"The Cardinals were on their bus, and McCarver sat sipping an orange soda. 'That looks really good, ' said Gibson as he went by him on the bus. 'Can I have a swig?' Gibson knew, of course, that a young Southern white boy's mind was filled with ideas that black people carried more and different germs and yet he knew McCarver would be afraid of angering an important pitcher on a team he had not yet made. McCarver, who had never shared anything with a black man, let alone something as intimate as a soft drink, looked at the bottle of orange soda, and then at the deadly serious face of Bob Gibson, and mumbled something. 'What was that?' Gibson asked, as if he could not hear. 'I'll save you some,' McCarver said. Gibby was just checking him out, McCarver realized later."
"There was also the time McCarver was about to leave the locker room when he noticed a black man waiting for Gibson. He went back in to tell the pitcher, 'There's a colored guy waiting for you. He says he's got a date with you.' 'Oh,' said Gibson, 'which color is he?' It was, McCarver came to understand, Gibson pushing him to be a better man and therefore a better friend as well." p 221
"Gibson once asked, 'do you know how a white boy shakes hands with a Negro?' McCarver said that he did not. So Gibson trotted out Curt Flood as his straight man, and they shook hands - Gibson the white boy, Flood the black. Afterward Gibson looked down at his hand a little self-consciously and wiped it against his pants. 'You've done it before, haven't you, Tim?' Gibson asked, and McCarver thought to himself, Goddamn, he's right, and he admitted that he had done it before. The more Gibson teased McCarver, the more secure their friendship became."
pg 222
October 1964
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