That was exactly what Joe Maddon wanted too. As the game had progressed, he stopped seeing Jake Arrieta out there pitching. He started to see Bob Gibson. You know, in Bob Gibson’s extraordinary career he started nine games in the World Series. He completed the last eight of them. You couldn’t take him out of a big game, not with a court order. That’s one of the big things Maddon loved about the guy. There was no doubt he would send Arrieta back out to the mound.
“My thought tonight,” Maddon would say, “was to attempt to take Jake Arrieta out of that game would have been tantamount to taking Bob Gibson out of that situation or a World Series performance. So I would say, in my experience as a kid growing up, I saw Mr. Gibson out there tonight.”