Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
Awards and Accomplishments
1895 Won Temple Cup, forerunner of World Series, with Cleveland
1901 Led American League in wins, strikeouts, and ERA
1903 Won first modern World Series, with Boston
1911 Earned his 511th win, an all-time record
1937 Inducted into National Baseball Hall of Fame
Strength and Stamina
In 1893, to generate more offense, baseball owners
increased the distance between the pitcher and home
plate by five feet to the current 60 feet, 6 inches. The
change ended the careers of many pitchers, who found
their pitches ineffective once batters had more time to
see them, or who threw too hard and wore out their
arms. Young was one of the few pitchers who did as well
after the change as before. His thirty-two wins in 1893
were the second highest in the league. His 1894 record
of 25-22 was decent, though weighed down by an endof-season
slump. In 1895, his thirty-five wins led the
league, and the Spiders finished in second place. In the
post-season Temple Cup championship, Young posted
three wins as the Spiders beat the first-place Baltimore
Orioles, four games to one.
His strength gave him a stamina few other pitchers
had. At 6 foot 2 and 210 pounds, he was one of the
league’s strongest men. Every year, when baseball season
was over, he’d go back to his farm to milk the cows
and chop wood. He claimed he never had a sore arm.
Early in his career, Young was a wild thrower, but over
the years he acquired more and more control, and
walked fewer and fewer batters. He had a great fastball,
and he could fool hitters too. “What very few batters
knew was that I had two curves,” he once said, according
to Rich Westcott’s book Winningest Pitchers. “One
of them sailed in there as hard as my fastball and broke
in reverse. It was a narrow curve that broke away from
the batter and went in just like a fastball. The other was
a wide break.”
Young was one of three pitchers who dominated
the 1890s, along with Kid Nichols and Amos Rusie.
His statistics dropped a bit in the late part of the
decade as the Spiders’ fortunes declined, but he still
turned in his first major-league no-hitter in 1897, a 6-
0 victory against Cincinnati.
At the end of 1898, after the Spiders suffered from
falling attendance and a dispute with Cleveland authorities
over playing home games on Sundays, team owner
Frank Robison moved Young and all the Spiders’ other
top players to his other team, the St. Louis Cardinals.
Young compiled a record of 26-16 in St. Louis in 1899,
but the Cardinals finished fifth in the league. In 1900, at
age 33, Young had a mediocre year, with a 19-18 record.
Speculation spread that his career was almost over.
Related Biography: Baseball Player Kid Nichols
Young
Charles (Kid) Nichols, Cy Young’s rival for the title of best pitcher of
the 1890s, won thirty games in seven different seasons, a record no one
has ever equaled. His career began soon after the 1884 rule change allowing
overhand pitches, and he became one of baseball’s first fastball pitchers.
For most of his career, in fact, his fastball was his only pitch. It was
enough, because he also had great control. He rarely walked anyone unless
he meant to.
Born in 1869, Nichols started pitching for the Kansas City Cowboys
of the Western League at age seventeen. He compiled an 18-13 record, yet
team management released him because they thought he was too young.
Stuck with the nickname “Kid,” he bounced around the minors for a few
years, until his amazing 39-8 record with Omaha of the Western League in
1889 earned him a place on the major-league Boston Beaneaters’ roster. He
won twenty-seven games his rookie season, and went on to lead Boston to
three straight pennants in 1891-93 and two more in 1897 and 1898. He
won 297 games in all during the 1890s, and the Sporting News named him
that decade’s best pitcher.
During 1900 and 1901, his winning percentage dropped to about
.500, and Nichols left Boston rather than accept a small contract offer. He
became co-owner and player-manager of the Kansas City Blue Stockings in
the Western League. He returned to the National League in 1904 as playermanager
of the St. Louis Cardinals, and he amassed a 21-13 record that
year, but his team finished fifth, and he was fired early in the 1905 season.
He finished his career with the Philadelphia Phillies, retiring in 1906 at age
thirty-six.
Nichols moved back to Kansas City, got involved in several businesses,
and became a champion bowler. He was elected to the National Baseball
Hall of Fame in 1949 and died in 1953.
Star of the American League
When the American League declared itself a major
league in 1901, Young left St. Louis and signed with
the Boston Pilgrims, who offered him several hundred
dollars more than the National League’s salary cap of
$2,400. Young dispelled the talk that he was washed
up, and became one of the new league’s biggest stars.
He led the league in 1901 with thirty-three wins, 158
strikeouts, and an earned run average of 1.62. The
next two years, he also led the A.L. in wins. In 1903,
he pitched three straight 1-0 shutouts, including the
game that clinched the pennant for Boston. That year,
Boston played Pittsburgh, the National League champions,
in the first modern World Series. Young lost the
first game of the series, but won the fifth and the seventh,
and Boston went on to win the series, five games
to three.
In 1904, he was just as good. He pitched the first perfect
game in the 1900s on May 5, beating the Philadelphia
A’s 3-0. It was part of twenty-three consecutive
hitless innings, still a record: six innings in two relief
appearances, the perfect game, and the first six innings
of the next game he pitched. He shut out Boston’s opponents
ten times that year, including three toward the end
of the pennant race with New York, which Boston won
on the last game of the season.
The Pilgrims slipped from contention for a few years,
and Young’s record suffered. In 1905, he struck out 208
batters, the most of his career, but his record was only
1817