High Heat (5 page)

The right-hander died penniless in a rooming house on the north side of Pittsburgh in 1902. He was only 45, and news of his death was
overshadowed by the flooding of the Ohio River, which left thousands homeless.

The fastest of all time? It's hard to say. As Feller would say, Galvin was certainly in the ballpark. Few in modern times appreciate Galvin's accomplishments, and he wasn't elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown until 1965. In reality, Galvin should be remembered as the fastball pitcher who bridged the gap from the underarm delivery of the game's beginnings to the conventional overhand method of today.

 

 

I
n a perfect world, Amos Rusie would have been recognized as one of the game's true pioneers, too, and inducted into Cooperstown while he was still alive to enjoy the honor. Instead, he was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977—34 ½ years after he died. In a way, Rusie has become baseball's version of Forrest Gump: a guy who was always around the action, but whose own accomplishments are overshadowed by the events and history he helped put into motion.

No doubt about it, though, Rusie threw hard. Legend has it that as a boy he started going hunting without a gun. When his father asked where his rifle was, Rusie replied that he didn't need one.

When the hunting party came upon a jack rabbit, Rusie pulled a stone out of his pocket before his father or brother could fire. And with deadly accuracy, Rusie threw it, nailing the rabbit dead in the head.

“Where'd you learn to do that?” his father asked.

“Practicing,'” Rusie answered.

There are several versions of how Rusie came to play big-league baseball. In one, the Indianapolis Athletic Club had to replace a sick pitcher at the last minute. Rusie was summoned and did so well that the Indianapolis National League team picked him up. My favorite has one of the proprietors at the state fair hearing about Rusie's throwing prowess. The two of them worked up a scheme in which the barker would charge folks 25 cents apiece to have the honor of witnessing Rusie throw a ball through a wooden fence from about 20
yards away. It was a stunt that would become part of the game's lore. Steve Dalkowski, for example, once won a bet from a teammate by doing pretty much the same thing. Rusie was supposed to go easy every now and then, so that the ball didn't bust through the board right away. This was supposed to work up a bigger crowd. But he purportedly just couldn't contain himself and often proceeded to demolish the obstacle in a few minutes. Thankfully, one of those who caught the act was a scout for the Indianapolis ballclub. After inspecting the wooden fence, to make sure everything was on the up and up, he became convinced Rusie had the goods to make it in professional ball. The pitcher they soon called “the Hoosier Thunderbolt” was in uniform for the 1889 season.

At 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, Rusie was reportedly “a perfect specimen of youthful vigor.” Yet many of the same stories also mentioned how the fun-loving fireballer was easily tempted, which only added to his reputation and infamy as a fireballer.

Sam Crane, a major-league shortstop who became a sportswriter, said Rusie began “life with everything in his favor, [but he] went through his active pitching days as though on a continuous joy ride. He broke training when he felt like it and never looked upon life as a serious matter.”

Just 17 years old when he joined Indianapolis in 1889, Rusie went 12–10 in his rookie year. During the off-season, the National League dropped Indianapolis and Rusie's rights fell to the New York Giants. His first season with them he lost a league-high 34 games, but he also won 29 and, more importantly, struck out 341. That would be the only losing season for Rusie in New York. Pitching every other or third day, he went 33–20 the following season and notched a no-hitter against Brooklyn.

Due in large part to Rusie's overpowering speed, the distance from the pitching mound to home plate was moved back five feet to its current 60 feet, 6 inches. While that helped batters against lesser pitchers, Rusie kept rolling along. In 1894, he posted a league-leading 36–13 record. Those who had the dubious honor of catching for him tried
layers of sponge and even thin plates of lead inside their gloves to save their hands.

“Rusie was the fastest of them all,” said Duke Farrell, one of those old catchers. “What a star he was and how few there are who will ever approach him. I have seen scores of pitchers come and go, and none of them inspired the terror in the batsman's heart that was put there by Rusie.”

The fiery right-hander capped the 1893 season by pitching the Giants past Baltimore. (The modern World Series didn't begin until 1903.) The Orioles were a formidable lot with seven eventual members of the Hall of Fame, including “Wee” Willie Keeler, Hughie Jennings, and John McGraw.

“Yes, Rusie was the fastest of them all,” said outfielder Jimmy Ryan, who played in the majors from 1883 to 1903, “the greatest in his way.”

