High Heat Page 4

  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.

  Exceptional 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 shoul
der 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.

  It wasn’t long before the local team came calling. Johnson saw his first action for the Oil Wells on July 24, 1904. The local newspaper reported that he struck out six in three innings. Although Johnson pitched a few high school games, including an epic 0–0 tie with Santa Ana that lasted 15 innings, his primary team was the Oil Wells. He pitched and played right field and first base for them. In fact, he excelled in most aspects of the game except fielding. Still an awkward adolescent, Johnson often bungled bunts near the mound. There was no questioning his arm or the velocity of his fastball, however.

  In the spring of 1906, Johnson traveled by train north to Tacoma, Washington. At the time, he seemed assured of a roster spot for the local team, the Tigers. But only days before Johnson arrived in Tacoma, one of the worst natural disasters in American history struck San Francisco. The earthquake and fire of April 18–20 impacted life up and down the West Coast. For several weeks, it appeared that the only way the Pacific Coast League would be able to play the new season was by merging with the Northwestern League. As a result, the Tacoma manager released Johnson. He figured better players would soon be coming his way. His parting advice to Johnson? Forget about pitching and focus on the outfield.

  Disappointed, Johnson was on the verge of returning home, back to helping his father and pitching for his old team, the Oil Wells. That’s when a former Olinda teammate wired him. Clair Head, once the Oil Wells’ shortstop, was in someplace called Weiser, Idaho. The team there needed pitching. Was Johnson interested? You bet he was.

  Located in southwest Idaho, near the border with Oregon, Weiser was a mining and farming community. For $75 a month, Johnson pitched for the local team, which played on the weekends in the sixteam Southern Idaho League. The rest of the time he dug postholes for the Weiser Telephone Company. He was there until the following June, when Cliff Blankenship, a reluctant scout for the Washington Senators, signed him to a big-league contract.

  “Looking back on it, playing in Weiser, Idaho, allowed Walter to kind of get his legs back under him again,” Thomas tells me. “The situation in Tacoma hadn’t been the best. He was looking for a place where he could just pitch, make his mark. But you have to think that with the fastball Walter had that somebody would have noticed, sooner or later. Anybody who saw him pitch in those days, who was intelligent enough to look past that sidearm business, soon recognized he had one of the best fastballs ever in the game.”

  I love how Thomas refers to Johnson simply as Walter. At first blush, it would seem to be a curious convention. But Thomas, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, is more than Johnson’s biographer. He’s also his grandson and was born in the same year that the legendary fireballer died.

  When Thomas’s grandfather arrived in the nation’s capital to pitch for the hometown Senators, he was already being labeled as a phenom. At first, opponents and even his new teammates were dismissive of the 19-year-old’s sidearm delivery. Such concerns disappeared when they stepped into the batter’s box. The Senators’ Jim Delahanty was said to be the first guy Johnson threw to in a team batting practice soon after arriving in D.C.

  “The big raw rookie just took a short windup and let go with the ball. I never had a chance to take a swing,” Delahanty later said. “It was in the catcher’s hands before I knew it had left Johnson’s. And, when he came back with another just like it, I just lay my bat down and talked to [manager] Joe Cantillon and said, ‘I’m through.’”

  Cantillon asked if Johnson truly had “a fast one.”

  “Has he got a fast one?” replied Delahanty. “No human being ever threw one as fast before.”

  That prompted the Senators’ manager to ask if Johnson had a curve.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Delahanty said. “What’s more, I’m not going back to bat against that guy until I learn how good his control is. From now on, he can pitch for me but not to me.”

  In fact, the young phenom was also afraid of what would happen if he hit a batter, teammate or otherwise. Only a few, notably Ty Cobb, ever figured that out and used it to their advantage. To the rest of baseball, Johnson soon became known as a plainspoken kid from somewhere out west, who threw a fastball that nobody could touch.

  His first big-league start was against the Detroit Tigers, and even though Johnson lost, 3–2, he certainly made an impression. “The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup—and then something went past me that made me flinch,” Cobb recounted in his autobiography. “I hardly saw the pitch, but I heard it. The thing just hissed with danger. Every one of us knew he’d met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ballpark.”

  J. Ed Grillo, covering the game for the Washington Post, wrote, “Walter Johnson, the Idaho phenom, who made his debut in fast company yesterday, showed conclusively that he is perhaps the most promising young pitcher who has broken into a major league in recent years.... He had terrific speed, and the hard-hitting Detroit batsmen found him about as troublesome as any pitcher they have gone against on this present trip.”

  The Senators were simply grateful to have something go their way for once. The ballclub had finished 55–95 the year before, second to last in the American League. “He’s the best raw pitcher I’ve ever seen,” Cantillon said after Johnson’s debut. “Give him two years and he’ll be a greater pitcher than Mathewson.”

  After going 5–9 his first big-league
season, a dazzling stretch over Labor Day weekend the next season forever put Johnson on the map. The Senators were in New York to play the Yankees. The Yankees weren’t the heavy-spending contenders that they are now. In fact, they were also-rans at the time, much like Washington. That didn’t stop Cantillon from trying to play mind games with his young phenom.

  At the team hotel, the manager showed Johnson a New York newspaper story that detailed the young pitcher’s lack of success against the Yankees. No matter that Johnson hadn’t pitched many games against New York. A bit fired up, Johnson went out and shut out the Yankees, 3–0.

  The next day’s paper read that Johnson had gotten lucky. That didn’t sit well with the phenom and he asked Cantillon to pitch him again that day. Of course, this was well before pitch counts and preordained days of rest. The Senators’ manager liked how worked up his young starter was and let him have another go. This time Johnson won in another shutout, 6–0.

  While that should have been the end of the story, the next day Johnson got talking with several of his veteran teammates in the hotel lobby. They teased that the newspaper writer still didn’t think much of him. Johnson, not realizing that they were egging him on, asked Cantillon if he could pitch again against the Yankees in the doubleheader slated for Labor Day Monday. (Sunday was an off day.) Johnson started the first game and pitched his third shutout in four days.

  After a disappointing third season, in which his fastball seemed to lose velocity, Johnson bounced back to lead the league for the first time in ERA (1.39) while posting a 33–12 record. From then on Johnson was a force to forever be reckoned with, leading the league in strikeouts 9 of 10 seasons, starting in 1910, and in victories 5 of 6 seasons, from 1913 to 1918. In addition, he pitched 56 shutout innings from April 10 to May 14, 1913, and three years later he pitched 369 ⅔ innings without allowing a home run.