This Day in American History: Cy Young Wins His First Game
- ForAmerica
- Aug 6
- 2 min read
On this day in 1890, a 23-year-old Ohio farm boy in a too-small uniform took the mound for the first time -- and a Hall of Fame manager who'd scouted him wrote him off as "just another big farmer."
Denton True Young grew up on a farm in Gilmore, Ohio, leaving formal schooling after the sixth grade to work the land. He picked up his famous nickname pitching for a minor-league club in Canton in 1889, after his fastball tore boards off a grandstand during a tryout and someone remarked it looked like a cyclone had come through -- "Cyclone" got shortened to "Cy," and it stuck for the rest of his life. Chicago Colts star Cap Anson, scouting Young in Ohio, was unimpressed: "No good -- just another big farmer."
The Cleveland Spiders bought Young's contract anyway for $300 and a new suit for his minor-league manager, and on August 6, 1890, he made his major-league debut against Anson's Chicago Colts at Cleveland's League Park. Young threw a three-hitter and beat Chicago's 41-game winner Bill Hutchison, 8-1, for his first career victory. He won his next two starts as well, finishing that partial rookie season 9-7 -- the only Spider that year with a winning record on a team that went 44-88.
That first win was the opening entry in what became the most lopsided record in baseball history. Young pitched for 22 seasons, across five different teams, and retired in 1911 with 511 career victories -- a mark no pitcher has come within 90 wins of in more than a century since, and one that almost certainly never will be matched given how modern pitching workloads are managed. Major League Baseball's annual award for the best pitcher in each league has carried his name, the Cy Young Award, since 1956.
Also on this day:
1926 -- Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
1945 -- The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
1965 -- President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law.
1991 -- Comedian and actress Lucille Ball, born on this day in 1911, would have turned 80.
"Just another big farmer" went on to win more games than anyone who's ever pitched, before or since. Some scouting reports don't age well.
Source: Society for American Baseball Research, National Baseball Hall of Fame
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