hope everyone had a nice opening day. i spent the day re-reading the wikipedia entry for rube waddell, my favorite player of all time.
worth noting that the only reason we know about rube waddell is that he was so good he would routinely *wave his teammates off the field* and then strike out the side
rube waddell& #39;s life was so wild that wikipedia just tosses off these kinds of facts with no follow-up
picture this: you& #39;re rube waddell& #39;s manager. rube shows up at your hotel at 1am offering you a pazzazza sandwich. wyd?
this baseball magazine article from 1917 describes a single night in which rube:
- snuck backstage at a play and fired a gun 40 times
- got attacked by a lion after "insulting" it (?)
- told the police his injuries were from fighting off "highwaymen," was declared a hero
- snuck backstage at a play and fired a gun 40 times
- got attacked by a lion after "insulting" it (?)
- told the police his injuries were from fighting off "highwaymen," was declared a hero
(those screenshots are taken from a great article by @Just_Mckinney about the rube waddell lion biting incident: https://medium.com/@BaseballObscura/that-time-baseball-hall-of-famer-rube-waddell-got-bitten-by-a-lion-7de00416f73d)">https://medium.com/@Baseball...
rube waddell died as he lived: smoking a pipe, whispering "hello you dutchman" with his final breaths. he was born on october 13, 1876 (friday the 13th) and died on april 1, 1907 (april fool& #39;s day). i love him.