HOME BOY: The late Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mike Royko once
wrote this about one of Bradford’s more eccentric native sons –
“Rube Waddell loved pitching, fishing and drinking. When he died,
they found him in a gin-filled bathtub with three drunken
trout.”
Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Rube was also one of
the game’s greatest southpaw pitchers.
Oh, and did we mention he was obsessed with chasing fire trucks
and even wrestled a few alligators?
An item in a 1907 Era showed that Rube returned to Bradford in
May of that year when he played with the Philadelphia Athletics,
which got us to thinking about this colorful crackerjack.
The Hall of Fame Web site says this about him:
“One of the top lefties in history, Rube was also among the most
eccentric and colorful players. Waddell possessed a great fastball
and curve, aided by pinpoint control. Connie Mack harnessed
Waddell’s early promise beginning in 1902, his first of four
straight 20-win seasons. In 1905, Waddell captured pitching’s
‘triple crown,’ with 27 wins, 287 strikeouts and a 1.48 era,
leading the lead in all categories. Known for his strikeout
prowess, he led the American League for six years in a row.”
The Web site also notes that “on July 1, 1902, Rube became the
first major league pitcher to strike out the side on just nine
pitched balls.”
Besides the Athletics, he also played for the Louisville
Colonels, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Chicago Cubs and the St.
Louis Browns.
Not much is known about his time in Bradford, other than his
birth date of Oct. 13, 1876. He was raised in Prospect, where a
marker calls him “one of baseball’s true matinee idols.”
That title was given on the basis of his antics on and off the
field. Nicknamed “Rube” because he was quite the hayseed, he often
showed up drunk for games.
According to author Garrick H.S. Brown, “He was prone to running
off the mound (and out of the stadium!), mid-windup, in pursuit of
passing fire engines. He would often disappear for weeks at a time
(once, at the height of the 1905 pennant race), only to reappear
with offerings of catfish for his irate managers.
Mack wrote in his biography, “He had more stuff than any pitcher
I ever saw. He was the atom bomb of baseball long before the atom
bomb was discovered.”
