Why was Cy Young so awesome?
If I’m understanding you right (and I hope I am), you’re asking how he was able to achieve all that he did and rack up such unbelievable stats. From what I’ve read, the answer comes down to two things: 1) Like the rest of the short list of the all-time greatest pitchers he had ungodly physical gifts. He didn’t just have a good arm, he had a Nolan Ryan/Roger Clemens/Walter Johnson/Bob Feller, et al. kind of arm. Young was quoted as saying, “All us Young’s could throw. I use to kill squirrels with a stone when I was a kid, and my granddad once killed a turkey buzzard on the fly with a rock.” Obviously this may be apocryphal, but it’s a lot of fun. More concretely, we know that during the early part of Young’s career his primary catcher Chief Zimmer used to pad the inside of his catching glove with a piece of beefsteak to protect his hand from Young’s fastball. 2) In an era when the game was evolving dramatically and rapidly, he constantly adapted. To give an idea, here’s a timeline (hat
Cy Young figured out how to throttle back and throw that “slow ball” to bad hitters, i.e. most of the opposing team’s lineup. The bottom half of late 19th century lineups were filled with guys who nowadays would have trouble getting out of Double-A. So, Cy could dial it down to those guys and give his arm/shoulder a bit of a rest. Even if they hacked at it, it was likely to be a groundball. Nowadays you have utility infielders hitting the weight room and hitting instruction down to a science, as well as a much larger population competing for a roster spot. You can’t dial it down as much, especially in the AL with the DH. Pitchers have answered by having 4-5 pitches in their arsenal, but they’re throwing 100-120 pitches at 100%. But Cy throttled and got away with it. He wasn’t the first to do it, but he had the stuff to get away with it.
