Rube Waddell: The Original Clown Prince of Baseball

Rube Waddell

It is a fitting, albeit tragic, detail of the Rube Waddell story that he died on April Fool’s Day. And while those who best knew him may have found some grim humor around the date of his death, they could not deny the heroicism that ultimately led to his demise. Most, if not all, of George “Rube” Waddell’s accomplishments on the baseball diamond are likely unfamiliar to even the most ardent fans of the modern sport. And yet, many of his qualities as an ace pitcher, from his dazzling array of pitches to his just-as-infuriating array of idiosyncrasies, are furthered by many of the best pitchers found in the game today.

There is a scene in the seminal baseball movie, Bull Durham, that captures the American relationship with the eccentric savant. In the locker-room scene, veteran catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) holds up one of rookie pitcher Nuke LaLoosh’s (Tim Robbins) old and moldy shower flip-flops and berates him for not keeping them clean. However, he notes that once Nuke “wins 20 games” he can let the fungus grow back and the press will find him “colorful”.

The exchange illustrates that so long as a top-level athlete is able to maintain a high level of performance, certain behaviors that would normally illicit scorn or disdain are characterized as charming aspects of that athlete’s personality. To win in spite of familiar flaws will endear you to the American populace, and no athlete’s career better embodied that maxim more than Rube Waddell’s.

It wasn’t just that Rube was so different than the average person, both in terms of temperament and athletic ability. What made him so distinct from any other baseball player of his era, and so beloved by the public, was the cavalier way in which he approached the pitching of a baseball. While on the mound, Rube would often become distracted by:

• Pretty women
• Adorable Puppies
• Fire Engines & Fires (A detail further explored below)
• Anything that was shiny

It was not uncommon for the opposing teams’ fans to heckle and distract Rube by bringing some of these items to the game to redirect his attention while on the mound. Seeing these things would often induce Rube into a trance-like state, one that he would have to be stirred from by either his teammates or managers. And despite all of their efforts, Rube remained the top pitcher in the game for much of the first decade of the 20th century.

Early Life

Aptly born on Friday the 13th, in October 1876, Rube was the sixth child of a Scottish immigrant laborer for Standard Oil in Bradford, Pennsylvania. There has been some speculation that Waddell was autistic, or had Asperger’s syndrome. While there is no way to prove whether or not he did today, he was noted for being a different sort of child early on life. At the mere age of three, George wandered away from his family home and spent several days at a nearby fire station. He was described by those who knew him as a child as blunt and direct, even past the point of politeness. However, he was also described as good-natured and full of laughter. Though he did not take his education seriously, constantly eschewing it for more exciting endeavors, he was literate.

Rube’s large physique (6–1, 196lbs.) was augmented by the work he did in Butler County, Pennsylvania, where his family moved when he was a teenager. He worked in the mines and drilling sites around the region, and also worked as a farmhand. This last job was the source he would later credit for his throwing ability as a pitcher, as he often practiced throwing rocks at birds to scare them away from the crops. He became adept at throwing with either hand, though as a pitcher he would throw left (and bat right).

Like most American boys of his age and era, Rube naturally gravitated to the baseball diamond, and his nurtured throwing talents were immediately evident. Other children often refused to play with him, as the speed of his throws were terrifying. He joined the local Butler semi-pro team in 1895. Almost immediately a star, Waddell also began to show his breezy and ephemeral nature towards his craft, often foregoing his scheduled starts for fishing trips and to play marbles on nearby street corners.

Rube’s first foray into the professional realm of baseball was in 1897, when he was signed by the Louisville Colonels (of the American Association) for $500. It was a brief stint, lasting only a couple of professional games, and a handful of exhibitions. For the next four years, Waddell would bounce in and out of pro baseball, enthralling fans, owners, and baseball managers with his prodigious talent, and quickly wearing out his welcome with that last group. It would only be in the next decade where Rube Waddell would find some semblance of consistent performance, and establish himself as a baseball legend.

Rube’s Prime Years (1900–1907)

Rube Waddell, while pitching for the Philadelphia A’s.

