On May 28, 1968, the Giants and Cardinals squared off on a Tuesday evening in St. Louis, with a future Hall of Famer starting for each club: Bob Gibson for the Cardinals and Gaylord Perry for the Giants. Despite the early-season date, this matchup could have been considered key: the Giants were sitting atop the NL standings by a single game, with the Cardinals right behind them. The Giants had finished in second place three years running and were looking to take the pennant, for a change. The Cardinals were coming off a World Series Championship in 1967 and looking to repeat.

Gibson, of course, had his epic year in 1968, posting an ERA of 1.12 while throwing an amazing 13 shutouts. The tall right-hander was probably the most impressive figure on the field that day, but let's not forget about the Giants' elder statesman, a guy by the name of Willie Mays. Mays, at the age of 37, had a fine season himself in that Year of the Pitcher, finishing 3rd or 4th in the NL in OBP, SLG, OPS and OPS+. He was also selected to the All-Star team and won a Gold Glove. He was still a force to be reckoned with, let there be no doubt about that.

The game was tied at 1-1 in the seventh inning, when Mays strode to the plate to face Gibson. Gibson had retired the first 15 Giants he faced, including Mays on a groundout and called strikeout. A home run by Giants catcher Dick Dietz had tied it in the sixth inning, though, and now there was a runner on first and nobody out. This was a classic confrontation: two future Hall of Famers, the power pitcher versus the slugger. They say good pitching beats good hitting, but not this time: Mays deposited a Gibson fastball into the bleachers, giving the Giants a 3-1 lead, which ended up being the final score.

So, this time Mays got the better of Gibson, but aren't you curious about how these two immortals fared against each other over the course of their careers? Well, thanks to Retrosheet, we know what happened in Mays v. Gibson. Not to mention Aaron against Koufax, Schmidt versus Seaver, and all the greats who faced off during the Retrosheet years.

I looked at the results of all batter/pitcher matchups for all players who were voted into the Hall of Fame by the BBWAA since 1972. This puts us squarely in the Retrosheet era, which goes back to 1957 (Retrosheet also has data for NL games of 1954). For players who played most of their careers in one league, there are enough plate appearances in individual matchups to make this exercise interesting. For example, Hank Aaron batted against Don Drysdale 246 times in his career. If I require at least 50 PAs, I find 174 Hall-of-Fame batter/pitcher pairs. Let's have a look at a few of those, shall we?

Willie versus Hoot

We know that Mays got the best of Gibson in the game described above. But what happened when these two Inner-Circle Hall of Famers faced off during the rest of their careers? The Retrosheet period covers all of Bob Gibson's big league career (1959-1975). So, (except for a possible missing game here and there), we have a record of all the Gibson-Mays matchups: from their first encounter on September 7, 1959, when the rookie Gibson sent the superstar Mays down on strikes; to their final meeting in August 1971 with Gibson again getting the best of Mays, who flied out to center field.

Here's the career line for these two Titans:

Mays vs. Gibson, career
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| AB   | H    | HR   | RBI  | SO   | BB   | AVG   | OBP   | SLG   | OPS   |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|   92 |   18 |    3 |    9 |   30 |   17 | 0.196 | 0.321 | 0.304 | 0.625 |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Looks like Gibson really had Willie's number over the years. This was Mays' worse performance against the Hall of Fame pitchers in my sample. It's not Gibson's best performance though: he held Tony Perez to just 7 hits and 2 walks with 28 strikeouts in 64 plate appearances. That translates to line of .121/.141/.190 for the Hall of Fame first baseman. Owie!

Tom Terrific faces Michael Jack

Tom Seaver is five years older than Mike Schmidt and the Hall of Fame pitcher reached the big leagues five years before the greatest third baseman who ever lived. Still, their time in the National League together lasted 12 seasons and they faced off many times. Things did not start off well for Schmidt against Seaver. In their first game together, on September 4, 1973, the established star Seaver struck out the rookie Schmidt three times. When the two squared off again nine days later, Schmidt's woes with Seaver continued: in five trips to the plate, he only managed a sacrifice bunt. Schmidt whiffed his other four trips to the plate.

Things did not improve all that much over the years, as Seaver handled the Phillies third baseman fairly easily over their career meetings:

Schmidt vs. Seaver, career
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| AB   | H    | HR   | RBI  | SO   | BB   | AVG   | OBP   | SLG   | OPS   |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|   85 |   16 |    2 |    5 |   35 |   15 | 0.188 | 0.301 | 0.294 | 0.605 |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Does this mean that the old saw is true, that good pitching really does beat good hitting? Before making any hasty pronouncements, let's look at our next Hall of Fame couple.

Johnny Bench vs. Steve Carlton

On September 15, 1967, nineteen-year-old Johnny Bench singled off Steve Carlton, a youngster himself at 22 years, despite pitching in his third major league season. Lefty did not let that first meeting rattle him, though, and he retired the young Reds catcher 15 of the next 17 times they met. But Bench would turn things around against Carlton and had a pretty good game against the southpaw on July 26, 1970, when he hit three home runs off the four-time Cy Young Award winner.

