Citation Needed - "Rube" Waddell

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

George Edward "Rube" Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). A left-hander, he played for 13 years, with the Louisville Colonels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago Orphans in the National League, as well as the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns in the American League. Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, and raised in Prospect, Pennsylvania, Waddell was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. Waddell is best remembered for his highly eccentric behavior, and for being a remarkably dominant strikeout pitcher in an era when batters were expert at making contact. He had an excellent fastball, a sharp-breaking curveball, a screwball, and superb control; his strikeout-to-walk ratio was almost 3-to-1, and he led the major leagues in strikeouts for six consecutive years.

Hello and welcome to citation needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. Noah, and I'm going to be managers in this team of misfits, but to do that, I'm going to need somebody to kick dirt on behalf of. So first up, two men arguing about who gets to be in left field, Heath, and Cecil. Okay, I'm the coach's son, so I am pitching, and Cecil, you get left field. Okay, I don't care. Comic relief pitching. Got it.

And also joining us tonight, two men who strongly disagree with Tom Hanks about how much crying there is in baseball, Eli and Tom. Okay, to be fair to me, I didn't realize that the catcher wasn't squat. on anything when I gave my opinion. Hey, some people just can't take a joke or a punch. Right. Yeah. And obviously, we wouldn't bother fielding a team if we weren't filling up those stands.

So before we get going, I want to take a second to thank all the people who listen to the show, whether or not their patrons. But I want to thank the patrons more, though. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Cecil, what person plays, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event we'll be talking about today. Today we're going to talk about Rube Waddell or Waddle Waddell. And Tom, you picked a sports thing, which tells me this is probably a really good fucking story. Are you ready to prove me right? I am. Noah.

Noah, this story goes hard in the paint. I think it's a real touchdown. All right. So, Tom, what is a simultaneously entertaining and time-padding way to eventually tell me who Rube Waddell is? Look, baseball is boring. Agree. It takes a long time, and most of that time, most of the players aren't doing anything other than waiting to maybe do something later.

It is, in fact, such a boring game that an entirely new version called Banana Ball was recently invented, taking off in popularity, because it was built on the idea that if baseball were not boring, people would actually enjoy watching it. In fact, the only reason most people who enjoy watching baseball is because they really enjoy the statistics. As a spectator sport, it leaves everything to be desired, which may give you cause to wonder why today I'm writing about baseball player, Rube Waddell.

And the answer is simple. It is because unlike baseball, Rube Waddell may be the least boring person to have ever lived. For sure, the universe gave him to baseball to balance him out, and it didn't work. It somehow didn't bring. Now, Rube wasn't always called Rube.

He was born George Edward Waddell in 1876, in Bradford, Pennsylvania. He was one of five children, but none of the others have a Wikipedia page and they don't matter. There you go. Hey, Wikipedia, writer, listeners, I want to matter.

I don't like to matter. George was from a young age, both athletically gifted and something of an eccentric character. His sister recalled that George rarely attended school, preferring instead to play ball, go fishing, or follow fire engines around. His love of fire engines was not some passing fad,

nor was this an abstract love. George was known to follow fire engines, not just to admire the engine, but they would also run in and start doing some light firefighting on his own, just in whatever he happened to be wearing. Hey, George, can you not wear the high-cut jorts if you're going to get wet?

Is that? Look, I know autism awareness is better for the world, but I do miss when history was just like, ha, this guy just fucking loves, rains. He loves him. The family lived on a farm, and George grew to be an impressively powerful man. He stood 6'1.

He weighed 200 pounds, and he worked the fields from dawn to dusk, pausing from time to time to strengthen his pitching arm by hurling rocks at birds. And obsessively falling around fire trucks in his jorts. There was also bad. Dude was fast, too. We haven't mentioned that, but he was just like following fire trucks. That's catching up to them.