In 1899, Rube rejoined the Louisville Colonels, right at the end of what would be both their and the American Association’s final season. Louisville ownership bought the National League Pittsburgh Pirates and transferred their best talent there. In addition to Waddell, Pirates’ legendary shortstop Honus Wagner and Hall of Fame manager Fred Clarke also arrived by way of this transaction. That following year, Rube’s first full year in the major leagues, he led the National League in Earned Run Average (2.37) despite finishing with a losing record. Fred Clarke did not have the copious amounts of patience needed to reel in the southpaw and suspended him. In 1901, after losing his first two games in ignominious fashion (giving up 12 runs in just over 7 innings), the Pirates traded the 24 year old to the Chicago Cubs, where he would finish out the year as a .500 pitcher. Rube was also suspended by the Cubs, and used that time to barnstorm across the United States, playing in Illinois, Wisconsin, and ultimately to California, where he played for the Los Angeles Loo Loos. At this point, it seemed that Rube’s devil-may-care outlook on life would cost him his shot at baseball glory. But the famed manager of the Philadelphia Athletics had other thoughts in mind.

Connie Mack, though only in his second season as the A’s manager, would go on to manage the team until 1950, a longevity record that will likely never be surpassed. A keen baseball mind, Mack was familiar with both Rube’s talent and peccadilloes, having briefly managed him in Milwaukee a few years prior. When Mack learned that Rube was available and in California pitching, he convinced Rube to return and pitch for his Philadelphia team. In what would prove to be a shrewd decision, and one which would be repeated at numerous points through Waddell’s career, Mack ensured Rube’s timely arrival by hiring two Pinkerton agents as his chaperones.

Waddell’s 1902 arrival to Philadelphia immediately set off a six year run of left-handed pitching dominance not seen before or since. Mack himself would later describe it as “the atom bomb of baseball long before the atom bomb was discovered.” Waddell won 24 games, losing only 7, and led the league in strikeouts, the first of six straight seasons helming that category. That same year, he pitched only the second immaculate inning in baseball history, striking out three batters on nine pitches. The A’s would win the American League pennant that year, but no World Series was played. In 1903, in addition to strikeouts, Rube also led the league in complete games as the A’s finished second in the American league.

In 1904, Rube struck out 349 batters, a seasonal record that would stand until 1965, when Sandy Koufax surpassed it. It still holds as the record for left-handed pitchers to this day. 1905 would prove to be Waddell’s opus. He won the natural pitching Triple Crown, leading the AL in wins, ERA, and strikeouts, as the A’s would once again win the pennant. However, before the series, Rube hurt his shoulder in a wrestling match with one of his teammates and was unavailable for the series, which the A’s lost to the New York Giants in decided fashion, 4 games to 1.

Only listing Waddell’s accomplishments does not do justice to the full effect he had on the game in that era. Following his death, multiple newspaper sources credited him with rescuing baseball, including the Milwaukee Sentinel, which in no small terms stated he “saved the American League from the rocks of bankruptcy.” In that regard, Waddell may have been the first to hold the lofty title of “Savior of Baseball”, just as Babe Ruth would following the 1919 Black Sox scandal, and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1999 following baseball’s 1994 strike and subsequent lockout. But if Ruth, McGwire, and Sosa were saving baseball as an institution, Waddell was responsible for saving a fledgling industry from dying in its cradle.

The American League, of which the Philadelphia A’s were a member, was an upstart league, having only been formed at the turn of the 20th century. In comparison to its more entrenched counterpart, the National League, it was considered far inferior in terms of talent. Other leagues had attempted to compete with the National League in the prior century, including the aforementioned American Association, only to fold under the crushing financial weight of running a league as well as the unsavory business practices of the National League. What the AL needed was a big-ticket star. A player that would not only bring fans to his own stadium, but to opposing teams’ stadiums when his team visited. And Waddell, with his prodigious talent, fit the bill. What truly made him revolutionary for the American League was both his natural showmanship, and the very behavior that made him so trying on his baseball managers.

