At Omaha Technical High School Gibson was a star in basketball and track, as well as a baseball catcher. He played basketball and baseball at Creighton University (Omaha) as a shortstop and outfielder. After playing professional basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters for one season, Gibson signed with baseball's St. Louis Cardinals in 1957 and played with their minor-league teams until 1959. A regular with the Cardinals from 1961, Gibson won 20 games in 1965 and 22 (including 13 shutouts) in 1968. He started 34 games in 1968, completing 28, and had an earned run average (ERA) of 1.12, the lowest single-season ERA since 1914. Gibson won both the NL Cy Young and NL Most Valuable Player awards for 1968. Two years later he added a second Cy Young Award after posting a league-high 23 wins with a 3.12 ERA. He pitched quickly, and his best pitches were a fastball and a slider. In his career Gibson had 3,117 strikeouts, the first pitcher to accumulate more than 3,000 since Walter Johnson (Johnson, Walter) in the 1920s. The eight-time NL All Star retired as a player in 1975. He later worked as a pitching coach for the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, and in 1996 he became a special instructor for the Cardinals. Gibson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.