know if that was wise or not. But we never did score a lot of runs when I was pitching, so there was a pretty good chance I wouldn’t win a ballgame.

Q: What do you think of starting pitchers being content to last six innings?

A: Very interesting. But I guess if you grow up that way, that’s the way it is. When we pitched six innings, there was going to be a nasty story written in the newspaper the next day. ‘Gibson can’t pitch but six innings. They need to trade hm.’