Cy Young was once asked to name the top fastball pitchers of all time and he replied, “Amos Rusie, Bob Feller, and me.”

Lou Criger, who caught Cy Young, didn't even put his legendary battery mate in the final equation. For Criger, Rusie “was the greatest pitcher that ever stepped in the box and I never expected to see a better one.”

The hard thrower soon became the toast of New York, with bartenders even concocting a cocktail called the Rusie. (Near as we can tell today, it was a cross between a daiquiri and a champagne fizz.) When he returned to town for the 1895 season, he was greeted by a marching band and thousands of adoring fans at the train station. Vaudeville teams worked up skits about Rusie's prowess, and Lillian Russell, the belle of Broadway, angled herself an introduction. Meanwhile, kids snapped up a pamphlet titled “Secrets of Amos Rusie: The World's Greatest Pitcher: How He Obtains His Incredible Speed on the Ball.”

The only one who could seemingly derail Rusie was Rusie himself. And that's what he soon did. Team owner Andrew Freedman had instituted a curfew for the 1895 season. That season Rusie was
roommates with shortstop William “Shorty” Fuller. One night in Baltimore, Rusie returned to the hotel before curfew but was told by the night clerk that Fuller was still out. And Fuller had the key. Rusie was scheduled to pitch the next day, so he took a key for another room.

The next day Freedman heard that Rusie hadn't been in his room and fined the star pitcher $100. Rusie didn't explain the situation in fear that he would get his roommate in trouble.

A few days later, Rusie reportedly thumbed his nose at Freedman from the mound during a game. That resulted in another $100 fine, which Rusie refused to pay.

“Those two fines amounted to $200,” Rusie later told the
Indianapolis Star
. “When they sent me a contract for 1896, I refused to sign it unless the fines were restored to me. This Freedman refused to do, so I wouldn't sign and stayed out all year.”

In essence, Rusie was one of the game's first holdouts. Several of the National League owners, notably Cincinnati's John Brush, became increasingly concerned about the pitcher's stance. Brush feared that it could lead to the dissolving of the game's precious reserve clause, which bound a player to the team that had him under contract. As a result, Brush led a campaign among the other owners to pony up $5,000, settling the case out of court.

Rusie's salary was a princely $6,250 for the 1897 season. Unfortunately, he still wasn't saving much of it. A soft touch, Rusie gave away a lion's share of his earnings to family, friends, and hangers-on, many often raising a Rusie cocktail to his health.

On the field, Rusie hurt his arm in midseason, trying to pick a runner off first base. Armed with only his curveball, he still won 20 games in 1898, only to suffer more self-inflicted wounds. Rusie sat out the 1899 and 1900 seasons due to marital problems. By then the Giants had had enough and traded his rights to Cincinnati for a 20-year-old pitcher named Christy Mathewson.

“The Giants without Rusie are like
Hamlet
without the Melancholy Dane,” the
New York Press-Telegram
proclaimed after the deal.

Of course, Mathewson went on to be one of the game's best pitchers, part of the original class inducted into the Hall of Fame. But Mathewson was better known for his “fadeaway” pitch than a superb fastball—a precursor to today's screwball that broke down and in to a right-handed batter and down and away to a left-hander when thrown by a right-hander like Mathewson.

“A screwball—the pitch—got its name because it must be thrown in a way that is opposite of every pitch,” Pat Jordan wrote in
Sports Illustrated Pitching: The Key to Excellence,
“because the ball spins in a way that is the reverse of a curveball; and, finally, because only a demented person would specialize in such a perverse pitch that is so hard to master and so damaging to a pitcher's arm.”

Besides the demented factor, the fadeaway or screwball also isn't especially quick. Sloppy Thurston, one of the top fadeaway specialists before Mathewson, called it “a slow ball.”
ESPN.com
's Rob Neyer likens the fadeaway or screwball, at least a slow one, to today's circle changeup. Considering the difficulty in learning it and the damage that could be done, the fadeaway seems downright un-American in a way. But thanks to Rusie, and others, signing a real fireballer had become akin to making a pact with the devil. The mighty fastball could certainly ring up a lot of batters, but sooner or later the ride always seemed to get too bumpy for everyone involved.

Rusie exited the game after the 1901 season with Cincinnati. During his career, he led the league in strikeouts five times. But his reputation as a loose cannon followed him into retirement. He squandered his success and became broke and jobless, until John McGraw, his former rival and now the manager of the Giants, eventually brought him back to New York as a ticket taker at the Polo Grounds.

