Carlos Martinez took to Instagram to show off how similar his delivery is to Bob Gibson's
Chances are good that if you're reading this post, you're a baseball obsessive. It's a wonderful thing to be obsessed with. I know I am -- my collection of baseball cards and bobbleheads and generally the sheer number of hours spent thinking about baseball would be quite concerning if you replaced those with, I dunno, creepy Victorian dolls.
You don't always expect that from Major League athletes, though. Often we expect that they treat baseball like it's a kind of job -- a great job, a dream one, even -- but you don't think of them going home to spend hours sorting their baseball cards and watching documentaries on the Expos.
Unless you're Cardinals pitcher Carlos Martinez, that is.
On Monday night, the starter took to Instagram to share the similarities between his delivery and that of Hall of Famer Bob Gibson:
I like to imagine that Martinez was going through his evening routine of flipping through old Cardinals yearbooks, highlighting facts about players like Dal Maxvill (the shortstop-turned-future Cardinals GM set a record by going 0-for-22 in the World Series) when he stumbled upon the photo of Gibson and knew just what he had to do.
While the finish is similar, the two have quite different ways of getting there. Though they each rock backwards, Martinez limits the movement of his hands, whereas Gibson goes with the old school above-the-head style. Doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you end up in the right spot. Even if they are both falling off the mound toward first base more than a coaching manual would say you should.
