Cy Young

Denton True Young pitched 22 major league seasons, won 511 games, lost 316, and compiled a 2.63 career ERA. He completed 749 of his starts, threw 76 shutouts, and pitched 7,356 innings. Every one of those figures except the ERA is the highest in baseball history, and most are so far ahead of any other pitcher that they will almost certainly never be approached. The award given each year to the best pitcher in each league bears his name. He earned the honor by outlasting and outworking everyone.

Gilmore, Ohio

Young grew up on a farm in Gilmore, Ohio, about 100 miles south of Cleveland. His formal education ended after sixth grade, when he left school to help his family work the land. He played baseball on local teams starting in the mid-1880s, earning a dollar a game from semipro clubs by 1888. In 1890, he signed with the Canton team of the Tri-State League. During his early appearances, his fastball struck the wooden fences and backstop with such force that onlookers said the aftermath looked like a cyclone had hit. Local newspapers started calling him "Cyclone," which reporters soon shortened to "Cy."

The Cleveland Spiders of the National League purchased his contract that same year. He debuted on August 6, 1890, at age 23, and won his first game.

Twenty-Two Seasons

Young's career spanned five teams, two centuries, and both major leagues. He won 36 games for the Spiders in 1892, leading the National League in wins, ERA (1.93), and shutouts. When the mound was moved back to 60 feet, 6 inches in 1893, his ERA rose but his win total held at 34. He won 35 games in 1895. He pitched for St. Louis in 1899, when the team was called the Perfectos, and in 1900, after the franchise had been renamed the Cardinals. Cleveland's owners transferred players between their two clubs.

In 1901, Young jumped to the new American League and joined the Boston Americans. He won the pitching Triple Crown that year, leading the league with 33 wins, a 1.62 ERA, and 158 strikeouts. He won 32 games in 1902. He won 28 in 1903 and helped Boston defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first modern World Series, winning two of his three starts with a 1.85 ERA.

On May 5, 1904, he pitched a perfect game against the Philadelphia Athletics at Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. It was the first perfect game thrown under the modern pitching distance established in 1893, and some historians consider it the first true perfect game in baseball history. He threw three no-hitters in all, the last one on June 30, 1908, against the New York Highlanders, when he was 41 years old. Only a walk kept him from a second perfect game that day. The baserunner was caught stealing, and no other batter reached.

He posted a 1.26 ERA in 1908, his best single-season mark, at age 41.

The Farm and the End

Young returned to Cleveland in 1909, now pitching for a team called the Naps. He went 19-15 that year with a 2.26 ERA, but his arm was wearing down. By 1910, he won only 7 games. He split 1911 between Cleveland and the Boston Rustlers, going 7-9 combined in what proved to be his final season. His last win came on September 22, 1911, a 1-0 shutout of the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. He was 44 years old.

After baseball, Young returned to farming in Peoli, Ohio, raising crops and livestock. He built and sold travel trunks designed for ballplayers. He was never ejected from a game in his entire career, a fact he attributed to five personal rules, chief among them moderation in all things and refusing to bait umpires. His wife Robba died in January 1933, and he sold the farm afterward. He struggled financially during the Depression and worked as a retail clerk in Newcomerstown, Ohio, during his later years.

The Award

Young was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1937, receiving 153 of 201 votes (76.1 percent), alongside Nap Lajoie and Tris Speaker. He attended the inaugural induction ceremony at Cooperstown in June 1939.

He died on November 4, 1955, of a coronary occlusion at his home in Newcomerstown. He was 88 years old. The following year, Commissioner Ford Frick established the Cy Young Award to honor the best pitcher in baseball, arguing that pitchers were underrepresented in MVP voting. The first award went to Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Beginning in 1967, the award was given separately in each league. It remains the highest individual honor a pitcher can receive.

Young's 511 wins are 94 more than Walter Johnson's 417, the second-highest total in history. No active pitcher is within 300 of the record. In an era when starters routinely throw fewer than 200 innings per season, the record is less a benchmark than a monument to a different game played by a man who threw in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, won in both the National and American Leagues, and never once got thrown out for losing his temper.