Russ Ford

A rainy morning in Atlanta, 1908. Russ Ford is warming up under the stands, wild, and one of his throws skips past his catcher and scrapes against a wooden upright. When the ball comes back, one side of it is torn up rough. Ford throws it again anyway -- and watches it dive in a direction no legal pitch was supposed to go. He didn't know it yet, but he'd just found the pitch that would make him the best rookie pitcher the American League has ever seen.

Ford spent the rest of 1908 and all of 1909 turning that accident into a weapon. He carried a small piece of emery board hidden in the padding of his glove, scuffing one side of the ball between pitches while going through the motions of a legal spitball to cover his tracks. By 1910, hitters across the league were flailing at a pitch they couldn't identify, and Ford had built a rookie season that still stands unmatched more than a century later.

Getting to New York

Ford was born April 25, 1883, in Brandon, Manitoba -- the first Manitoba-born player to reach the majors -- and grew up in Minneapolis. His first look at the big leagues came April 28, 1909, in relief against Boston: three innings, four runs, four walks, three hit batsmen (a line that would get most pitchers released outright). Not the kind of outing that keeps a job. The Highlanders shipped him to Jersey City of the Eastern League, where he went 13-13 and quietly kept sharpening the pitch he'd stumbled onto in Atlanta.

He came back to New York in 1910 a different pitcher, and nobody in the American League was ready for him.

The Rookie Season

Ford opened 1910 with a complete-game shutout against the Philadelphia Athletics, striking out nine in a 1-0 win. It set the tone for everything after. Hal Chase played behind him at first base that year, and together they helped drag the Highlanders to a second-place finish -- their best showing in years.

On July 19, Ford carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning before a misjudged fly ball fell for the only hit he allowed all day. He didn't get the no-hitter, but he'd already made his point. By season's end, Ford had gone 26-6 with a 1.65 ERA, 209 strikeouts, and 8 shutouts across 299 2/3 innings -- a rookie wins record that has never been broken.

"It never occurred to me that I had uncovered what was to become one of the most baffling pitches that a Cobb, Lajoie, Speaker or Delahanty would be called upon to bat against in the big leagues," Ford wrote years later, looking back on that accidental discovery in Atlanta. He wasn't exaggerating. Ty Cobb himself would recall how Ford disguised the pitch -- touching his fingers to his mouth, working the ball like a spitballer -- while the real doctoring happened out of sight.

The Decline

Ford couldn't hold the pace forever, and the league started catching up to him even without figuring out his secret. He followed his rookie year with a 22-11 mark and a 2.27 ERA in 1911 -- still one of the best pitchers in the league, even if the win total looked smaller next to 1910. Then came the fall. In 1912, he led the American League in losses with 21, going 13-21 as his ERA climbed to 3.55. By 1913, a fatigued right arm had caught up with him, and he finished 12-18.

He'd married Mary Hunter Bethell in 1912, and by 1914 he was ready for a change of scenery -- and a bigger paycheck. Ford jumped to the outlaw Federal League's Buffalo club, where the emery ball was still legal and his arm found new life: 21-6 with a 1.82 ERA, his best mark since that unrepeatable rookie year. It didn't last. On September 12, 1914, umpire Tommy Connolly caught Yankees pitcher Ray Keating with emery paper hidden in his glove -- the same trick Ford had been running for five years -- and the American League banned the pitch within the week. The Federal League couldn't shield Ford from his arm forever, either. He went 5-9 in 1915 and Buffalo released him that August, closing the book on his major-league career at 32.

Legacy

Ford never got the standing of a Chesbro or a Ruth in Yankees lore, but the numbers hold up on their own. His full big-league record -- Highlanders, Yankees, and Federal League Buffalo combined -- came out to 100-71 with a 2.59 ERA, still the lowest career ERA of any Canadian-born pitcher in major-league history. The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inducted him in 1989, nearly three decades after his death.

Ford died January 24, 1960, in Rockingham, North Carolina, of a heart attack at 76. He was a second cousin of President Grover Cleveland, a detail that shows up in nearly every account of his life and explains nothing at all about how a Manitoba farm kid figured out how to make a baseball lie.

Twenty-six wins as a rookie is still the record (nobody's gotten within striking distance in over a century), and it came from a piece of sandpaper a 27-year-old journeyman found by accident on a rainy morning in Georgia. Baseball spent four seasons chasing him before it finally caught up.