“It's like climbing out of your grave,” Rusie said, “and going to a dance.”

Of course, the star of the Polo Grounds by then was Mathewson, the guy who Rusie had been traded for. “[He] was golden, tall, and
handsome, kind and educated, our beau ideal, the first-all-American boy to emerge from the field of play,” Frank Deford wrote in 2005. And the star pitcher Rusie now had to watch.

Control, not speed, was Matty's calling card. In an interview with
Baseball Magazine,
Mathewson detailed how in 1908 he walked only 42 batters in 390 ⅔ innings. Nicknamed “the Big Six,” a reference to a train engine of the era, Mathewson played 16 years for the Giants, placing records for endurance (46 games started in 1904) as well as victories (37 in 1908). In the 1905 World Series he shut out the Philadelphia Athletics three times in five days.

As a result, proponents of the mighty fastball found themselves also looking for such a champion: a guy who could not only throw hard but be an exceptional citizen to boot. They finally found one in a gangly kid, who was pitching in what was left of the Wild, Wild West.

 

 

E
xceptional pitching doesn't demand a fastball for the ages, a thunderbolt from Mount Olympus. But it's sure a lot more fun when that's part of the package, isn't it? That was the starring role seemingly preordained for Walter Johnson at the turn of the last century.

Born in Humboldt, Kansas, in 1887, Johnson had family that reportedly fought at Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg during the Civil War. At first, the family earned a living by farming on the Great Plains, and years later Johnson would credit such an upbringing for his incredible physical strength and legendary endurance on the mound. During recess, one April morning at Crescent Valley School, he impressed the bigger boys with how hard and how far he could throw. As his biographer, Hank Thomas, later noted, this ability “was a gift, pure and simple.” Much later in life, Johnson recalled that day when everything came together for him. “From the first time I held a ball, it settled in the palm of my right hand as though it belonged there,” he said, “and when I threw it, ball, hand and wrist, arm and shoulder and back seemed to all work together.”

When a drought hit eastern Kansas, the Johnson family was forced to move into town and, for a time, barely scraped by. Walter, 13 by
then, struck up a friendship with an eighth-grade classmate and began playing catch with him in the street after school and on weekends. Humboldt wasn't home for long, though. Two of his mother's brothers had found work in the oil fields of southern California. Soon word drifted back about the boom times there and Johnson's father decided to pay a visit. He quickly found work, and by April 1902, Johnson and his four siblings were aboard a train heading for the West Coast.

The family settled in Olinda, a small town 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Their home, which had indoor plumbing, electricity, and gas heat, stood on Main Street and was owned by the Santa Fe Oil Company. Besides being a company man, Johnson's father was also a fan of the local ball team, the Oil Wells. He took his children to the games, and young Walter began to follow such national stars as Wee Willie Keeler, Honus Wagner, Ed Delahanty, and the prominent pitchers of the day, Cy Young and Christy Mathewson, in the newspapers. As for playing himself, Johnson didn't really get started until he was 16. He was too busy helping his father, who hauled supplies by horse and wagon for the Santa Fe Company from Olinda to Fullerton, about six miles away.

Johnson would later credit this delay, along with his many chores around the home, for his amazing durability. “By that time I had attained sufficient strength so I could not hurt myself,” Johnson is quoted as saying in Thomas's award-winning biography.

When Johnson did begin organized ball, it was as a catcher. Despite playing with no mask or other protective equipment, Johnson soon gained a reputation for having a strong, accurate arm. Few dared to try and steal on him. It wasn't until 1904, after three other pitchers “had been clobbered,” that Johnson was told to take the mound. Although he didn't enter the game until the fourth inning, Johnson struck out 12. His motion that day was much the same as it would be at the professional level. After a short windup, he delivered the ball to the plate with a smooth sidearm motion. It seemed as if he was almost casually flipping the ball toward home plate. In a way, that proved to be an optical illusion, belying how fast the ball was borne in upon the batter.
Even though legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice would later call the delivery “the finest motion in the game,” it didn't stop managers and older players from trying to alter it. Real pitchers were supposed to throw overhand. Not sidearm, almost underhanded. To his credit, Johnson didn't pay much attention. Instead he began to throw rocks at empty cans in his spare time to sharpen his accuracy.