The Strangest Man Who Ever Pitched

George Edward "Rube" Waddell was born on October 13, 1876, a Friday the 13th, in Bradford, Pennsylvania. He grew to be 6-foot-1 and nearly 200 pounds, enormous for his era, when the average American male stood under 5-foot-7. He was left-handed, ambidextrous, and by every account of his contemporaries, quite possibly the most talented pitcher who ever lived. He was also, without question, the most bewildering human being to play professional baseball.

Waddell chased fire trucks during games, regularly and in complete earnest. If he heard a siren from the field, he would leave the mound and run after the truck. He did this on multiple documented occasions.

He disappeared for months during the offseason, and nobody knew where he went until his teammates learned he had been wrestling alligators at a circus.

Puppies distracted him. Opposing fans learned that if they held up a puppy in the stands, Waddell would sometimes leave the field to go play with it. Shiny objects reportedly had a similar effect, and early in his career he left in the middle of a game to go fishing.

He once performed in a stage play during the offseason. His acting was terrible. He couldn't remember his lines and improvised everything. At one point, he picked up a fellow cast member and threw him across the stage into the orchestra pit.

He kept a flock of geese that he trained to jump rope, and on at least one occasion a lion bit him.

And his roommate, catcher Ossee Schreckengost, insisted on a clause in Waddell's contract banning him from eating animal crackers in bed.

All of this would be a footnote if Waddell hadn't been an extraordinary pitcher. He led the American League in strikeouts for six consecutive years, from 1902 to 1907. In 1904, he struck out 349 batters, a record that stood for more than 60 years until Sandy Koufax broke it. It remains the American League single-season record for a left-hander. In 1903 and 1904, he posted consecutive 300-strikeout seasons, a feat no other pitcher would accomplish until Koufax in 1965 and 1966.

In 1905, Waddell won the pitching Triple Crown, leading the league with 27 wins, 287 strikeouts, and a 1.48 ERA. He had a devastating fastball, a sharp-breaking curveball, a screwball, and pinpoint control. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was nearly 3-to-1. Connie Mack, who managed him for six years with the Philadelphia Athletics, called him "the atom bomb of baseball long before the atom bomb was discovered."

Waddell enjoyed waving his fielders off the diamond and then striking out the side by himself, a piece of showmanship the crowds loved and that became one of the most repeated stories of his career.

The animal crackers clause is the detail everyone remembers, and it was real. In the early 1900s, players shared beds on road trips. Schreckengost was Waddell's catcher and his roommate, and he refused to share a bed with a man who left crumbs and peanut shells in the sheets every night. Schreckengost told Mack he wouldn't sign his own contract unless Mack wrote a no-crackers clause into Waddell's. "Schreck wouldn't sign unless he saw that clause in Waddell's contract," Mack later said. "So I wrote it in there, and the Rube stuck to it."

Waddell was an alcoholic. He reportedly spent his entire first signing bonus on a drinking binge. The Sporting News nicknamed him "the sousepaw," a pun on "southpaw," and his drinking worsened over the years until teammates openly complained. By 1908, several Athletics players threatened not to report unless Mack got rid of Waddell. Mack traded him to the St. Louis Browns.

In the spring of 1912, while living in Hickman, Kentucky, Waddell waded into the freezing waters of a flooded river to help build a levee. He stood in the cold water for hours, stacking sandbags. The exposure weakened him, and he contracted tuberculosis. He entered a sanatorium in San Antonio, Texas, where he died on April 1, 1914, at the age of 37. April Fools' Day.

The Veterans Committee elected him to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946, honoring a career ERA of 2.16 (11th best in history) and 50 shutouts. He was the opposing pitcher for Cy Young's perfect game on May 5, 1904, and hit a fly ball for the final out.

Modern commentators, including Bill James, have suggested that Waddell may have had a developmental disability, autism, or attention deficit disorder. Physicians in 1900 understood little about these conditions. What everyone understood was that Rube Waddell could throw a baseball harder than anyone alive and that no one, including Rube Waddell, had any idea what he would do next.