He was so strong that locals complained that in games he hurt their hands with how fast he pitched. Many in town didn't want to play with him

and they said he was too powerful for friendly neighborhood games. Okay, there's one in every town. Same guy who's doing like the violent side tackles

during the practice drill and you're just trying to do like basic whatever. He almost drowned you at the town pool like several times every summer. How'd you die?

You get that panic when you're being held underwater. It's terrifying. Fine, fucking Joe. I like that the pitches hurt their hand. They made fucking gloves out of straw back then. What the fuck are you talking about? By 19, George was pitching for the Butler Town team.

But George is about as committed and focused on pitching for the local team as he was when he was in school. Meaning that he was known to just arrive late to his games, stop and play with children in the stands in the middle of the games, or just walk away and go fishing. if he got bored. Is he trying to find a series of more boring things? Well, hey guys, you know, then he left fishing to go watch a period drama on Netflix, you know? Fuck, man.

So, like, that sounds bad, but to be fair, Major League Baseball pitchers didn't stop going fishing in the middle of games until they added the pitch clock the year before last, right? Like, that's how I recall. As distractible as he was, he was a damn good pitcher. And the following year in 1896, he joined a struggling team playing out of Franklin, Pennsylvania, and it was here that George got the nickname Rube. The catcher called out to the 20-year-old kid, All right, Rube, let's see what you got.

And the nickname just stuck. George was now Rube and the die was cast, though Rube didn't stay with the Franklin Penn team for very long. Yeah, he wandered off to go fishing. Yeah. Okay, this catcher was like, all right, Rube, dude, you're from Franklin, Pennsylvania, too. you're just like relax In 1897

Rube had a chance to pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates But he was cut before he had a chance To play a single game Now though the reason isn't known It's most likely and no bullshit Because he just wandered off too often During practices Told you

Yeah I feel like too often isn't even very often In this instance Rube was recruited to play ball For Volant College Where he was not required to attend any classes He was supplied with all the chewing tobacco we wanted and he was paid $1 per game. Okay, the pinnacle of fair treatment

for student athletes until four years ago. Yes. A wad of chaw wrapped in a dollar bill. Cool. Rube was such a dominant pitcher that he led Volunt to victory in all but one game of their season. That sounds great.

but Rube was actually so dominant that the other colleges, they just refused to play against Volunt as long as Rube was on the team. So Rube's college days were over. Rube went on to pitch for a number of local teams before signing on with the Louisville Colonels of the National League, where he pitched well but also began his drinking career. Inconsistent at the best of times drunk Rube. And spoiler, he's going to be drunk pretty much from here on out, was even less reliable, which caused him to be traded.

to the Detroit Tigers. We would never do that to you, Heath. You're fine. How is he... I'm sorry, but how is he less reliable than just went fishing in the middle of games? I don't even know what the next notch

on that dial would say. Now, when you're a professional baseball player, you're supposed to only play baseball for your team. But Ruby didn't give a shit about that rule and he would just randomly go off and play in sandlots with kids or join a local club team

and play local games and he would do this even while he was out traveling with the tigers so it didn't take long before he was fired okay I kind of like this though he was doing the almost famous thing

and just drilling instead of diving off the roof into a pool over the next few years Roob bounced around from Louisville to Columbus to Grand Rapids back to Louisville

then to Pitts despite all the moving around Wadd led the league in ERA which is baseball math for good pitching. Whip is better, but it's a nerd. Nourd.

Walks and hits burnings pitch. It's fine. You want to get B-A-B-B-I-P in there too. Nobody, you just, those are sounds. Just making sounds. All those hits. But he was so difficult to work with, he was pretty much constantly getting suspended for being drunk, showing up late,

or just, again, wandering away. Okay, I feel like suspending a guy for already having left. It's like when you tell your dog to walk away and ignore you so you can feel in control for once. Come on. He's suspended himself. Now, eventually the guy managing the team in Milwaukee, Connie Mack, borrowed Waddell to finish out a season. On August the 19th, 1900, Rube threw a 17-inning complete game.

