Sid Hudson: Interview with a Baseball Lifer.
A 6-4 right-handed pitcher for the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox (1940-1954), Sid Hudson went directly from Class D minor leagues to the major leagues.
In his first big league start, he faced a Boston Red Sox lineup of Dom DiMaggio, Doc Cramer, Jimmy Foxx, Joe Cronin, Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr.
After his 104-152 active career, he was a scout, pitching coach, and coach at Baylor University, covering 56 years in baseball.
We sat with the 92-year-old Hudson and his wife and his scrapbooks and memories, at St. Catherine’s nursing home in Waco, Texas, on October 11, 2007. – Norman L. Macht
I was born in Coalfield, Tennessee, near Knoxville, on January 3, 1915.
I was pitching and playing first base in sandlot ball in 1938 and a fellow from Cleveland, Tennessee, was the manager of the Sanford club in the Class D Florida State League.
He saw me play and told me they needed a first baseman. “I’ll pay you $100 a month.”
'“Rawmeat” Rodgers
I said okay and he signed me. Scouts named as signing me had nothing to do with it. I hit well but we had a terrible team and they fired him and hired Bill “Rawmeat” Rodgers.
They called him that because he liked to eat raw steak. He brought a first baseman with him, so now I’m sitting on the bench.
One night we were getting beat pretty bad and he says to me, “You ever pitch?” I said, “Yeah, a little.” It was the eighth inning. He said, “Go in and see what you can do.”
I went in and struck out all six I faced and he said, “From now on you’re a pitcher.”
Everything I learned was from Rawmeat Rodgers.
He’d take me out to the ballpark in the morning and we’d go out to the mound and he’d talk to me about how to pitch, holding runners on, how to field the position, everything.
In 1939 I was back in Sanford and won 24, and pitched 27 complete games. Made $150 a month.
Getting a chance in the Major Leagues
Two weeks before the season ended, the owner told me, “I have a chance to sell you to the big leagues. Two teams want you, Cleveland and Washington. Take your choice.”
Cleveland had Feller, Harder, and a lot of good pitchers. I thought I’d never get a chance there. Washington had four knuckleballers. I chose Washington.
In spring training in 1940 I was thrilled walking into a major league clubhouse out of Class D. The newspapers said I was 22. I was really 25.
I don’t recall anyone suggesting I cut three years off my age. Maybe the man who signed the Sanford club owner who sold me to Washington did it. It wasn’t me.
I was warming up one day and the manager, Bucky Harris, walked up behind me and said, “Let’s see you throw a couple.”
Baseball lifer Sid Hudson when on the Senator’s roster
I cut loose two or three pitches. He said, “You’ll do,” turned and walked away.
I had a $3,000 salary. The Washington owner, Clark Griffith, was a nice guy. He tried to raise you each year. Next year I got $6,000, then $8,000.
Tops I made was $17,000. Mickey Vernon led the American League in hitting making $16,000. The way I understand it, he asked for $20,000.
Griffith told him, “I had the best pitcher who ever lived, Walter Johnson. That’s the most he ever made. You’re not worth that.”
On opening day I watched Lefty Grove shut us out. Two days later I started, walked five in the first four innings, then gave up a home run to Foxx in the fifth.
We lost, 7-0. But I never lost my poise. I made two plays fielding bunts. The Washington Post said I “pounced on ground balls and made brilliant throws to first.”
That was my fielding style on bunts. I ran full speed and jumped just as I got to the ball, picked it up and threw in the same motion.
I was 2 and 9 when I got a call from Clark Griffith to come to his office. Harris was there. Griffith says, “Sid, you’re having a rough time of it.
You aren’t throwing like you did back in spring training. You look like you’re trying to throw every pitch just as hard as you can throw it, and have no idea where it’s going.
“We think you can pitch here. You’ve got good enough stuff. Go out and show us that you can pitch.”
He was right. I threw a two-seam fastball -- had a tail on it, curve, and changeup. I tried to throw a slider but it hurt my arm.
I won five after that, including two one-hitters. In a night game in St. Louis, I knew I had a no-hitter going. I had a 1-0 lead.
The Washington Post said that in the eighth inning, first baseman Zeke Bonura saved a hit diving to his right for a hard-hit ball and threw to first.
I never saw Bonura dive for anything in his life.
In the ninth Rip Radcliff hit the first pitch two inches fair down the right field line for a double. I didn’t feel a letdown. I was in a 1-0 game.
McQuinn bunts, misses the ball and the catcher misses it. Now I’ve got a man on third and nobody out. I struck out McQuinn and got the next two batters.
I threw another one-hitter on August 6, a single in the fifth inning.
One day against Cleveland we were behind one run in the ninth against Bob Feller.
