Verge: For baseball lifer Gibbons, his baseball life began in Goose Bay
Former Blue Jays manager John Gibbons helped Greg Oliver write his 18th book.
March 21, 2023
By Melissa Verge
Canadian Baseball Network
T-ball? It was a no go for John Gibbons.
An air force base ball diamond in Goose Bay, Newfoundland, swarming with black flies and other seven-year olds is not a welcoming place for a shy kid who’s never played organized baseball.
“I was scared to death, I wouldn’t get out of the car,” Gibbons said. “So finally [my Dad] he said ‘to heck with it,’ so we went home.’”
The now 60-year-old’s career could’ve ended there.
By some luck - or what Gibbons says “maybe it was meant to be” - his Dad, late Colonel William Gibbons, happened to be co-workers on the air force base with one of the coaches of a team.
Maybe it was nepotism, maybe that Little League coach saw something in him from afar through the car window. Whatever the reason, he decided to take a chance on the timid kid from Great Falls, Mont., and added him to the roster. No tryouts needed.
Now, 53-years later and a more than 40-year career in pro ball, he looks back on that memory as where it all started. He has since evolved from his seven-year-old self, shedding the timidness with his little league jersey. You can’t be shy when you’re managing major-league players.
There were a few less black flies at the Rogers Centre, and a few more fans when he led the 2015 Blue Jays on their first postseason run since 1993.
The memories, the excitement, the family that the team becomes in the eight months that you’re on the road - it’s all detailed in his new book coming out April 4, called Gibby: Tales of a Baseball Lifer.
He managed the Blue Jays in two separate stints totaling 10 years, spending extensive time in Canada. You have to be strong when you have 40,000 people watching you work closely every day, so it’s no wonder his early fear by the ball diamond in Newfoundland and Labrador, didn’t scare him away from the country. Although he was young, there were some things that stuck with him.
“The amounts of snowfall and black flies in the summer - summer lasted about a month,” Gibbons said, who now resides in a more balmy San Antonio, Tex.
That’s where Canadian sports writer Greg Oliver went to visit the Gibbons homestead with the backyard pool that Gibbons says is credited to former Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos, who “paid him good enough so he could build a pool.”
Oliver spent five days there gathering content for the book “Gibby: Tales of a Baseball Lifer.”
They sat around and jammed as much as they could into those five days, Gibbons said. Oliver also spoke with his mother, kids, and some of the baseball acquaintances met along his lengthy and exciting journey in pro ball for content in the book. Although he wasn’t always sold on the book idea, the writing process has given him extensive time to reflect on his experiences as a player back in the 80’s, and later as a manager in the 2000’s.
His two stints in Toronto were like night and day. In the early years from 2004 to 2008, it was rough. The team wasn’t very good, it wasn’t a good time to be a Blue Jay, and people frowned upon him, he said. In his second round, they played better, and he also got to know the country a little better where his baseball days began.
He’s still hopeful to return to the diamond one day. He misses the competition, the boys in the clubhouse and the “folks up north.”
“That’s still my dream,” he said, “but if it doesn’t happen that’s fine because I’ve had it good, you know. I’ve been given opportunities a lot of guys never get, a lot of better people than me never get, [so] I’m thankful regardless.”
Gibbons did collect his first hit as a Little Leaguer on Goose Bay sandlot. How many Newfoundlanders do that and wind up a first rounder (24th overall) in 1980? He was one of three Mets’ first rounders that year along with OF Darryl Strawberry (first) and OF Billy Beane (23rd), who now runs the Oakland A’s.
Even though the weather is warmer in Texas, and there’s less black flies, Canada has a lot of nostalgia for him. That early memory on the Goose Bay air force base, his dad in the front seat, a shy seven-year-old too scared to go out for T-ball tryouts remained a humorous point in the family.
His dad has since passed, but the memory brought the father and son chuckles for years.
“We’d laugh at it later in life, what a change, you know,” said Gibbons. “It was [all just] really rolling the dice and trying to live out a dream.”