Rube Waddell
Rube Waddell | |
---|---|
Pitcher | |
Born: Bradford, Pennsylvania, U.S. | October 13, 1876|
Died: April 1, 1914 Elmendorf, Texas, U.S. | (aged 37)|
Batted: Right Threw: Left | |
MLB debut | |
September 8, 1897, for the Louisville Colonels | |
Last MLB appearance | |
August 1, 1910, for the St. Louis Browns | |
MLB statistics | |
Win–loss record | 193–143 |
Earned run average | 2.16 |
Strikeouts | 2,316 |
Teams | |
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Career highlights and awards | |
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Member of the National | |
Baseball Hall of Fame | |
Induction | 1946 |
Election method | Old-Timers Committee |
George Edward Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American
Waddell is best remembered for his highly eccentric behavior, and for being a remarkably dominant strikeout pitcher in an era when batters were expert at making contact. He had an excellent fastball, a sharp-breaking curveball, a screwball, and superb control; his strikeout-to-walk ratio was almost 3-to-1, and he led the major leagues in strikeouts for six consecutive years.
Early life
Waddell was born on October 13, 1876, just outside Bradford, Pennsylvania. He grew up in the countryside (Prospect, Pennsylvania). Biographer Alan Levy wrote that Waddell was "a decidedly different sort of child".[1] At the age of three, he wandered over to a local fire station and stayed there for several days. He did not attend school very often. He was left-handed and strengthened his arm as a child by throwing rocks at birds he encountered while working on his family's land. He also worked on mining and drilling sites as a youngster, which helped his conditioning.[1]
Early baseball career
Waddell's career wound through a number of teams. He was notably unpredictable; early in his career, he once left in the middle of a game to go fishing.
Waddell's first professional contract was for $500 with Louisville, where he pitched two league games and a couple of exhibitions with the team at the end of the 1897 season. When the season ended, he was loaned to the Detroit Tigers of the Western League to gain professional experience. After defaulting on rent and being fined by owner George Vanderbeck, he left Detroit in late May to pitch in Canada before eventually returning to Homestead, Pennsylvania, to pitch semi-pro baseball there. However, Louisville retained his rights and he was lent to Columbus of the Western League in 1899, continued with them when the franchise moved to Grand Rapids mid-season, and finished with a record of 26–8. He rejoined Louisville in the final month of the 1899 season and won seven of nine decisions. When the National League (NL) contracted to eight teams for the 1900 season, Louisville ownership bought the Pittsburgh franchise and the Louisville franchise was terminated. Louisville's top players, including Waddell, Honus Wagner, and Fred Clarke, were transferred to Pittsburgh.
Waddell debuted with the
Dominant seasons
Waddell had worn out his welcome in Pittsburgh by 1901, and his contract was sold to the
Connie Mack, then in Philadelphia, was desperate for pitching; when he learned that Waddell was pitching in California, he dispatched two
Shortly after the 1902 baseball season, reports indicated Waddell would play for Connie Mack's
In his prime, Waddell was the game's premier power pitcher, with 302 strikeouts in 1903, 115 more than runner-up Bill Donovan. According to baseball historian Lee Allen in The American League Story, Waddell began the 1903 season "sleeping in a firehouse at Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events, he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics; [...] toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt; courted, married, and became separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts; saved a woman from drowning; accidentally shot a friend through the hand; and was bitten by a lion."[8] His performance in The Stain of Guilt was notable in that his co-stars, who had realized that he was incapable of memorizing his lines, allowed him to improvise his lines for every show; the play was critically acclaimed and was much discussed for a scene in which Waddell lifted the actor playing the villain and threw him across the stage with ease. Waddell used his newfound stardom as an actor to negotiate a higher wage for his baseball career.
In
In 1905, Waddell won a
Later career
This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2018) |
Waddell's drinking problem was exacerbated by a tumultuous marriage to May Wynne Skinner, his second of three wives, and a series of injuries in 1905 and 1906. Skinner threatened to prosecute Rube for bigamy because she did not recognize the divorce granted Rube in St. Louis. But the divorce, granted by the circuit court on February 9, 1910, was legal, so the former Mrs. Waddell had no case.
On April 8, 1908, The Scranton Republican Newspaper published an interview with Waddell entitled "Unkissed Girl Sought by Rube Waddell".[11] This article provided yet another example of Waddell's progressing instability. Waddell's intent was to use the article as an advertisement for his desire to find himself another wife.
