Rube Waddell

"George Edward Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American southpaw pitcher in Major League Baseball. In his thirteen-year career he played for the Louisville Colonels (1897, 1899), Pittsburgh Pirates (1900–01) and Chicago Orphans (1901) in the National League, and the Philadelphia Athletics (1902–07) and St. Louis Browns (1908–10) in the American League. Waddell earned the nickname 'Rube' because he was a big, fresh kid. The term was commonly used to refer to hayseeds or farmboys. He was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Waddell was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. Waddell, a remarkably dominant strikeout pitcher in an era when batters mostly slapped at the ball to get singles, had an excellent fastball, a sharp-breaking curve, a screwball, and superb control (his strikeout-to-walk ratio was almost 3-to-1)."
Wikipedia

"Legend: Rube Waddell was the first pitcher in major league history to strike out three hitters in one inning on only nine pitches. Fact: On July 1, 1902, in his first home appearance as a Philadelphia Athletic, Rube Waddell struck out three Baltimore batters in the third inning on only nine pitches, the first documented case of a 'perfect inning.' The feat is even more amazing when you consider the American League had not yet adopted the 'foul strike rule.' Rube The Screenplay. 'Rube' is the incredible true story of the most colorful character in the annals of American sports. George Edward 'Rube' Waddell was consummate 'Peter Pan,' a child's mentality trapped in a giant, powerful body. Rube, the screenplay, has the elements of a classic Greek tragedy, with Rube Waddell cast as the classical, flawed mythological hero - he had an 'Achilles brain.'"
Rube Waddell

SABR: "He entered this world on Friday the 13th and exited on April Fools Day. In the 37 intervening years, Rube Waddell struck out more batters, frustrated more managers and attracted more fans than any pitcher of his era. An imposing physical specimen for his day, the 6'1", 196-pound Waddell possessed the intellectual and emotional maturity of a child--although a very precocious and engaging one at that. 'There was delicious humor in many of his vagaries, a vagabond impudence and ingenuousness that made them attractive to the public,' wrote the Columbus Dispatch. Waddell's on- and off-field exploits became instant legends."
SABR

Rube Waddell: Pitching Giant, Mental Midget
"... Charles Edward 'Rube' Waddell was born in the small, farming community of Bradford, Pennsylvania on October 13, 1876. He died of either pneumonia, tuberculosis, or (depending on your sources) the cumulative effects of lifelong alcoholism on April 1, 1914. In the intervening 38 years, he achieved immortality as America's greatest southpaw pitcher, alligator wrestler, firetruck chaser, actor, bigamist, obsessive fisherman, rugby player, baton-twirling parade leader, Herculean drinker and philanthropic live-saving hero. Perhaps the flakiest, and most undependable major league star of all time, 'The Rube' was known to show up drunk for games regularly. His teams would usually play the soused Waddell anyway; with Rube generally pitching brilliantly, but fielding horribly. His penchant for holding marathon marbles sessions with street urchins caused him to be continually late for games. He was prone to running off the mound (and out of the stadium!), mid-windup, in pursuit of passing fire engines. He would often disappear for weeks at a time (once, at the height of the 1905 pennant race), only to reappear with offerings of catfish for his irate managers."
Rube Waddell: Pitching Giant, Mental Midget by the venerable Garrick H.S. Brown

Rube Waddell: The Peter Pan of Baseball - John Thorn
"George Edward 'Rube' Waddell was baseball's most kaleidoscopic character. In 1903 he began the year sleeping in a firehouse at Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in Wheeling, West Virginia. 'In between those events,' wrote Lee Allen, 'he won twenty-two games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end for the Business Men's Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married, and separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand, and was bitten by a lion.' The stories go on and on about this wild and crazy guy and, remarkably, most of them are true. Playing marbles under the stands at game time while his teammates searched for their starting pitcher; being paid his year's salary of $2,200 in one-dollar bills because he was so impulsive a spender; hurling both ends of a doubleheader just so that he could get a few days off to go fishing; calling his outfielders to the sidelines, then striking out the batter."
Mr. Baseball

Young Rube Waddell
"George Edward Waddell, called Eddie, was born in October 1876 in Bradford, Pennsylvania near the New York border. As a teenager, he moved with his family to a farm in the town of Prospect, north of Pittsburgh in Butler County. In his youth, he attended school and worked the fields. Part of his responsibilities included chasing off crows who fed on the harvest. He did so with rocks, becoming proficient in both accuracy and sheer force. Growing to over six feet and weighing around 200 pounds, Eddie would later intimidate batters as he did the scavenger birds. In 1895 at age 18, Waddell joined the Butler team, a mediocre club which held contests with other local nines. It wouldn’t be long before the rest of the state and Organized Baseball started hearing about this impressive lefty who sent more than his share of batters back to the bench. He would soon be known as the first great lefthanded strikeout pitcher."
Baseball History

amazon: Rube Waddell: The Zany, Brilliant Life of a Strikeout Artist