What? Which meant that he threw every pitch of that 17-inning game, which he won himself by then hitting a triple. He couldn't even get all. That's weird. We have a walk off triple. It should really just be a single or a double. That's weird to like make it into a triple because you know, whatever, it's fine. Mac was impressed and decided he needed Waddell on the team.

So he lured him to Milwaukee with the promise of days off to go fishing. Waddle arrived and promptly threw a shutout. And that last pitch of that 17 inning game was hard to hit because his arm detached and wound up in the catcher, too. Bright. Jesus. Also, by the way, imagine. what a hard fucking job lure people to Milwaukee

is. Wow. The problem was that no one could really keep track of Waddell. Sure, he was bounced around a lot from team to team, but again, he would also just randomly disappear. And in the offseason, he took that disappearing to a new level.

One season, he didn't return when scheduled, and the team was in a panic looking everywhere for their star pitcher. And they eventually found him working in a circus wrestling alligators. I'm sorry, come on. I thought it was weird that the bleachers never emptied when there was a fight between me

and this guy. This is all starting to come together. I'm just impressed they found him. Somebody on the team was like, hey, we should probably check the alligator circus. And it works. Now, oftentimes, Waddell would show up late to games, missing the start of the game and throwing coaches and

managers into a frenzy looking for he was often found fishing or playing marbles with street kids. I bet he kept the marbles that he won. I bet he kept the ones he won. He throws him really hard at the kids. Like glass flying everywhere. Pagan kids with marbles. Stays right close to the fucking wall when I do that.

In Jacksonville, Florida, he was late to a game because he was asked to walk in a parade after gaining a measure of local celebrity for swimming out into a lagoon and wrestling an alligator just for fun in front of a crowd of onlookers. I feel like there are a lot more alligators back then. Yeah, they're everywhere. And the bar to parade entry was a lot lower.

I don't think the bar in Jacksonville has changed, dude. If you out Florida, Florida, man, Jacksonville will still close a few fucking roads for it. And even when Waddell did show up to the games, he was notoriously distractible. So much so that manager Huey Jenner, quote, used to go to the dime store and buy little toys like rubber snakes and he'd go to

the first base coach's box and set him down on the grass and yell, hey, Roob, look. Eventually just pretending to have something in his hand, but not really. Just being like, hey, Roob, physical optic. What do I have? Now, Rub- Get down, down, down, down, stop. Now, Reuben could also be thrown off his game by his own thoughts. On one notable occasion during a game, one of the main.

one of the managers invited him to go hunting after the season was over and he offered Rube the use of his bird dog for the hunt. For the rest of the game, Rube was so preoccupied with questions and thoughts about that dog that he forgot entirely about the game

even though he was supposed to be playing in it. Fans of opposing teams knew this and they would sometimes bring their pets into the stands to distract them. It often worked well enough that Waddell would wander off the pitcher's mound and just pet dogs instead of playing baseball.

That's why you need Air Bud Relief pitcher. There you go. Golden Reliever. Don't take this the wrong way. Are you Ruudel in sort of a Highlander situation?

You do have to tell us. I don't need you to tell us. No, I don't have to tell you. Now, when people say they play for the love of the game, most of them, If they are professionals, are, of course, lying. They're playing for money. I understand entirely.

Rube, however, did not give a fuck about money. In fact, Rub in his entire career never took his full salary. Instead, he asked the managers to dole out his pay in $5 increments. Because if you ever got more than $10 at a time, he would just disappear for weeks or months at his time. All right. Well, speaking of disappearing, it's time for a quick break and a little apropos of nothing. Steer right three. Oh, come on, Jones.

That was a ball. Nuh. Was two? Was not? Hey. Hey, kids. What's going on? What are you doing?

Oh. Um, hi. He's playing baseball. Yes, sir. Can I let me play? Can I play? Sure. Say, aren't you a professional baseball player?

Yeah, that's me. Professional baseball player. Right. Well, we all was just a... Oh, man, so you're dog? You mean scruffy? Yeah, let me pet him. Can I pet him?

