Terrier Town: Summer of ’49

Billy Gibbs

289 Billy Gibbs B ILLY GIBBS RETIRED FROM THE BRANTFORD RED SOX IN 1952. “I was whipped,” he said. “My arm was shot and we had a family we were raising, so we put baseball behind us. It wasn’t a hard decision to make. Not really. It’s difficult to stay in shape and keep your arm in shape as a pitcher.” He was working full-time at a car dealership and doing other things, so it was hard to concentrate on baseball. Besides, he was twenty-five years old and his dream to make it to the big time was never going to materialize. “You should be in your prime at twenty- five,” he said, “but I started pretty early.” The 1949 season was one of the highlights of his career, though the season before, when the Brantford juniors had lost the Ontario finals to Windsor, was also memorable. He had come back to Brantford mid-season and played the last two months that year after leaving the Cardinal chain. As the years passed he played a little slo-pitch, but stayed away from coaching. His son got into baseball and turned out to be a talented player, and a good pitcher, though he quit early on. “He was probably better than me,” Billy said. The same thing happened with his grandson. The Gibbs had five children and fourteen grandchildren. Family always meant a great deal to them, and leaving baseball was his way of building his family. He continued to work at the Ford dealership in Brantford until his retirement in 1993. He rarely takes in a Brantford game now, but when he does the memories flood back. They are good memories. “We had a lot of good times,” he explained. “Even on the buses we’d play bridge and really enjoy things, win or lose. That’s the way it was.” When he played, his family would all show up—his father and mother, Janet and his sisters. They would follow the Red Sox around, to Stratford, St. Thomas, to Waterloo and Galt. “It’s too bad,” he said, “but when I got out of baseball I kind of lost interest to the point of feeling that if I’m not in it, what’s the use. But I did a lot of other things.” It was inevitable that those days when he would do anything to play in a game would come to an end. They had to. He couldn’t stay a kid forever. Bill Gibbs still lives in Brantford. The other ace on the 1949 Brantford Red Sox, Alf Gavey, who made pitching look effortless, died not many years after the championship season in a mishap while working with Ontario Hydro. 290 Terrier Town—Summer of ’49 ...