Ken Burns' later documentary Baseball claimed Waddell had even lost track of how many women he had married. In time, his alcohol use began to erode his relationships with his Athletics teammates. Schreckengost, a one-time friend who regularly fetched alcohol and fishing poles for Waddell, squabbled with both Waddell and Mack for being treated differently for the same offenses.
Waddell's increasingly erratic behavior included an incident in which he got into a fistfight on a cross-country train after making fun of a teammate's straw hat. Complaints from teammates forced Mack to send Waddell to the St. Louis Browns for $5,000 in early 1908 despite his continued success. Recent commentators such as
To make sure he stayed out of trouble during the off-season, Browns owner
Pitching style
Waddell's pitching repertoire usually consisted of only two pitches: one of the fastest fastballs in the league and a hard curve. However, he had command of many more pitches, including slow curves, screwballs, "fadeaways" and even a "flutterball". Mack once said that Waddell's curve was "even better than his speed... [He] had the fastest and deepest curve I've ever seen".[12]
Waddell enjoyed waving his teammates off the field and then striking out the side. He actually did so only in exhibition games, since official baseball rules prohibit playing with fewer than nine men on the field in regulation play. But in a league game in Detroit, Waddell actually had his outfielders come in close and sit down on the grass to watch him strike out the side. Once the stunt almost backfired. Pitching an exhibition game in Memphis, he took the field alone with his catcher,
Final years
After his major league career was over, Waddell pitched for parts of three more years in the minor leagues, including a 20-win season for the
Honors
Waddell was elected to the
In 1981, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. Under what they called "the Smoky Joe Wood Syndrome", they argued in favor of including players of truly exceptional talent whose career was curtailed by injury (or, in Waddell's case, substance abuse), despite not having had career statistics that would quantitatively rank them with the all-time greats.[19] In this case, fans and peers recognized Waddell as a baseball great long before Ritter and Honig did.
See also
- Triple Crown (baseball)
- List of Major League Baseball annual ERA leaders
- List of Major League Baseball annual strikeout leaders
- List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders
- List of Major League Baseball career hit batsmen leaders
- List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders
- Major League Baseball titles leaders
Notes
- ^ a b Levy 2013, pp. 9–10.
- ^ Levy 2013, p. 11.
- ^ Levy 2013, p. 7.
- ISBN 978-0-8032-4003-2.
- ^ Ward, Geoffrey C.; Burns, Ken (1994). Baseball: An Illustrated History. A. A. Knopf. p. 74.
- ^ "Immaculate Innings: 9 Pitches – 9 Strikes – 3 Outs". Baseball-Almanac.com. Baseball Almanac. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
- ^ "American League Notes". The Sporting Life. Vol. 52, no. 20. 1909-01-23. p. 17. Retrieved 2021-04-03.
- ^ Lee Allen (1965). The American League Story. Hill & Wang. p. 37.
- ^ "The Strangest Month in the Strange Career of Rube Waddell – Society for American Baseball Research". Society for American Baseball Research. 2013-07-15. Retrieved 2020-07-14.
- ^ "Fantastic career of "Rube" Waddell is cut by reaper". Quad-City Times. April 2, 1914. p. 8.
- ^ "Unkissed Girl Sought by Rube Waddell". The Scranton Republican. April 8, 1908.
- ^ Allen, Lee & Meany, Tom. Kings of the Diamond, 1965.
- ^ Rube Waddell - Baseball Biography
- ^ "Rube Waddell Minor League Baseball statistics". statscrew.com. Stats Crew. Retrieved 13 July 2023.
- ^ Livacari, Gary (11 May 2022). "RUBE WADDELL: THE ULTIMATE ZANY". baseballhistorycomesalive.com. Retrieved 13 July 2023.
- ^ Livacari, Gary (11 May 2022). "RUBE WADDELL: THE ULTIMATE ZANY". baseballhistorycomesalive.com. Retrieved 13 July 2023.
- ^ Bertha, Kevin. "The Story of Rube Waddell and His Drinking". bleacherreport.com. Bleacher Report, Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. Retrieved 13 July 2023.
- ^ "Rube Waddell". Baseball Hall of Fame.
- ^ Ritter, Lawrence S.; Honig, Donald (1981). The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. Crown Publishers.
References
- Levy, Alan H. (2013). Rube Waddell: The Zany, Brilliant Life of a Strikeout Artist. McFarland. ISBN 9780786407866.
External links
- Rube Waddell at the Baseball Hall of Fame
- Career statistics and player information from Baseball Reference, or Baseball Reference (Minors)
- Rube Waddell at Find a Grave