Sure, mister, you can pet him? Nice. Anyways, I was telling my paw the other day that we might not want to stay down at the cellar, you know, since there ain't no more work these days. Well, what did your mom say? Yeah. Well, Molly ain't been back for more than a spell now

ever since her sister got sick. You get a stick. I hear that. I'm mighty sorry. It's all right. I just wonder some winners if she's thinking to me, you know. I remember those Christmases when she was all. sitting around the fire.

I didn't know we had much money. I know we didn't have much of anything. But in those moments, I can't help but think I was truly happy. Truly part of a family, you know? I got inside. Say, mister, do you have a baseball game today? Yeah. Ah.

Ah. Fuck. Yeah, I got to go. I got to go. Bye, doggy. Bye. Nice guy. I have the rickets.

Yeah. Okay. How about that one? Nope. Got the poison one. Come on. Seriously? I told you guys. Hey, fellas, you ready to finish recording the show? Almost. We were just testing Tom's bad luck. What bad luck.

Okay, so you know how nothing ever works out for Tom in any way ever? Well, it turns out that statistically, it's actually very impressive. Yeah. For example, he just picked the only poison jelly bean out of the whole bag. Six times in a row. Really big back. Tom, if you're ready to turn your luck and you're eating habits around, why don't you try factor? What's factor?

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All right, guys. Thanks. Looks like my luck is about to change. Oh, uh, Tom Piano. That's like four this week. Yep. That's five. And we're back. left off. Tom was dreaming of a life where he

could just wander off and go fishing during apropos of nothing. Tom, are you ready to awaken from that wistful hope and tell us more about this dead guy? Something that happened to your family again. Shouldn't have breath. Anvil.

When manager Connie Mack ended up working with the Philadelphia athletics, he was desperate to get Waddell on his team. But no one knew where he was. Mack had to hire the Pinkerton detective agency to track him down. Quick, fellas, somebody dressed

like a fish. Waddell was fishing. I told you so. I told you so. The Pickerton agents convinced Rube to come back east and pitch for Connie Max's athletics, which Waddell agreed to and promptly led the team to the 1902

American League crown. In 1902, he became the second pitcher to throw an immaculate inning, striking out three batters in nine pitches. He finished the season with 24 wins, 210 strikeouts, despite joining the team mid-season. This was the first of six seasons

that he led the American League in strikeouts and won 10 games in July alone. Yeah, and 9.7 in war was second only to Cy Young that year. He's very impressive. And that immaculate inning, second only to Bugs Bunny. He did that one slow pitch

that struck out three guys, but like other than Bugs Bunny, fucking impressive. The next year in 19, 1903, Waddell struck out 302 batters. The second closest that year was 115 strikeouts behind Rube. As

quoted in the American League story, Waddell began the 1903 season sweeping in a firehouse in Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. And between those events, he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end

for the businessman's rugby football club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toward the nation, in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt courted, married, and became separated. This is in one year from Maywin Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts

saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through his hand, and was bitten by a lion. It was a very busy year. Okay. Well, Tom, you haven't been bitten by a lion yet. Okay, I'm pretty sure that

exact same sequence that Tom just said happened to root Juliani right before his latest times. All of that stuff happened. That's crazy. All right. So some detail on the lion incident. Oh, thank you. I was going to ask about it. So what else was supposed to be

on tour doing his performance for the stain of guilt? But he was no more committed to being in a play than he was to playing baseball. Rube ditched his own performance that day to go to a different show because that show had lions. And it turns out Rube didn't like

the lions. So he punched one of them. Okay. Which bit him because it was a lion. Because a lion. Yeah. Okay. So from what we already know of this guy, I feel like nobody has any questions about the lion punching. He seems

like a lion punch. Yeah. Definitely. How the fuck he winds up in a play on the other hand. That feels like a better question. The Wizard of Oz maybe. He's just punching the line. Do you have any more details about the stain of guilt. I have a bit more, Heath, about the stain of guilt.

