MLB pitcher graduate of CM High School

Paul Gibson graduated from Center Moriches High School in 1979 and was a Major League Baseball pitcher for eight seasons with the Detroit Tigers, 1988-1991; the New York Mets, 1992 and 1993; and the New York Yankees, 1993, 1994 and 1996. After eight years as an MLB southpaw, Gibson coached Center Moriches baseball, winning two Long Island championships.

He also ran the facility called Paul Gibson’s All Pro Sports Academy in Bellport for many years subsequent to his playing career. In 2006, Gibson started his career as a scout for the Atlanta Braves, then worked as a scout for the Seattle Mariners, and in 2010 was hired by the Kansas City Royals as a national scout supervisor and currently is the Royals senior director of pitching performance.

Q&A:

Tide: You spent nine years playing Minor League Baseball before finally being called up to the big leagues with the Tigers in 1988. Talk a bit about what made you decide to keep playing because I know it can be a tedious and frustrating process waiting to finally get called up to The Show and a lot of guys just give up after a few years.

Gibson: Yeah, probably most of the credit goes to my wife for pushing me along and giving me the will to not have to go away into the real world and look for a job back then. I was a high school draft and I was still pretty young in terms of my career, but there were plenty of points along the way where it was frustrating for me because I was either not having success or was having success and not being able to take advantage of those opportunities, but the last couple years of my minor league career I started to put things together, where an opportunity with Detroit presented itself and I made the team and was fortunate enough to hang on for a while as a swing man-type role lefthanded starter of some type of lefthanded reliever, so I’m glad that I hung on. It was not an easy trail, for sure.

Tide: Playing with the Tigers, your manager was the great Sparky Anderson, some of your teammates were Hall of Famer Allan Trammell, Hall of Famer Jack Morris, Lou Whitaker, Fred Lynn, Ray Knight. Talk about being a rookie and getting to play with those legends.

Gibson: First of all, Trammel and Morris are still two very good friends of mine. I was fortunate enough to be invited to their Hall of Fame induction a few years back and the things that you learn from people along the way, just about how to present yourself as a big-league player or big-league person, those guys certainly played a major role in that for me, so all great people that you mentioned and many more, but quite an honor to get to Detroit play for Sparky and then be with those guys for four years.

Tide: How was it to play for both the Yankees and the Mets?

Gibson: Great question. Obviously, a distinct honor to play for both of your hometown teams. Not always the easiest. There were difficult times in there, which also come a lot with playing for your hometown team because as we know the Mets’ and the Yankees’ fans are very passionate people and the expectations, especially my first year with the Mets, were very high, a lot of investment in a team to win, and it didn’t happen, we had some injuries and we didn’t play well, nobody really performed consistently and it ended up being a really tough time for the organization. And the Yankees, I mean, for anybody to be able to put on those pinstripes for any period of time is an incredible experience, and I’m grateful to be one of not a whole lot of guys in the Major Leagues to be able to play for both.

Tide: Talk about Center Moriches baseball. The program obviously has had so much success for a long time.

Gibson: I started with the junior high team and then the varsity job opened up and they asked me to do that. It was great to be able to give back to the community and coach so many really great kids. A lot of them to this day I’ll stay in touch, and now they all have their own kids and it was an awesome experience, so yeah, I got out of the game but I stayed in the game. In my life it’s one of the great opportunities that I had to get on the field and be able to be a part some of the things that I learned along the way from great coaches and managers—teach kids how to play the game and teach them how to become young men.

Center Moriches is a small community with a lot of really great people and a community that supports all sports there, and it had always been a place where kids played two or three sports because of the size of the school and the amount of people in each class. We averaged 100 to 115 students in each grade when I went to Center Moriches; we had tremendous youth programs from ages 8 and up.

The Little League program has always been very strong, so to be able to get these guys to commit to play two or three sports at that time was not very hard to do—they just wanted to do something, so that’s the fabric of that community is the youth programs and all the programs. It’s a unique place because they play at a high level with not a lot of players to pull from, so athletes and families and parents that are committed to giving their kids the best opportunity is really what makes all those programs go at the high school level—keeping them on the field, keeping their grades up. Just a great place to raise a kid and have an opportunity to play sports. Just can’t say enough about all of those people in the community. 

Tide: The championship season for the Royals in 2015, the Royals beat the Mets. So, it was against the hometown team. Also, Steven Matz (Ward Melville) was on the Mets that year and in the ALCS Marcus Stroman (Pat-Med) was on the Blue Jays. Can you talk about some of those local correlations during the 2015 playoffs?     

Gibson: It was really interesting because in 2015 I was part of the advanced scouting team, and what that means is we would follow certain clubs around that were potential playoff opponents, so I spent a good amount of September that year watching the Blue Jays and Marcus. I have experience with both Marcus and Steven from All Pro Sports the Academy, and I know their families very well. It was an exciting time to be a part of that World Series team, but most importantly, it sort of brought everything full circle to watch those young guys compete against us, both in the playoffs and the World Series. [I have] a lot of fond memories of those moments, and I follow both those guys to this day and stay in touch with their families. But that World Series ring that I possess from 2015 is one of my biggest treasures.