Bench continued his successful ways against Carlton, ending up with this very nice line against the first ballot Hall-of-Famer:

Bench vs. Carlton, career
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| AB   | H    | HR   | RBI  | SO   | BB   | AVG   | OBP   | SLG   | OPS   |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|  124 |   37 |   12 |   30 |   20 |   26 | 0.298 | 0.412 | 0.645 | 1.057 |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Willie, again, vs. Spahnie

Everybody knows how Willie Mays struggled when he was first called up to the big leagues. Mays was destroying Triple-A pitching in Minneapolis, as his .477 batting average attests, when he was called to New York. He struggled at the start, though, going 0 for his first eleven at bats and 1-for-27. I knew about Willie's initial struggles at the plate early in my life because whenever I was down about my (it must be admitted) feeble Little League hitting, my dad would remind me about Willie's 1-for-27 at the start of his career.

What Dad never mentioned, though, was that the hit was a home run, and off a future Hall-of-Famer, to boot. Warren Spahn remembers the blow in Vincent Fay's The Only Game in Town.

Willie Mays got his first base hit off me. Willie Mays got his first home run off me. Same pitch. So I realized before the rest of the league that he was going to be a good hitter. And over the years I think Willie hit more home runs off me than anybody.

Mays ended up with a pretty nice line against Spahn:

Mays vs. Spahn, career
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| AB   | H    | HR   | RBI  | SO   | BB   | AVG   | OBP   | SLG   | OPS   |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|  158 |   43 |   13 |   32 |   12 |   15 | 0.272 | 0.328 | 0.551 | 0.878 |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Not as good as his career numbers (.302/.384/.557), but not bad considering the opposing pitcher. Of course, the main period of overlap (1957-1965) falls more in Mays' prime than in Spahn's. By the way, those 13 home runs are the second most by anybody in my sample. Hank Aaron hit 17 home runs off Don Drysdale, although it took him 218 plate appearances to do so. I'll have more on Hammerin' Hank in a bit.

Ernie Banks vs. Sandy Koufax

Both Banks and Koufax had ups and downs in their great careers and I was curious to see how they matched up. Koufax, as everybody knows, was plagued by wildness for roughly the first half of his career, but became one of history's best pitchers in the period 1961-1966. He retired at age 30 while still at the top of his game. Ernie Banks, one of the few players in history to win back-to-back MVP awards, did that in 1958-1959, when Koufax was still a league-average pitcher. Mr. Cub's decline phase started around 1962 or so (he moved from shortstop to first base that year), just when Koufax was becoming the best pitcher in the game.

Their first meeting (as recorded by Retrosheet) occurred on April 30, 1957, when the 21-year-old left-hander, pitching in relief, faced the Cubs slugger in the ninth inning with a runner on first, one out and the Dodgers down by a run. Banks went down on strikes and Koufax ended up throwing two innings of scoreless relief, allowing the Dodgers to come back and win the game in 10 innings. The winning blow? A home run by shortstop(!) Don Zimmer.

Another memorable matchup between these two first ballot Hall-Of-Famers occured on September 9, 1965. Koufax faced Banks three times that game and each time he struck out the Cubs first baseman. Ron Santo also had a tough time against Sandy that day, as did Billy Williams and all the rest of the Chicago hitters, none of whom reached base against the Dodger pitcher. This was, of course, Koufax's celebrated perfect game.

Overall Koufax dominated Banks in their matchups:

Banks vs. Koufax, career
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| AB   | H    | HR   | RBI  | SO   | BB   | AVG   | OBP   | SLG   | OPS   |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|  127 |   21 |    7 |   18 |   31 |   10 | 0.165 | 0.226 | 0.362 | 0.588 |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Best Performances

I think the best performance by a hitter in these HoF batter-pitcher matchups has to go to Hank Aaron against Koufax:

Aaron vs. Koufax, career
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| AB   | H    | HR   | RBI  | SO   | BB   | AVG   | OBP   | SLG   | OPS   |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|  113 |   42 |    7 |   16 |   12 |   13 | 0.372 | 0.437 | 0.664 | 1.100 |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

To me, this is an amazing batting line, considering the lower run scoring environments typical when Aaron and Koufax were facing each other. Of course, the most impressive thing about Aaron's line is the quality of the opposing pitcher, Sandy Koufax.

My award for the best pitching performance in a HoF matchup goes to Catfish Hunter versus Frank Robinson.

Frank Robinson vs. Catfish Hunter, career 
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| AB   | H    | HR   | RBI  | SO   | BB   | AVG   | OBP   | SLG   | OPS   |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|   98 |   15 |    2 |    7 |   17 |   10 | 0.153 | 0.231 | 0.265 | 0.497 |
+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Hunter was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1987 (his third year on the ballot) and many consider him to be a marginal candidate at best. I don't want to get into that discussion here, but rather just note that he really handled first ballot HoFer Frank Robinson pretty easily, didn't he? The amazing thing about the above line is the number of home runs. Robinson hit 586 home runs in his career and Hunter seemingly surrendered as many (the actual number is 374). Yet, incredibly, Hunter surrended just two round trippers to Robinson in over a hundred plate appearances. And he didn't give up much else either, as you can see from the line above.

Good pitching beats good hitting?

I didn't really set out to answer this question, but after looking at these Hall-of-Fame matchups, I think I have to agree with Casey Stengel, who said, "Good pitching beats good hitting, and vice versa."

John Walsh is a regular contributor to the Hardball Times. He welcomes comments via email.