At the time, it was just another ballgame, though the outcome was a bit unusual. In Cleveland`s League Park on Aug. 6, 1890, the home-team Spiders defeated the Chicago White Stockings 8-1.
It was unusual because the Spiders finished next-to-last that season while the White Stockings, led by the great Cap Anson, were contenders for the National League pennant, ultimately won by the Brooklyn Bridegrooms.
But on this August afternoon exactly 100 years ago today, the White Stockings (now the Cubs) got only three hits against a young pitcher making his first major league start, having just been purchased from Canton of the Tri-State League. His name was Young, Denton Young of Gilmore, Ohio, and he won that first game.
Twenty-one years later, Young won his 511th and in the ensuing 79 years, nobody has even come close to that. Considering that Nolan Ryan, nearing the end of his career, just became the 20th pitcher to win 300, it`s a pretty good bet that nobody ever will come close to Young. No wonder baseball named its top pitching award after the man who even before he got to the major leagues was known as ”Cy,” short for ”Cyclone,” a tribute to the speed and force of his pitches.
In fact, a box score in the April 28, 1890, Canton Evening Repository simply lists the Canton pitcher for a game against Altoona as ”Cyclone.” He lost that game 1-0 and the newspaper noted ”The Altoona players pronounce the `Cyclone` a good pitcher, but will have to improve greatly before he can be classed as first-class.” So much for the scouting abilities of the Altoona players.
On second thought, perhaps one ought not be too hard on the Altoonans. By any measurement, Young was a great pitcher, and it may be inappropriate to second-guess his accomplishments on this 100th anniversary of his first victory. But as a great woman once said, ”Truth is a jealous mistress, and will reveal herself not a whit to any but the disinterested seeker.” And the fact is that a disinterested, non-sentimental look at Young`s record reveals it is not quite as impressive as it seems.
First of all, 265 of his wins came in the 1890s, which is generally considered before baseball`s ”modern era.” This is hardly Young`s fault, of course; he could only play the game that existed at the time. But it was, in several ways, a different game, and an easier one for pitchers. For the first three years (and 72 victories) of Young`s major league career, for instance, the pitcher stood only 50 feet from home plate. It wasn`t until 1893 that the pitcher`s toe plate was moved to its present 60 feet, 6 inches from the batter.
Young`s first season was the year of the Players League, baseball`s single-season experiment in employe-ownership. As a financial enterprise, the Players League failed. As a baseball enterprise, it succeeded. Most of the best players-including John Montgomery Ward, Dan Brouthers and Ed Delahanty-were in the Players League. The National League in Cy Young`s first season was really a minor league.
So, to some extent, was the American League when Young joined it in 1901. Even as devoted a Cy Young fan as David Bussan acknowledged ”Young`s career was on a decline in the National League. When the American League was formed, he jumped. With the hitting what it was then, he was pretty much pitching to minor league hitters.”
Bussan is a 31-year-old instructor in the theater and cinema department at Dennison University in Granville, Ohio. He`s also a baseball fan, and when he found out recently that Young was born, lived and died not far from Granville, he decided to find out what he could about baseball`s winningest pitcher.
One thing he found out was that Young was a homebody. ”He was born in Gilmore, he farmed in Peoli and he died in Peoli,” said Bussan. Peoli is a section of Newcomerstown, and all these places are within a few miles of each other in eastern Ohio. The land Young lived on still is farmed, Bussan said, and Young is buried in a small country cemetery not far away.
According to Bussan, Young had gone to spring training with the Boston Braves in 1912, as he was turning 45 years old, but he didn`t make the team. After a year as a greeter in a Boston hotel, he came back to Ohio to farm. After his wife died in 1933, he moved from the farm and lived with friends until he died in 1955. He had no children.
Young switched leagues in 1901, the first year the AL claimed major league status. He had won ”only” 20 games in 1900 with St. Louis in the NL. With the Boston Red Sox in the American League, he won 33 in 1901, 32 in 1902 and 28 in 1903. In 1905 and 1906, when the league had better hitters and Young was approaching 40, he had losing records. But in the following two years, he won 43 games and lost 26.
Cy Young threw the very first pitch of the very first World Series game in 1903, against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Boston. He lost that game, but won the fifth and the seventh as the Red Sox won the first series five games to three.
He also lost the very last game he pitched in the major leagues, Busson said. It was in 1911, and Young was back in the National League with the Braves, and he lost a 1-0 pitcher`s duel to a 24-year-old rookie with the Philadelphia Phillies. The rookie`s name was Grover Cleveland Alexander.