The Cy Young Award
Cy Young: a legend of the game
Most baseball fans reading this have heard of the Cy Young Award, given annually to the National and American League pitchers voted by the Baseball Writers’ Association as the most outstanding of the year. (When the award began in 1956, it went to only one major league pitcher. That was changed in 1967,)
But do you know why it was named – deservedly -- for an Ohio farm boy born two years after the Civil War ended, whom nobody alive today ever saw throw a ball? Here’s why - by Norman L. Macht.
The Beginning
Denton True Young grew up on a farm near Gilmore, Ohio, doing all the year-round chores and heavy lifting a farm required. He grew and grew, reaching 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds, a giant stature for the times. When he wasn’t working or going to school, he enjoyed throwing things – rocks, nuts, homemade balls – at targets.
By the time he broke in with the minor league team in nearby Canton in 1890, he was throwing so hard, he splintered the fence behind the catcher and earned the nickname Cyclone, which became Cy, the only name he was known by for the rest of his life. Before the season was over, the Cleveland Spiders of the National League bought him for $250.
For most of his 22-year career, teams carried four starting pitchers who also relieved, and maybe one or two relievers. So every starter was a workhorse, though none was as hard-working for as many years as Young.
Jumping to the American League
In 1901 Young left Cleveland to join the Boston Pilgrims in the new American League. In the first World Series, in 1903, he pitched three complete games and relieved in a fourth, for a 2-1 record for the victorious Pilgrims. It was his only World Series.
Throughout his career, Young led a temporal life, working on the farm and hunting in the fields every winter. That’s how he was fit to face his greatest, most challenging complete game at the age of 38.
It was July 4, 1905. The Philadelphia Athletics were in Boston for the traditional morning/afternoon split doubleheader. Young started the afternoon game against Connie Mack’s 28-year-old flaky fastballer, Rube Waddell.
Boston scored 2 in the first. The A’s tied it in the 6th. None of the 12,666 spectators went home as the two pitchers matched zeroes from the 7th through the 19th inning.
In the top of the 20th, the A’s scored twice on 2 errors, a hit batter and a single. Waddell held on for the 4-2 win. Young had faced 75 batters, given up 12 hits, struck out 9 and not walked a single batter in the 3-hour 31-minute battle. Each pitcher had probably thrown well over 200 pitches.
The Cy Young award has been bestowed on many great pitchers
Years later Young recalled:
How did I feel when the scrap was over? Well, I thought it was all right until I hit the clubhouse. Then I all but keeled over. When I sat down and tried to get up it was as if there was a pain in every bone in my body.
Then, when I tried to take off my shoes, I hardly had strength to untie the laces. And what do you think the Rube as doing? There he was on the other side of the clubhouse turning flip-flops and smoking a cigarette.
Perhaps an evening greater testament to Young’s condition and stamina is the fact that only three days later, he started again, in Philadelphia against Waddell, and lost again, 2-1, in 10 innings.
It was fitting that the 44-year-old Young split his last season, 1911, between Cleveland and the Boston National League Rustlers, completing 12 of his 18 starts.
A new Mount Everest will be discovered before any pitcher equals or even comes anywhere close to Young’s 22-year achievements:
906 Games (815 Starts)
749 (92%) Complete Games
7356 Innings Pitched (averaging 338 per year for 22 years)
511- 315 W-L Record
And that’s why baseball’s top award for pitchers is named for Cy Young.
