Iron Man

One summer afternoon in 1890, a gawky farm hand named Denton True Young came down from "the Ohio hills to try out as a pitcher for the Canton baseball team of the Tri-State League. He had no uniform, and the Canton manager did not even bother to use a catcher. One of the team's best batters simply stood in front of the grandstand, and the kid started firing the ball past him. The batter never got a piece of it, and the big farmer's fast ball almost tore up the grandstand backboard. "Looks like a cyclone hit it," said the Canton manager. "Cyclone" Young had earned a nickname and a place in organized ball.

That summer Cy Young pitched 26 full games and finished ten others. A little later the league folded, and Canton's owner got a new suit of clothes for trading Cy to Cleveland, then in the National League.

No Fancy Stuff. Even in that era of iron men, the 6 ft. 2 in., 210 Ib. fireballer was a standout. In 22 years divided between Cleveland, St. Louis and Boston in the National League, and Boston and Cleveland in the American League, he started in 874 games and won 511. Cy always claimed that he had won 512; either way his record is still unbroken. Unbroken also is his record of appearing in a total of 906 games, his lifetime pitching average of .619, his losing record of 315, and the astonishing record of 23 consecutive hitless innings he pitched in 1904. In 14 seasons he won 20 or more games; for five seasons he won more than 30. Only the late great Walter Johnson, who fanned 3,497 batters in his lifetime, broke Cy's strike-out mark of 2,836. In 1904, pitching for Boston against Philadelphia, Cy became the third pitcher in major-league history to pitch a perfect game.*

As a big-league ball player, Cy never earned more than $2,500 a season, but he thought nothing of working in both halves of a double header. He never bothered much with fancy stuff--never threw a spitter even though it was legal, never relaxed with a change of pace. He relied on his fast ball and a variety of tricky curves.

The Boys Are Bunting. No matter how often he pitched, Cy Young could always hold his own with the best of his day. Rube Waddell of the old Athletics, Cleveland's Addie Joss, Ed Walsh of the White Sox, Amos Rusie of the Giants, Washington's Walter Johnson--sooner or later, Cy Young matched them all. In 1911 when he played for Boston, Cy's rubber right arm was still strong, but his legs were slowing down. "The boys are bunting on me," he said. "When the third baseman has to start doing my work, it's time to quit."

So Cy Young retired to his farm near Peoli, Ohio. For a short, sad period in the 19303, he hit the road again with a team of baseball has-beens, playing the tank towns for coffee and cake. It was a losing effort from the start. In 1937, he was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame. After that Cyclone Young was content--and he was really retired.

The mail he got from his fans and old cronies was all that kept the little post office of Peoli going. It was enough to keep Cy Young's memories of baseball alive until he died in his rocking chair last week at the age of 88.

* The others, before him, John Lee Richmond and John Ward in 1880; since Young: Adrian Joss, 1908, Ernest Shore, 1917, Charles Robertson, 1922.

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