The genial skipper, John Gibbons, two time manager of the Blue Jays with his mother Sallie in San Antonio. Photo: Greg Oliver Studios.

March 28, 2023

Working with Gibby

By GREG OLIVER

In the memoir, Gibby: Tales of a Baseball Lifer, John Gibbons argues in a few places that he is not the analytics-hater that he has sometimes been portrayed to be.

Having worked with Gibby on the book, I think I came to a similar conclusion—the man knows baseball, how to manage, both old-school and new-school, and it’s almost mind-boggling that he is not employed by a major-league team.

But I am not sure I can say the same thing about his grasp of technology.

Instead of editing in a word processing program, marking it up with electronic comments, I would e-mail him a finished chapter and he would ...

1) Print it out

2) Make notes on it with a pen

3) If there were longer notes or paragraphs he wanted changed, he’d write it out long-hand on a blank piece of paper

4) He would then use his phone and take a photo of the edited page and/or the written page and send it back to me

Author Greg Oliver, left, and former Blue Jays manager John Gibbons with the manager’s wife, Christi.

We made it work, though. If anything, the process itself made him really study and think about what he wanted on the written (and hand-written!) page. He was conscientious about what he was saying, how he was saying it, and we walked back a few swear words knowing his mom would read it.

As for working with Gibby, its genesis started in April 2019, when I was approached by a gentleman named John Arezzi about writing his autobiography at a reunion of pro wrestlers in Las Vegas.

Arezzi, you see, had been a wrestling radio pioneer and a promoter. I didn’t have a lot of interest in another wrestling story ... but then he told me about his time in minor-league ball and in country music, where he discovered Patty Loveless and Kelsea Ballerini.

A deeper appreciation for country music came out of working with Arezzi on Mat Memories: My Wild Life in Pro Wrestling, Country Music and with the Mets.

My love of baseball had always been there, and I still have a couple of vintage Montreal Expos caps.

(And “The Happy Wanderer” just danced through my mind as I typed that.)

A life-long Mets fan, Arezzi dreamed of working in baseball, and went to the winter meetings in 1980 and wrangled his way into a low-paying, demanding publicity and sales job with the Class A team in Shelby, N.C. With players always coming and going through the team, Arezzi rented out rooms in his home to the Shelby Mets players.

The roommates? J.P. Ricciardi from Boston, Mike Hennessy from New Jersey, and some Texas catcher with Boston roots named John Gibbons.

Since Arezzi had three lives, we came up with three forewords for the book, which ECW Press published in spring 2021, and Gibby wrote one of them. (Mick Foley wrote the wrestling one and country music personality Susan Alexander wrote the other.)

I can remember telling Arezzi — who Gibby calls “Big John” — that I should write Gibby’s memoir next. Well, it wasn’t next, but it happened, all through Arezzi, who similarly was a “connector” as an executive in country music.

I jumped in with both feet, heading to San Antonio, Tex., in late November 2021, where I spent days with Gibby as he laid on the couch, spinning tales. Technology was definitely my friend, the laptop open to flip through baseball websites and stats as we were talking.

It was truly delightful. John’s wife, Christi, and stepson Jack, were great hosts. A highlight was heading out to visit with Gibby’s mom, Sallie, who was a real hoot. I’m glad we got a photo of her throwing out the first pitch at a Blue Jays game into the book. Later, I got to talk to all three of Gibby’s children, Jordan, Troy and Kyle, for their perspective. John and I also decided to do a “Gibby’s Greats” each chapter, where we celebrate a player or coach a little deeper than just in the narrative.

That Josh Donaldson agreed to do the foreword for Gibby is just a cherry on the top of a rich dessert.

You won’t hear me promising that Gibby isn’t anything you aren’t expecting. You can’t tell his story without talking about his first competitive games as a kid in Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, his early baseball days in high school and the minors, and then being a part of those great New York Mets teams, including the 1986 World Series championship squad.

With a playing career that didn’t pan out, he got into managing, and that did turn out pretty well.

Gibby: Tales of a Baseball Lifer is out now from ECW Press, in hardcover, and Gibby’s been out there promoting it with plenty of interviews, and more to come.

Greg Oliver is the author of 19 books and runs the SlamWrestling.net website. For more on Greg see Oliverbooks.ca and his work.

GREG OLIVER: Working with Gibby on his memoir