End-to-End with Amos Rusie and Christy Mathewson

One starts where the other ends, and vice versa...sorta

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1975 Fleer Amos Rusie (#12) - Card of the Day

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What’s the most lopsided trade of all time? As modern baseball fans, we all have our “pet” picks for bad deals:

• Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio

• Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi

• Steve Carlton for Rick Wise

• John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander

• Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen

• Fernando Tatis, Jr., for James Shields

At least a couple of those worked out exactly as planned for the “losing” teams, at least in the short term — with division titles. It wasn’t until the players they traded away started to look like superstars that uneasiness, regret, and fan backlash sprouted.

Other swaps listed above looked pretty one-sided almost as soon the teams pulled their respective triggers. And, of course, there have been dozens (maybe hundreds) of other trades that looked pretty bad for one side or the other by the time the players involved headed for their rocking chairs.

But, far from being a modern phenomenon, bad baseball deals have been part of the business since the very beginning of the pro game, if not before. Everybody “remembers,” for example, the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees for a bag of gourmet-chocolate-covered magic beans way back in 1919.

That was a pretty impactful deal for both teams, not to mention all of us a hundred and some years later.

But even before the Bambino started building his baseball house in the Bronx, another New York team decided to shake things up a bit in the pursuit of a brighter future.

Specifically, on December 15, 1900, the New York Giants traded 29-year-old Amos Rusie to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for 20-year-old Christy Mathewson.

Rusie had been one of the great pitching stars and mound workhorses of the game during the first half of the 1890s. But a bitter contract dispute and then a string of injuries robbed him of three full seasons. By the end of 1900, he hadn’t stepped on a major league mound for more than two years.

Meanwhile, Mathewson had made his big league debut with the Giants in July of 1900, but his 0-3, 5.08 ERA showing did little to impress team brass. The Giants dumped him back to the minors, then left him unprotected in the Rule 5 draft. The Reds plucked him away in December, then swapped him back to New York in the middle of the month.

One unwanted pitcher for another? Maybe it seemed that way in the moment, but the picture changed pretty dramatically, and in a flash.

With the Reds, Rusie actually made it back to the big leagues, but his 0-1 record and 8.59 ERA across 22 innings spelled a quick exit from the Queen City. He threw his last major league pitch on June 9, 1901, just ten days past his 30th birthday.

Meanwhile, Mathewson pitched to a 20-17 record and 2.41 ERA for a bad (seventh-place) Giants team (that finished a game ahead of the last-place Reds).

The kid was just getting started, too, as Mathewson would go on to win 20 or more games in a season 13 times, topping 30 on four occasions. Overall, after the trade that brought him back to New York, Mathewson went 372-185 for the Giants from 1901 through 1916.

If you’re a WAR person, Matty contributed 101.3 to New York’s bottom line during those seasons, while Rusie tallied -0.7 WAR in his brief stint with the Reds.

Don’t feel too bad for the Hoosier Thunderbolt, though. Thanks to those early standout years, Rusie finished his career at 246-174 with a 3.07 ERA over parts of ten seasons in the bigs. He also logged 393 (!) complete games, along with 30 shutouts.

That was a strong enough resume to get him elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1977. And Rusie’s full baseball story (SABR bio) is a pretty interesting one, too, with that contract dispute mentioned above standing as an early salvo fired against the old reserve clause that Curt Flood famously battled some 70 years later.

And Mathewson, of course, is one of the greatest pitchers to ever toe the rubber. Did you know, though, that he didn’t finish his career with the Giants? It’s true. He finished with…the Reds.

Because this is baseball, and everything is tied to everything else. You know, like seams.

And also because the Giants traded him, Bill McKechnie, and Edd Roush to Cincy for Buck Herzog and Red Killefer in July of 1916.

Alas, Matty had just one win left in his arm. Roush became a Hall of Fame centerfielder, though…and finished his career back with the Giants.

But to bring this back to today…

A mere 75 years or so after the big Rusie-for-Mathewson trade, Fleer christened old Amos one of the “Pioneers of Baseball” and included him on card #12 in their 28-card issue of the same name in 1975. That’s the sepia-toned beauty (or beast?) you see at the top of this post.

The back even gives you some of the most important points of that interesting baseball story of his:

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What the card back doesn’t tell you?

That Amos Wilson Rusie, proud son of Mooresville, Indiana, was born on May 30, 1871.

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