The other day my Dad took me out for lunch. Tagging along was a distant relative from BC who turned out to be very cool- a 20-year-old kid who came to Edmonton for a Clutch show. As we tried to ascertain how we were related, we had the following conversation:
Me: "So, who are you? My first cousin twice removed?"
Cousin: "Yeah, or something."
Dad: "No, he's my cousin's son, which makes him my first cousin once removed and your second cousin twice removed . . . or something."
Me: "Is your last name Waddell?"
Cousin: "Yeah"
Me: "Good enough for me."
Then we talked about how rarely you run into members of the Waddell clan- it isn't a hugely common name. I don't think I'll get any wrong numbers from sweet old ladies wondering if she had reached the home of Craig Waddell the famous hockey player.
However, there was one famous Waddell sports star- but he was a baseball player whose heydey was a century ago. His name was Rube. And he was an . . . interesting fellow.
Rube was a pitcher, playing most of his career under the legendary Connie Mack for the Philadelphia Athletics, and he was good enough to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame. Which is all great, but what's really cool about him is how strange he was- strange in a Homie Bear kind of way.
Apparently it was difficult to keep his mind focussed on the game. He was known to leave the pitcher's mound mid-inning to chase firetrucks. He had a penchant for going AWOL mid-season to go fishing- once showing up after five days, his team in the midst of a pennant-race, bearing catfish for Connie Mack. Sometimes he could even be found under the bleachers shooting marbles with the kids, drinking in a bar, playing in a park or leading a parade.
Rube was also known for pretending to be an autonomaton in store windows, long before the advent of living mannequins. He once wrestled an alligator. And he even is said to have saved a number of lives- one from a fire, and some others (no one seems to know for sure- 13 is one number but that's likely exaggerated) from drowning.
One time he poured cold water over his pitching arm, so that the heat from it wouldn't set his catcher's glove on fire. Speaking of his catcher, Ossee Schreckengost, one gets the impression he was a long-suffering sort. It's said he refused to renew his contract with the A's unless Mack made Rube stop eating crackers in bed (they roomed together on the road). But he got a measure of revenge when Rube, drunk, jumped out of a second story window and wound up in the hospital. "Why didn't you try to stop me?" Rube asked Ossee.
"And lose the hundred bucks I bet on you?"
Anyways, I don't know if we're related or not, but we have the same last name and that's good enough for me.
Rube Waddell's Hall of Fame page.
And someone wrote a book about him: Rube Waddell: The Zany, Brilliant Life of A Strikeout Artist