December 15, 1900: The New York Giants trade Amos Rusie to the Cincinnati Reds for Christy Mathewson.
Known as the Hoosier Thunderbolt, for his Indiana origin and the best fastball in the game at the time, Rusie was 28 years old, and had already won 246 games in the major leagues, striking out 1,944 batters, then the all-time record. He had led the National League in strikeouts 5 times, wins twice, and earned run average once. In 1894, he led in all 3, "the Triple Crown of Pitching."
"It took a lot of pitching to strike a man out in those days," Rusie explained years later. "The foul strike rule hadn't come in. A guy had to miss three of 'em clean before he was out."
Not only had he continued to pitch well following the 1893 move of the distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate from 50 feet to 60 feet 6 inches -- some pitchers did not, and dropped off dramatically -- but it didn't seem to have any effect on him at all. Indeed, some observers thought that his speed was the reason for the move: 50 feet was too close for a batter to get out of the way of a pitch that might hit him. Maybe Rusie realized he didn't have to worry as much, and gained some confidence.
Connie Mack, who played in the major leagues from 1886 to 1896, and then managed in them until 1950, saw every great fastball pitcher in that time. He batted against Cy Young, managed Rube Waddell and Lefty Grove, and managed against Walter Johnson and Bob Feller. "Rusie was the fastest, without a doubt," he said. "They looked like peas as they sailed by me. All I saw of them was what I heard when they went into the catcher’s mitt."
So why would the Giants trade the man who, along with Cy Young and Kid Nichols, was probably the best pitcher in baseball at the time, and at what should have been his physical peak? Because he was a headache for them. After the 1895 season, he got into a contract dispute with Giants owner Andrew Freedman. He ended up holding out for the entire 1896 season.
Freedman settled just before the 1897 started, because Rusie threatened to take the National League to court and get the reserve clause overturned. Keeping the reserve clause was more important than the money, because there's one thing a rich person values more than money, and that's control.
Rusie was once again a great pitcher in 1897 and most of 1898. But on August 12, he injured his shoulder making a pickoff throw against the team that would, in 1903, be renamed the Chicago Cubs. "My arm felt dead," he said. "I finished the game throwing floating curves. The following day saw the start of a parade of doctors. Each examined my arm. Each had a different diagnosis. The X-ray was unknown then, so their job wasn't an easy one."
He took a month off, and was fine after that: "For the rest of the season, everything was fine. But the following spring, when I tried to pitch, my arm felt dead." On top of that, he and his wife May split up, and he tried to patch things up with her. Between his arm and his personal issues, he didn't pitch at all in the 1899 and 1900 regular seasons.
So, in spite of his earlier greatness, Rusie was now a liability, from the neck up and from the neck down. So Freedman, having had enough of him, traded him to the Reds. It's not that the Reds didn't know about his issues. The Giants didn't put one over on him. They were willing to take a risk on him coming back, and trading away a 20-year-old pitcher who'd appeared in all of 6 major league games, winning exactly none of them.
That pitcher's name was Christy Mathewson. The Giants had bought his contract the preceding July, from the Norfolk team in the Virginia-North Carolina League. They loaned him back to Norfolk, and then he was chosen by the Reds in the 1900 Rule 5 Draft. They decided they didn't want him, anyway, and traded him back to the Giants.
Over the next 16 years, Mathewson became the best pitcher that baseball had ever seen to that point, winning 373 games against 188 losses, with a career ERA of 2.13, an ERA+ of 136, and a WHIP of 1.058. In 1916, he was traded back to the Reds, along with Bill McKechnie and Edd Roush, for Buck Herzog and Red Killefer. This trade was a bit more even: Mathewson was done, but Roush became a Hall-of-Famer. So do McKechnie, but as a manager. And Herzog helped the Giants win the Pennant in 1917.
Mathewson died of lung problems in 1925. In 1936, he was one of the 1st 5 players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Having reconciled with May, Rusie tried pitching for the Reds in 1901, but could only manage 3 appearances, 22 innings, and an 0-1 record. He was done at 30. Interviewed late in life, he said, "Even today, I'm often bothered by twinges of pain." He died in 1942. In 1977, he, too, was elected to the Hall of Fame.
Despite their long history, which includes 14 postseason appearances, 10 Pennants and 5 World Series wins, the Reds have only 9 players who are in the Baseball Hall of Fame mainly due to their performance with them. Only 1 is a pitcher, Eppa Rixey, and if the Hall ever had to remove 10 players from its ranks, he might be 1 of them.
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December 15, 1900 was a Saturday. Baseball was in the off-season. The college football season had ended. Basketball was in its infancy, and while there was hockey, it was all-amateur.
There were scores on this historic day, if you count England's Football League. In one of their games, Leicester Fosse beat Woolwich Arsenal, 1-0 at Filbert Street. Woolwich Arsenal moved from Plumstead, then in Kent but now in Southeast London, to North London, in 1913, and dropped the locality from their name, becoming simply "Arsenal." In 1919, Leicester Fosse changed their named to Leicester City, although they are still nicknamed the Foxes.
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