A big league pitcher who wins twenty games today becomes the toast of the baseball world and is given a fat raise in pay. In my day—the Nineties—if you won only twenty games the club owner would say, ‘You didn’t do so good this year—we are going to cut your salary next season....(HT: Jonathan Chait.)
And did you ever hear of Amos Rusie, Cy Young, Radbourne or Mathewson having an elbow operation for the removal of chipped bone? Such operations were unheard of until recent years. If the arm got sore, we went out and pitched until the soreness left -- we had to, or we would have been dropped from the team. Nothing short of a broken leg could have kept us out of uniform.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
DID YOU KNOW THAT "THE ONION" USED TO BE CALLED "BASEBALL DIGEST"? Hall of Famer pitcher Kid Nichols (361 wins in a career stretching from 1890-1906), in January 1948, published a column in Baseball Digest titled "Pitchers Are Sissies Now."
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It's Grumpy Old Baseball Man!
ReplyDelete"In my day, we went out there, and we pitched until our pitching arm fell off. And when our pitching arm fell off, we learned to pitch with the other arm. And when that arm fell off, we learned to pitch with our feet. We were a bunch of armless foot pitchers! And we LIKED IT! We liked it fine. Flibberty floo!"
Adam, I don't know if you've read the rest of the issue, but there actually is an article there about how "Pete" Browning became "the only major leaguer to make a putout by catching a batted ball with his feet" back in 1888.
ReplyDeleteThey were complaining about overpaid players in the nineteenth century, too.
ReplyDeleteDid they tie onions to their belts, which I hear was the style of the time?
ReplyDelete