Rube didn't do a lot of book learning, and he didn't intend to learn any lines just to be in a play that he was touring with, but he was nonetheless in that play, and he did have lines. But Rube just improvised every night, and no one seemed to care. Audience loved him because he was a huge hulking presence, and he had the ability to throw the actor playing the villain of the story across the stage with ease. Hey, guys, I just invented pro wrestling right now. he's Rube Goldberg Because of the wrestler Goldberg

And despite all of his successes Connie Mack was forced to suspend Rube The final month of the 1903 season Because Rube, he just randomly signed up for And was simultaneously playing For a couple of different semi-pro teams On the side, just for kicks. As genuinely impossible as he was to manage,

He was also a generational talent so everybody just kind of had to deal with it. The following year, Rube struck out 349 batters. That was 100 more than the runner-up. That 349 strikeouts set a record that lasted more than 60 years and remains the American League record 102 years later for left-handed pitchers. I feel like if we give it to someone else,

he'll just wander back from wherever he's been fishing and win it again. Okay, so best in the American League for a left-hand. handed pitcher. I feel it underscels this event. I look this shit up. There are five seasons in Major League Baseball history with more strikeouts than that. Two were by Nolan Ryan and two were by Randy Johnson. So like a total of

three other people have ever done better than he did. That's fucking 100 years ago. Nuts. In 1905, what else? Peak season there was a contract dispute. That was not about money but crackers. You see, to save money, teams used to have the

players share a hotel room. And hotels in 1905 commonly just had one bed, which means the players also had to share a bet. And Rube, he had a habit of eating crackers in bed, and evidently he did so in straight up cookie monster fashion, so much so that his Bunky, Asi, insisted that his contract be revised to add a clause for bidding Rube Waddell from eating crackers in bed. And that clause was added to his actual legal contract for employment. Asi was Rub's actual best friend also and he still wanted the cracker thing in writing

Think about how many crackers that had to be But one Tom, in bed In bed would be one fucking cracker ever Are you kidding me? The worst part was is that he would just jump into egg wash And then jump into a bed full of crackers Right afterwards and roll around I feel like if you think a contract is going to stop

Rube Waddell from eating crackers in his bed. You're a lot of things, but his best friend is not one of them. You are not. Oh, the fucking paper your holes does no crackers? I punched a lion today. I punched a fucking lion. I play on the

lion's team now. I beat up eight children. Now, despite the cracker kerfuffle, Gwadel was on fire. He won the pitching triple crown finishing the season with a 27 and 10 record, an ERA of 1.1.1 48 and 287 strikeouts. He tied the league in saves,

which makes it kind of a quadruple crown, but I guess that's not a thing. But then again, when I looked up the triple crown, that's not even a real crown you get to wear, so I think it's all just lying to us about the whole thing. Also, saves weren't a stat yet,

so everybody tied with zero, I guess, technically. They went back and did it. He didn't have any saves. It's fine. Had the Sy Young Award been invented at this time, he would have beaten Sy Young

for that award. It wasn't just that he was good. He was fucking nuts to watch. And when he was feeling cocky, which was nearly always, he would put on a show, waving his teammates off the field and then striking out the side. In another famous instance, he ordered all of the outfielers to come into the edge of the outfielders and sit down in the grass before striking out of the side. When I say fuck, you say lions, fuck. in an exhibition game in Memphis

he pitched three entire innings with only his catcher on the entire field with him despite two close calls he struck out every hitter for all three of those innings Derek is I ever tell you guys about the time Heath beat me at ping pong when I had a paddle and he had to use the TV remote I've actually practiced with

I've done VCR cassette VHS sets too. I got used to using weird objects for that. Oh, and he also saved a department store once. Now, remember when I said he would just chase fire engines around and run into burning buildings? Well, the same year that he was setting records,

he came across a fire in a department store and he just ran inside of it. And there he discovered the source of the fire was a flaming oil stove. So he picked up the flaming oil stove and carried it outside. And then he made the firefighters set on the sidelines and watch him do it all by himself.