Waddell’s Athletics soon became the draw the AL needed to compete. Fans would flock to the stadium and watch Waddell dominate the game while also ham it up for the fans. As mentioned before, Waddell would often be entranced by certain items, such as puppies and shiny objects. Some of the other notable anecdotes about Waddell’s behavior at the ballgame include:

• Performing cartwheels on and off the mound.
• Running off the field to chase fire trucks. This aspect of his personality in particular seemed more like a compunction. Rube would often wear a red undershirt underneath his uniform and upon hearing the siren bell would rip off his jersey and chase after it, even if he was on the mound.
• Directing his outfield to come in and sit on the grass while he pitched, assuring them that he would strike out the side (This antic was also a staple of Negro League star Satchel Paige, though it should be noted that Paige would do it in official games, and Waddell is only recorded as having done it in exhibitions).

His antics on the field actually paled in comparison to Waddell’s day-today behavior. Waddell’s capricious yet inquisitive temperament often set him on adventures far flung from his baseball team, much to its consternation. Consider his 1903 season. In that single year Waddell did the following.

• Resided in a firehouse in Camden New Jersey.
• Toured the nation in a highly successful vaudeville play entitled The Stain of Guilt.
• Got married (and separated) for the second of three times in his life.
• Saved a woman from drowning.
• Shot his friend through the hand.
• Was bitten by a lion.

All of these exploits further endeared him to American public. But Waddell’s dark side was also prevalent at this time, and would ultimately be his undoing. He was neglectful of each of his wives, and was an uncontrollable drunk. There was also the stain of that 1905 World Series, where whispers that Rube had been bribed by gamblers to fake an injury to throw the World Series were present both on the field and off.

Rube himself bristled at those accusations, and they are further repudiated by the fact that he never returned to his dominant form following the shoulder injury. He still led the AL in strikeouts in both 1906 and 1907, but his prodigious drinking and wild lifestyle had begun to take its toll. Connie Mack had had enough, and following the 1907 season, traded him to the perpetually moribund St. Louis Browns. It began the ultimate downturn of his life.

Final Baseball Years (1908–1910)

Rube Waddell baseball card while pitching for St. Louis.

Though Rube was not his formerly dominant self, he still managed to win 19 games for the Browns in 1908, who finished fourth. It should also be noted that while the ticket sales for the Browns increased threefold, they went down for his former team that year. Rube even managed to tie an American League record at the time against the A’s, striking out 16 batters in one game that year. The following year, his record dropped to 11–14, as his decline became more evident. Rube was released by the Browns the following year, and never played in the Major Leagues again.

Final Years

Rube Waddell’s grave site.

Rube quickly joined the Minneapolis Millers, a minor league team, and won 20 games for them in 1911. In 1912, while living with his manager of the Millers in Kentucky, he stood for four hours in the freezing Mississippi River packing sandbags for a levee to prevent its flooding. He developed pneumonia, which soon became tuberculosis. He spent his last few years in a Texas sanitarium, his treatment in part paid for by Connie Mack. He died, as mentioned on April 1st, 1914.

Waddell, for all his flaws, was a man well-liked by both his teammates and managers. Connie Mack’s daughter often stated that in later years, Mack would tell stories about Waddell, and when he did so, always had a “gleam in his eye.” And even though he was easily distractible, he was also a caring friend who was always the first to help a friend in need, or visit an ailing teammate.

His exploits on the Mississippi River were not his first forays into the heroic either. Waddell also is credited with saving at least 13 people in his life. One more famous incident occurred in 1905, in Lynn, Massachusetts, where he grabbed a boiling stove pipe and carried it out of the house, throwing it into a snow bank to prevent a fire. Of course, in the typical way that Waddell contradicted himself, he had to flee the state not three days late for assaulting his in-laws in a domestic dispute.

As far as athletes as colorful characters go, Rube truly was a pioneer. In his 37 year life, he experienced more danger, success, and heartache than many will ever go through. He truly set the template for today’s athlete as celebrity and even Babe Ruth doesn’t surpass him in terms of scope and outlandishness when it comes to his exploits. His life is one to be remembered, if only for path he blazed for how a “colorful” athlete can achieve fame and success.