Play Ball 2025! : Why We Love It !

It Makes Us Laugh

The fun of baseball stories never stops. Whether they feature characters like Dizzy Dean, Yogi Berra, and Satchel Paige or seen on TV shows like SNL and Seinfeld, they are an endless source of laughter. This week it’s the flakiest player of all – Rube Waddell, whom writer G.W. Braund labeled as the King of the Hall of Flakes.

Rube Waddell

We will have to go back to the early years of the twentieth century for Rube’s story. Although some of the stories of the distant past have most likely been exaggerated they are worth reporting. Rube was a fanatic, but also a great ball player. He played for five teams over thirteen seasons and won 191 games with an incredible ERA of 2.16, including leading the league in strikeouts for six consecutive seasons. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1946. However, his accomplishments were often overshadowed by his man-child erratic behavior.

He was a country boy who was obsessed with fire trucks and animals. He wore a fireman’s shirt under his uniform and was known to have left the pitcher’s mound ripping off his uniform shirt to chase after a passing firetruck. His obsession with animals drove him to shout animal sounds from the mound between pitches. In his youth, he worked in a circus wrestling alligators. He loved animal crackers and ate them while on the mound and in bed at nighttime. Once, he was ejected from a zoo after climbing a fence to play with bears. He also was arrested for allegedly stealing a pony. The fans loved him and he would often entertain them by walking to and from the mound on his hands. Listen to what teammate Sam “Wahoo” Crawford had this to say about Rube: (Source: Glory of Their Times)

You couldn’t control him because he was just a big kid. We’d have a big game on Sunday with posters all over town that the great Rube Waddell was going to pitch that day. The little park would be packed; everybody wanted to see Rube pitch, but half the time there would be no Rube. The manager would be having a fit. And then, just a few minutes before the game, there would be a commotion in the grandstand, and you’d hear people laughing and yelling, “Here comes, Rube! Here comes Rube! “

And there he’d come, right through the stands. He’d jump down onto the field, cut across the infield to the clubhouse, taking off his shirt as he went. In about three minutes ( he never wore any underwear) he’d run back out in uniform and yell “ All right, let’s go get ‘em”

The main thing you had to watch out for was not to get Rube mad. Hughie Jennings, our manager, used to go to the dime store and buy little toys like rubber snakes or a jack in the box. Standing in the first base box, he would set them in the grass and yell, “Hey Rube, look.” Rube would look over at the jack in the box and kind of grin real slow like you know. Yeah, we’d do anything to get him in a good mood.

Unfortunately, the fun did not last past Rube’s baseball career. Booze took Rube down the dangerous path to an early death at the age of 37.

In coming episodes, we will cite other crazies who have entertained us over the years, but it is hard to beat Rube for pure fun at the ballpark.

Tune in next week as we change the dialogue from fun and laughs to sad and tears.