Edward Marvin Reulbach, nicknamed “Big Ed”, was born December 1, 1882 in Detroit, MI.
Reulback employed the technique of “shadowing” hiding the ball in his windup and had what was generally regarded as the finest curve ball in either league to become one baseball’s most difficult pitchers to hit.
Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 39 of the 2010 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of September.
September 26
1908 Ed Reulbach pitches two shutouts in the same day whitewashing Brooklyn 5-0 on a five-hitter and 3-0 on a three-hitter. The entire doubleheader is played in less than three hours.
Edward Marvin Reulbach, nicknamed “Big Ed”, was born December 1, 1882 in Detroit, MI.
Reulback employed the technique of “shadowing” hiding the ball in his windup and had what was generally regarded as the finest curve ball in either league to become one baseball’s most difficult pitchers to hit.
Eighteen-year-old Ed was already a veteran of one minor-league season when he enrolled at the University of Notre Dame in the fall of 1901. Returning to pitch in the minors for each of the next two summers, Ed became Notre Dame’s star outfielder and pitcher, breaking the college’s single-season record for strikeouts in 1904 and never yielding more than six hits in a game that season.
In June his teammates elected him Captain for 1905 but fate had something else in store for Reulbach. While pitching in Vermont’s Northern League, he met and fell in love with his future bride, “Nellie” Whelan. To be closer to Nellie, Ed decided to forego his senior year at Notre Dame and enroll in medical school at the University of Vermont. In the spring he became the star of the UVM baseball team, batting cleanup and playing left field when he wasn’t pitching.
Newspapers called Reulbach the “greatest of all college pitchers,” and on May 12, after winning his fourth start, 1-0, against Syracuse, he received an offer from the Chicago Cubs that, according to the Burlington Free Press, “would take the breath away from an average person.” That night, accompanied by a large group of students, he caught a train to New York.
Four days later he made his major-league debut at the Polo Grounds against the reigning National League champion New York Giants, tossing a complete game and giving up only five hits in a 4-0 loss. Nine days after later he earned his first victory, entering in the second inning and yielding five hits and no runs the rest of the way as the Cubs rallied to beat the Phillies, 9-4.
Perhaps Ed’s most impressive performance came against the Phillies on August 24, when he went the distance to defeat Tully Sparks, 2-1, in a 20-inning game. For the 1905 season the 22-year-old rookie posted an 18-14 record and a 1.42 Earned Run Average.
In 1906 he pitched 12 games of five hits or fewer, not including the one-hitter he threw against the White Sox in Game Two of that year’s World Series. He started a 17-game personal winning streak that didn’t end until June 29, 1907, when Deacon Phillippe defeated him, 2-1. It was the post-1900 record for consecutive victories until Rube Marquard broke it in 1911-12, and it remains the fourth-longest streak in history.
Reulbach also set an National League record with 44 consecutive scoreless innings late in the 1908 season and on September 26, 1908, he became the only pitcher ever to throw a doubleheader shutout.
He led the league in winning percentage each season from 1906 to 1908, a feat matched only by Lefty Grove.
On May 30, 1909, Reulbach went on a 14-game winning streak, becoming the only 20th-century National League pitcher with two winning streaks as long as 14 games. He defeated every National League team, including five wins over the Brooklyn Superbas, before he lost again on August 14. A November 1913 article in Baseball Magazine judged Reulbach’s 1909 streak the most impressive in history; in 14 games he surrendered only 14 runs, giving up three on one occasion, while pitching five shutouts and five one-run games.
Reulbach’s magnificent five-year run finally ended in 1910, when he tailed off to a 12 and 8 won/loss record with a 3.12 Earned Run Average in only 173.1 innings. He and Nellie had one child and Ed missed part of the season to be at his son’s bedside during an attack of diptheria.
Reulbach improved to 16-9 with a 2.96 Earned Run Average in 1911, but the following year his record dipped to 10-6 while his Earned Run Average ballooned to 3.78.
In July 1913, with his record a mere 1-3 to go along with a 4.42 Earned Run Average, the Cubs practically gave him to Brooklyn for cash and a mediocre pitcher named Eddie Stack. In his first six days with his new team, Reulbach proved that he still could pitch by giving up only two hits in 16 innings. Over the second half he posted a 7-6 record and 2.05 Earned Run Average, but the most telling sign that he had returned to form was his ratio of 6.30 hits per nine innings.
