Rube Waddell
American baseball player
Died when: 37 years 170 days (449 months)Star Sign: Libra
George Edward Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB).A left-hander, he played for 13 years, with the Louisville Colonels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago Orphans in the National League, as well as the Philadelphia Athletics and St.
Louis Browns in the American League.Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, and raised in Prospect, PA, Waddell was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.
Waddell is best remembered for his highly eccentric behavior, and for being a remarkably dominant strikeout pitcher in an era when batters were expert at making contact and avoiding making an out without putting a ball in play.
He had an excellent fastball, a sharp-breaking curveball, a screwball, and superb control; his strikeout-to-walk ratio was almost 3-to-1, and he led the major leagues in strikeouts for six consecutive years.