Cy Young

For the Disney animator, see Cy Young (animator).

For the Major League Baseball award, see Cy Young Award.

Denton True "Cy" Young (March 29, 1867 – November 4, 1955) was an American baseball player who pitched professionally for five different major league teams from 1890 to 1911, primarily in Cleveland and Boston. He set several records during his 22-year career and retired with 511 Major League Baseball (MLB) career wins, the most in MLB history and 94 more wins than runner-up Walter Johnson.

In recognition of Young's contributions to Major League Baseball, MLB created the Cy Young Award, an annual honor given to the pitcher voted the most effective in each of the two leagues. The Baseball Hall of Fame elected Young in 1937. Young won at least 30 games in a season five times, with ten other seasons of 20+ wins. He also pitched three no-hitters, including a perfect game.

Young established himself as not only one of the game's great pitchers, but unquestionably its greatest "workhorse". In addition to wins, Young also holds the MLB records for most career innings pitched (7,355); games started (815); and complete games (749). He also retired with 316 losses, the most in MLB history. The only other pitcher with more than 300 career losses is Pud Galvin. Young's 827 career decisions record (wins plus losses) are over 100 more than Walter Johnson's. Young also had 76 career shutouts, fourth most in history.

In 1999, 88 years after his final major league appearance and 44 years after his death, the The Sporting News' ranked Cy Young 14th on its list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players". That same year, baseball fans named Young to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

Early life

Denton Young was born in Gilmore, Ohio, a farming community located in the easter portion of Ohio. Early on, he went by the name Dent Young.

Professional career

Young began his professional career in 1889 with the Canton, Ohio team of the Tri-State League. After Young tried out, the catcher who warmed up Young gave him the nickname "Cyclone" in reference to the speed of his fastball. Reporters then shortened the name to "Cy" and that was the nickname he used the rest of his life. In his one-year with the team, he won 15 games and lost 15 games. In 1890, Young signed for $500 with the Cleveland Spiders of the National League.

On August 6, 1890, in his first major league start, Young pitched a 3-hit shutout.. In games Young started while with the Spiders, Chief Zimmer was the catcher more times than any other player. Bill James, a noted baseball statistician, estimated that the Young-Zimmer battery appeared more times than any other battery in baseball history. On the last day of the 1890 season, Young won both games of a doubleheader.

For fourteen consecutive years, from 1893 through 1906, Young led his leagues in fewest walks per nine innings thirteen times, and finished second the other season. Only twice in his 22-year career did Young finish lower than 6th in the category.

In 1895, the Spiders faced the Baltimore Orioles in the Temple Cup, a precursor to the World Series. Young was the star pitcher and he recorded three victories in the series. Cleveland took the Temple Cup four games to one.

In July, 1896, Young lost a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning when he allowed a single to Philadelphia's Ed Delahanty. On September 18, 1897, Young pitched the first no-hitter of his career in a game against the Cincinatti Reds. Although Young did not walk a batter, the Spiders committed four errors while on defense. One of the errors had originally been ruled a hit, but the Cleveland third baseman sent a note to the press box after the eighth inning, saying he had made an error, and the call was changed. Young later said that despite his teammate's gesture, he considered the game to be a one-hitter.

In 1899, the Cleveland Spiders ownership also took over control of the St. Louis Perfectos. A mass redistribution of talent occurred, with most of Cleveland's talent being shipped to St. Louis, including Cy Young. The remnants of the Spiders team went on to have the worst year in baseball history, losing 134 of 154 games. Young played for St. Louis in 1899 and 1900, although by 1900, the team had been renamed as the Cardinals.

In 1901, he left St. Louis to join the American League, which was elevated to Major League status that year. The move revived his career, which had been more ordinary in his last few NL seasons. He signed a $3,500 contract with the Boston Americans, and spent the next seven seasons with the franchise. In his first season with the Americans, Young earned the AL Triple Crown for Pitchers when he led all pitchers in the league with 33 wins, 158 strike outs, and a 1.62 ERA. Young won almost 42% of Boston's games in 1901, a record which would stand for over seventy years until broken by Steve Carlton's 27-10 record for a 59-win Phillies team.

Before the 1902 season, Young served as a pitching coach at Harvard University. Much was made in the Boston press of a man with a sixth-grade education traveling to such a lofty destination.

In 1903, Young was a member of the Boston Americans that won the AL pennant, thus reaching the first-ever Major League Baseball World Series. Young threw the first pitch in World Series history. Although he lost the first game to the Pittsburgh Pirates, he won two others, and Boston won the Series, five games to three. Young even drove in three runs in Game Five, an 11-2 victory.

On May 2, 1904, the Philadelphia A's star pitcher Rube Waddell one-hit Boston, and taunted Young to face him so that he could do the same to Boston's ace. The matchup occurred three days later, but the results were not what Waddell had hoped for.

Waddell had picked an inauspicious time to issue his challenge. Young pitched a perfect game on May 5, 1904 in Boston, against the Philadelphia Athletics. It was the first perfect game in American League history. Waddell was the 27th and last batter, and when he flied out, Young shouted, "How do you like that, you hayseed?" In 1905, Waddell got a measure of revenge, beating Young in a 20-inning matchup. In 1907, the two pitchers faced off in a scoreless 13-inning tie.