Reulbach’s stellar second half earned him the starting assignment on Opening Day 1914, when he defeated that year’s eventual World Series Champions, the Boston Braves. Despite his 11-18 record, the veteran right-hander was Brooklyn’s second-best pitcher in 1914, compiling a 2.64 Earned Run Average.
Off the field, Reulbach was the secretary and one of the founding members of the short-lived Baseball Players’ Fraternity. One of his ideas was for major leaguers to sign a pledge of total abstinence from alcohol. His efforts to raise player salaries were more popular with his colleagues, but it may have cost him his job with Brooklyn.
One day during the 1914 season, owner Charlie Ebbets offered team captain Jake Daubert a $500 raise for the coming year. An excited Daubert told Reulbach while the team was en route to Chicago, but Ed advised Jake not to sign right away, figuring that the Federal League would offer even more when the train arrived in Chicago. Daubert refused to sign until Ebbets increased his offer to $9,000 per year for five years, a whopping raise of $5,000 per year.
Reulbach himself was offered a big contract from the Feds, possibly as an incentive to induce other teammates to sign, but he declined. He ended up signing with the Feds anyway because Ebbets released him after learning that he was a ringleader in the movement to raise salaries, and (perhaps not coincidentally) no other National League team offered him a contract.
With the Federal League’s Newark Peps, Reulbach put together one last outstanding season in 1915, going 21-10 with a 2.23 Earned Run Average. Among that year’s highlights were his Opening Day triumph over Chief Bender and his 12-inning win over former Cubs teammate Mordecai Brown. Reulbach also pitched and won the final game in Federal League history, defeating the Baltimore Terrapins, 6-0, in the second game of an October 3 doubleheader.
The Pittsburgh Pirates acquired the rights to the big right-hander in the Federal League dispersal draft but sold him to the Boston Braves just before the start of the 1916 season. Reulbach pitched mostly in relief for the Braves over the next season and a half before ending his career in baseball with Providence of the International League in 1917.
Reulbach gave up fewer hits than innings pitched in each of his 13 seasons, a feat that was never accomplished by any pitcher in the Hall of Fame. Christy Mathewson and Cy Young also did it 13 times, but they pitched 17 and 22 seasons, respectively.
Despite statistics that compare with those of Sandy Koufax, who also pitched in a pitching-oriented era, Reulbach never received a single vote for the Hall of Fame. Perhaps one of the factors that prevented him from receiving more consideration was his occasional lack of control. In 1920 Reulbach revealed to Hugh Fullerton a secret that he’d been keeping for two decades: he had a weak left eye, which not only interfered with his ability to field balls hit to his left, but also sometimes made him wild.
Ruelbach later recalled, “There were times when the weak eye was worse than usual, especially on hot, gray days, or when the dust was blowing from the field. Lots of times the sweat and heat would affect the good eye and I’d have to figure out where the plate was.” Reulbach said that his teammates never suspected the problem; he didn’t even inform his own catchers so they could give him a special target.
According to J.C. Kofoed of Baseball Magazine, Big Ed Reulbach was “one of the greatest pitchers that the National League ever produced, and one of the finest, clean-cut gentlemen who ever wore a big league uniform.”
Reulbach’s post-baseball years weren’t happy ones. He spent a fortune trying to save the life of his constantly ill son, who ended up dying anyway in 1931. An article in the Chicago Tribune the following year referred to Reulback at age 50 as a “sad and lonely man.”
Considered one of baseball’s brainiest during his playing days, teammate Johnny Evers claimed that Ed was “always five years ahead of his time in baseball thought.”
Ed Reulbach died on July 17, 1961, in Glens Falls, New York at age 78.
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Cappy Gagnon. It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: C
Career year
The best season of a player’s career; a season as statistically good as a particular player can expect to have during his playing years.
In the Sept. 9, 1996 edition of Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci defined the term as “when a player exceeds his well-established statistical norms.”
If you would like to a part of Baseball History Podcast, submit your written contribution for the tour segment. I will only be doing the tour when one is sent in by a listener. You can do the segment on any stadium or team; past or present; Minor League, Major League, Negro League or any league outside of the US. Write about 1 page in a conversational tone, send it to me, I will record it, and you will get the credit.
You can email me at baseballhistory@gmail.com.
You can follow me on Twitter; I’m BaseballHistory.
Look for the new BHP web site at Baseball History Podcast at baseballhistorypodcast.com.
Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
