Alan H. Levy - Rube Waddell

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Levy, Alan H.
Rube Waddell: the zany, brilliant life of a strikeout artist / by Alan H. Levy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 978-0-7864-0786-6

1. Waddell, Rube, 18761914. 2. Baseball playersUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
GV865.W23 2000
796.357'092dc21 00-30474
[B]

British Library cataloguing data are available

2000 Alan H. Levy. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Rube Waddell on the practice field with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1904. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown,N.Y.)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

I am indebted to several people for their generous assistance in my research. Mr. Bruce S. Markusen of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum kindly provided me with all the materials on Rube Waddell in the files at Cooperstown. Mr. David Kelly of the Library of Congress was most kind and helpful in steering me to the many pertinent sources in that most grand facility. The staff of the Library of Congress Microfilm Reading Room were always courteous and prompt in hunting up the many obscure reels I requested. Mr. Eric Duchess of Evans City, Pennsylvania, who has done some of his own digging on Waddell, took the time to converse with me on a few occasions, and I thank him for exchanging some thoughts and bits of information with me. I would also like to thank Mr. Bruce Irwin who provided some useful thoughts and invaluable help in proofreading and indexing.

Less directly, but no less importantly, I owe a debt to Mr. Drew Craig, the son of one of my colleagues at Slippery Rock University. One afternoon, while telling Drew a few Rube tales, I noticed a certain spiritual communion occurring between these two strong and unique characters. The animation which the Waddell fables sparked in my young friend left me with the notion that a biography of the Rube would make a nice present for Drews then upcoming tenth birthday. When I searched for a biography, however, I discovered none existed. It was at that point that I decided to embark upon the penning of a biography of a ballplayer who has certainly long deserved one. So Drew, this ones for you.

Rube Waddell. Just by itself, his name stands as a sentence for fans of old time baseball, from the days before Babe Ruth and before new stadiums like Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. Rubes name brings both a grin and a sad shake of the head. Part-time political commentator and full-time baseball fan George Will hailed Waddell as the strangest man ever to play baseball. Both Johnson and Will were right, and there lies the combination of ingredients that makes Rube Waddell so intriguing a figure. Were it just for his personality, Waddell would be a fascinating figure. His ability alone also merits the attention of every baseball fan. Combined, the two points were and remain irresistible.

As an artist of the pitchers mound, Waddell had it all. Pitching great Cy Young called Waddell the greatest left-hander of all time. Connie Mack declared Rube and Christy Mathewson the greatest pitchers ever. Rube was an absolute terror to hitters. He was a very large man, about six foot two, and he usually weighed around 225 pounds. He could throw with the velocity of any man who ever played the game. When he played with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Rube took part in a throwing contest with teammate Honus Wagner, and both threw the ball nearly 400 feet (the Dutchman beat him by a foot). Waddells fastball was the equal of any pitcher he faced, including Christy Mathewson, Cy Young, and Walter Johnson, a fact each freely admitted. And Rubes fastball was quite a riser. Left-handed hitters were often startled when they would reach for a fastball on the outside corner, only to find it suddenly about to graze their nose. Many a hitter swung at the letters as a Waddell blazer whizzed by them at eye level.

Then there was the Waddell curve, or more accurately the curves. Waddell had unusually large hands (and feet) even for his size, features of giantism. His shoe size was 13. As for his hands, John McGraw noted that Waddell could encircle a baseball with his fingers as the ordinary man could a billiard ball.

Rube could also curve it the other way, away from a right hander, into a lefty. Today we call that a screwball; others have called it fadeaway. Christy Mathewson was famous for it, but Rube could throw it, too.

Rube also had two kinds of puzzlers, off-speed change-ups, one of which, some reporters mused, a hitter could swing at three times before it got to the plate. The other slow one Rube called his wobbler, which today would be called a knuckleball. Rube had quite the arsenal, as complete as anyones then or since. The Rube could summon any part of it at will, and he usually did at just the right times. Although a complete head case off the field, on the field Rube was all savvy, with skill and stuff heightened by speed that was truly frightening.

In 1903 Rube struck out 301 batters while no other pitcher in the league topped 175. In 1904 he struck out an incredible 349, walking just 81. Rube never walked 100 in any season; even Christy Mathewson broke triple figures once. Rubes 349 strikeout mark would not be broken until 1965, and then only after the season had been lengthened. (Baseball officials never Roger Marised that record.) In September of 1904 Rube also missed about eight starts due to an injury while on a real hot streak, so his mark of 349 might actually have approached 400. Rubes strikeout feats need to be considered in context, too. In 1903-4 players tended to swing not for the fences but just to make contact, so strikeouts were less frequent. Here Rube was a phenomenon, far beyond the normal play of his day. The 349 he struck out in 1904 bettered half the total of any other team that year.

As a boy, I went to a Dodgers-Phillies game in old Connie Mack Stadium, a stadium which could indeed be termed the house that Rube built. That day Sandy Koufax, the man who broke Waddells single-season strikeout record, was slated to pitch. During the pregame warmups I situated myself at the railing alongside the field as close to catcher John Roseboro as I could get. I stood within two feet of where the right-handed batters box would have been and experienced as much as possible what it is like to stand and face a pitcher like Koufax. It would actually be inaccurate to say that from there I saw Koufax pitch. Rather, I heard him pitch, for I never really saw the ball. I could only hear, and feel, the whoosh of the ball and the shotgun-like pop his pitches made into Roseboros mitt. I did the same thing on other occasions in other parks with various pitchers, including Jim Palmer and Tom Seaver. It was not the same, though Clevelands Sam McDowell came close.

My memory of Koufax, while anything but scientific, gives me some appreciation of how the pitching of someone like Waddell must have appeared to the players, and the adoring young fans, of his era. The parallel of Rube with Koufax involves more than my own little experience, however. The two were quite similar as players on the field. Off the field they could not have been more different. Koufax was as stable a pitcher as ever played. The only off-field link between them could be that a rabbi happened to preside at Waddells funeral. (No, unlike Jim Palmer, Rube was not Jewish, but a rabbi happened to be on hand in San Antonio, Texas, where Rube died penniless in 1914.)