Rube Waddell

 This is Rube Waddell, a base ballpitcher from the early 1900s whose life still leaves me shaking my head in disbelief.

In the middle of games he would suddenly run off the field to chase fire engines racing down the street. Opposing fans figured this out quick, so they started bringing cute puppies to the ballpark. The second Rube spotted one, he’d drop everything and go play with it.

One writer said that 1903 started with Rube sleeping at a fire station in Camden, New Jersey, and ended with him pouring drinks behind a bar in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, starred in a traveling play called The Stain of Guilt (he couldn’t remember his lines so he just made them up every night, and the critics loved it), fell in love, got married, and split up with a woman from Massachusetts, rescued a lady from drowning, accidentally shot a friend in the hand, and got bitten by a lion.

In 1905 he roomed with catcher Ossee Schreckengost. Ossee finally said he’d move out unless the team put something in Rube’s contract that said “no eating crackers in bed.” (Back then two players usually shared the same bed on road trips.) That same year Rube missed the World Series because he hurt his shoulder wrestling a teammate over a straw hat.

Still, he led the league in wins, strikeouts, and ERA, basically the pitching Triple Crown. If the Cy Young Award had existed then, Rube would have beaten Cy Young himself.

He died of tuberculosis at age 37 on April Fool’s Day, 1914.

The man lived like a cartoon character who somehow happened to be one of the best pitchers who ever stepped on a mound.