It's like a whole thing. I thought Tom was going to say he struck a guy out with it. Yeah. I thought Tom was going to say he punched it. Now, sadly, after the department store flaming stove and quadruple crown year, things began to turn on Rube.

And the whole time all this has been happening, Rube has been drunk. And like, not a little drunk, but full on Heath drunk. It just didn't affect his performance. That's terrible. But Rube was struggling and facing a spade of interest. a fucking lion

A rube was struggling lions earlier and he was facing a spate of injuries and personal problems his relationship with Maywin Skinner had disintegrated his best friend catcher Ozzy Shrek and Gost and he were on the outs

and Connie Mack was just done with him he was sold off to the St. Louis Browns for 5,000 bucks I okay so I feel like all three of those problems are rude in the crackers in bed thing. Like if we could tell that one fucking thing.

Yeah, probably. It's fun, though, when you find a big crumb later. Also, he's fucking Superman. Let him eat crap. Who fucking care? Thank you.

You're a normal person and he's an ex-man. Let him have a cracker. Even as he was falling apart, he was still the best player the game had to offer. The same year, he was traded. he set an AL record for striking out 16 batters in a single game.

The owner of the Browns tried to keep Waddell in the straight and narrow during the offseason by employing him in the winters to hunt his land for him, but Rube continued to drink and to implode. Married again, divorced and married and divorced the third time by 1910. Things were not looking good, and he was traded off to Newark. Yeah, you can't get any more rock bottom than winding up in Newark. Shortly thereafter, he was out of the majors, and he bummed around the miners for a while, dominating, but a complete personal disaster.

In 1912, during spring training, there was a massive flood nearby, and Rube left the training camp to pile sandbags by the river, and he helped to save the town from the rising floodwaters. Unfortunately, he also contracted pneumonia and then tuberculosis, neither of which is good for you. He entered in sanitarium, but those did nothing, and it was still years before antibiotics became a thing, and Rubadale died in 1914. He was 37 years old. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I wasted the first 37 years of my life.

Right? Yeah. And are you ready for the quiz? I am indeed. Okay. I think we can all agree that Rub Waddell clearly died right before he was going to start doing porn. Yeah.

What was the best title that he had planned ahead, but then he died? A. The Mound Visit with Rube Waddell Backe. Backdoor sliding. C. Lions and Tigers and Bad News Bears. Fantastic.

D. If you filled it, he will come. Or E. Bactuah. Bacchua is amazing. There it is. Bacchua is so good.

That's so good. That's got to be the answer. You nailed it. All right. Okay. Who was the best baseball player to go fishing with? A. Mike Trout. B. Barry Ponds.

C. Greg Haddicks or D. A rod and reel. Well, I know these are all baseball player puns. I recognize Barry Ponds. So I'm going to go with Barry Ponds. It is Barry Ponds. Nailed it. Yes. Asteris.

Brings his own fish. I was wondering who you'd be more upset. If he picked Barry Ponce or A-Rod in Real, I couldn't tell. Yeah, also asterisk, I'm pretty sure. All right, Tom. This was an excellent essay, but A, I very clearly had dibs when I created a draft in our mutual future episodes folder called Baseball Weirdos. B.

Now I'm out of baseball weirdos except for Ty Cobb, and his story isn't... It's not fun. No, don't do that one. C. That was pretty rube of you, Tom. that was so bad that's the answer though I don't know

I can't tell who wins it's not there to make me say this at this point Cecil SSA Eli wins Neat

I want a Cecil SSA Okay All right well for Cecil Eli Heath and Tom I'm Noah thank you for hanging out with us today We're going to be back next week and by then Cecil will be an expert on something something else. Between now and then, you can keep yourself entertained by listening to our past shows

backwards to hear all the great satanic messages that we hit in there. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes. Good night with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com.