Feller had that high kick on the mound and when he did, he kept twitching his right eye and the hitters would get to watching that and they wished he’d quit it. I thought he did it deliberately.
We had our 3-4-5 hitters coming up. Feller threw nine fastballs and got three strikeouts. Bucky Harris said, “Pretty quick, isn’t he.”
Harris rated him behind Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove. The first time I pitched against him, the game was tied with two outs and a man on second.
The batter hit a fly to Gee Walker and he dropped it and I lost.
On September 2, I beat Grove, 1-0, in 13 innings. They had men in scoring position in seven of those innings. I had a good curve that day.
[Mrs. Hudson: The wives sat on the first base side just beyond the dugout. We had a good time, and just laughed off the fans’ booing.]
At the beginning of 1941 Phil Rizzuto said the Yankees were going to trade for me. Washington wanted $100,000 for me and they wouldn’t give it.
That year I lost a 13-inning game, 2-0, against the White Sox. They pulled a triple steal in the 13th. That was embarrassing.
Saved twice by Ted Williams
Ted Williams saved me from two losses in my career. In the 1941 All-Star Game, I went in in the seventh, gave up two runs, and was the losing pitcher until Ted hit his ninth-inning home run.
Twelve years later I’m with the Red Sox. We’re down, 1-0, to the Tigers in the eighth.
With Piersall on first and two outs, Ted patted me on the fanny, said, “I’ll hit that little slider into the right field seats for you and win you a game,” and he did.
Getting prasie from Joe DiMaggio
Joe DiMaggio paid me the best compliment I ever had. We finished the 1941 season in New York and I shut out the Yankees on four hits.
We stayed over to see a World Series game between the Yankees and Brooklyn. When the Series was over, reporters asked DiMaggio what he thought of the Dodgers’ pitching.
He said, “They didn’t have a pitcher that showed us the stuff Sid Hudson did in the last game of the season.”
In 1942 I got a call from Birdie Tebbetts asking me to come down to Waco Army Air Force Base and enlist and play ball for the base team.
That’s how I came to settle in Waco. I was 20-1 for the base team, then they sent us and another team to the Pacific. We wound up at Saipan.
What do Babe Ruth, Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower all have in common?
One day they chose a team of servicemen to play in New York against the Giants and Yankees at the Polo Grounds.
My CO in Waco said I could go if I would bring back Babe Ruth’s autograph. I carried an autograph book and before we got to the clubhouse, there was a little cubbyhole with a desk and a chair and there sits Babe Ruth.
We all stopped and he shook hands with every one of us and I asked him if he would sign my book. He said, “Sure,” and dumb me, I didn’t get one for myself.
But I do have four balls signed by presidents.
Richard Nixon was sitting behind the dugout one day and I asked him to sign a ball and he said, “Sure,” and I tossed it up to him.
Dwight Eisenhower came down to the clubhouse. Harry Truman and Gerald Ford threw out first pitches and I caught them and they signed them.
I came out of the service with a sore arm. I led calisthenics for cadets five times a day five days a week. When I came out I couldn’t throw. I pitched in ’46 and ’47 with a sore arm.
Then they found a spur on my shoulder. Doctors at Johns Hopkins said it came from excessive use from all those callisthenics, plus throwing with a ¾ motion.
They told me to throw sidearm. It took me two years to come back.
A Career change to scouting then coaching
I was released in the spring of 1955 and scouted for the Red Sox for five years in Texas and New Mexico. Didn’t like it, traveling every day looking for a ball game.
Jerry Mallett played at Baylor, good arm, power. Joe Cronin said bring him to Boston. I did and he hit balls over all the fences. Cronin wanted to see him throw.
They hit one to him in the outfield and he threw it on a line to home plate. They signed him, gave him $70,000. He got into four games with Boston. I figure he didn’t have it inside him.
When Mickey Vernon managed the new Washington team, I was his pitching coach. I did the same for four years for Ted Williams in Washington and then the Texas Rangers.
Williams was fun to coach for. One day I said to one of our young pitchers, “If you get a first-pitch strike on [Orioles first baseman] Boog Powell, drop down a little and throw from there.”
He did, and Boog hit that ball over the right field fence. After the game Williams has the kid In his office reaming him out, wagging a finger in his face about pitching that way.
I went in there and said, “Ted, it’s not his fault. I told him to throw that way.”
He didn’t look up or say anything, just kept giving this kid a going over. I turned and walked out.
The next day we’re at the ballpark early and he calls me into his office and said, “You got piqued at me yesterday, didn’t you.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, that’s just the way I like it.”
I worked for the Rangers for 25 years, scouting, and coaching.
Fifty-six years in baseball.