Waddell had picked an inauspicious time to issue his challenge. Young's perfect game was the centerpiece of a sterling pitching streak. Young set major league records for both the most consecutive scoreless innings pitched, and for the most consecutive innings without allowing a hit; the latter record still stands at 24.3 innings, or 73 hitless batters. Even after allowing a hit, Young's scoreless streak reached 45 shutout innings, a record not broken until 1968.

Subsequent research has shown that Young was credited with an extra win in 1907. He entered a game in relief, with the Red Sox already holding a 6-4 lead, but was awarded the victory by the scorer. An appeal to baseball's rules committee many decades later failed to correct the decision. "If I hadn't been dealing with an immortal like Cy Young," said SABR's Frank Williams, "I think I probably would have gotten the switchover to [Ralph] Glaze," the pitcher who'd preceded Young. Young also went 3-3 as an interim player/manager for the Boston team, a role he did not relish.

On June 30, 1908, Young pitched the third no-hitter of his career, while coming close to his second perfect game. Young walked the leadoff hitter for New York, who was then caught stealing. No other batter reached base. Young also drove in four runs in the game, which was his second near-perfect game in a month; on May 30th, he'd allowed just one single while facing 28 batters. Three months past his 41st birthday, Cy Young is the oldest pitcher to record a no-hitter, a record which would stand 82 years until 43-year-old Nolan Ryan achieved the feat.

Young was honored on August 13, 1908. No American League games were played on that day and a group of All-Stars from the league's other teams gathered in Boston to play against Young and the Red Sox.

Young was traded back to Cleveland before the 1909 season, this time to the Cleveland Naps of the American League. He split 1911, his final year, between the Naps and the Boston Rustlers.

On September 22, 1911, Young shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates and their pitcher Babe Adams 1-0, for his last career victory. But two weeks later, Young's 906th and final game was one to forget: the last eight batters Young faced hit combined to hit one triple, four singles and three doubles.

Young's legacy

For nineteen consecutive years, from 1891 through 1909, Cy Young was in his leagues' top ten for innings pitched; in fourteen of the seasons, he was in the top five. Not until 1900, a decade into his career, did Young pitch two consecutive incomplete games.

Young retired after the season with 511 career wins. At the time, his total was 147 more wins than the runner-up, Pud Galvin. Walter Johnson, then in his fourth season, would eventually become second on the all-time list with 417 wins. Johnson would break Young's career record for strikeouts a decade after Young's retirement.

Cy Young's unreachable win total was underscored one day, many years after his retirement. As Young told the story to a reporter, a man seemed to recognize him, and asked, "Did you used to play baseball?" Young replied, "Mister, I won more games than you'll ever see." Cy Young was a bridge from baseball's earliest days to its modern era; he pitched against stars such as Cap Anson, already an established player when the National League was first formed in 1876, as well as against Eddie Collins, who played until 1930. When Young's career began, pitchers delivered the baseball underhand and fouls were not counted as strikes. The pitcher's mound was not moved back to its present position of 60 feet, six inches until Young's fourth season; he did not wear a glove until his sixth.

Young led his leagues in wins five times (1892, 1895, and 1901-1903), finishing second twice. His career high was 36 in 1892. He had fifteen seasons with twenty or more wins, two more than the runners-up, Christy Mathewson and Warren Spahn. Young won two ERA titles during his career, in 1892 (1.93) and in 1901 (1.62), and was three times the runner-up. Young's earned run average was below 2.00 six times, but this was not uncommon during the dead ball era. Another example of the period is that Young threw over 400 innings in each of his first four full seasons, but did not lead his league until 1902. He had over 40 complete games in nine seasons. Young also led his league in strikeouts twice (with 140 in 1896, and 158 in 1901), and in shutouts nine times.

Although the WHIP ratio was not calculated until well after Young's death, his control was well-known during his lifetime; Young was the retroactive league leader in this category seven times, and was second or third another seven times.

Young only took a minimal number of warmup throws before a game, feeling that he had a certain number of pitches in his arm. He credited his offseason farming chores, including wood chopping, with keeping his pitching strength in good shape until he was 44. Even at his retirement, his arm was healthy, but Young had gained weight and was unable to field his position anymore. In three of his last four years, he was the oldest player in the league.

The first Cy Young Award was voted on in 1956, and was given to Brooklyn's Don Newcombe. Originally, it was a single award covering the whole of baseball. The honor was divided into two Cy Young Awards in 1967, one for each league.

Young is still the Boston Red Sox' all-time leader in wins with 192, a total which was tied but not surpassed by Roger Clemens in 1996. Clemens has won more Cy Young Awards than any other pitcher.

Decades later, some Cy Young Award winners were unaware of Young's accomplishments, not terribly surprising considering the amount of time that had passed. When Fernando Valenzuela was presented with the Cy Young Award in 1981, he admitted that he had never heard of Cy Young, but said that Young had to have been quite famous himself to have an award named for him. 1968 winner Denny McLain, baseball's last 30-game winner, was impressed to hear that Young had surpassed that total five times.

Young was saluted in the poem "Lineup for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:

Y is for Young,
The magnificent Cy;
People batted against him,
But I never knew why.

See also

• Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame
• List of MLB individual streaks

External links

• Career statistics from MLB  · ESPN  · Baseball Reference · Fangraphs  · Baseball Reference (Minors)  · Retrosheet
• Cy Young managerial career statistics at Baseball-Reference.com
• Cy Young at the Baseball Hall of Fame
• cmgworldwide.com official homepage

Accomplishments