PHOENIX — The Arizona Diamondbacks rallied behind former manager Kirk Gibson on Tuesday, after Gibson revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
“He’s strong-willed,” D-backs right-hander Brad Ziegler said. “You feel like if somebody is going to beat it, it is going to be him. You know he is not going to give up at any point. He is going to keep fighting. He probably looking at it like, ‘I’m going to kick butt and do what I can and not change anything about the way I live because this is who I am.’”
Gibson, 57, manager the D-backs from the July 2010, through the final weekend of the 2014 season, and was the National League manager of the year when the Diamondbacks won the National League West in 2011 with a 29-game improvement from the year before.
“It was a shock to all of us,” D-backs president/CEO Derrick Hall said. “Gibby, obviously, means a lot to this organization. He had a couple of wonderful years here as a manager and is always going to be part of this family. We’re here to support him. It’s got to be devastating news for him as it was for us.
Like Hall, many D-backs players reached out with texts or phone messages Tuesday.
“It’s tough, but we know if he takes half the approach that he did on the game itself, he’ll be fine,” said D-backs second baseman Aaron Hill, who was among the several players who hunted with Gibson in his northern Michigan spread.
“He became a great friend. I obviously had a tremendous amount of respect for him as a player, as a manager. Off the field, I don’t think people really know how good of a guy he is. He has a big heart, a kind man. I know he has tremendous support around.”
Right-hander Josh Collmenter, also a Michigan native, has spent off-seasons hunting with Gibson.
“You are blind-sided,” Collmenter said. “You don’t really expect anything like that to happen. To know him the last four years, the things that he’s been able to do in this game … to have something like this that could cripple you. A lot of times I’m sure you feel invincible, like something like that could never happen to you. I’m sure it’s as shocking to him as well in that realization. You wish him the best.”