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Galvin further exploited the advantage of sheer speed by repeatedly picking runners off first base. Once he walked three men in an inning and then picked each one off first base in order.
    â€œIf I had Galvin to catch, no one would ever steal a base on me,” Hall of Famer Buck Ewing once said. “That fellow keeps them glued to the bag. You notice that funny false motion of his that can’t really be called a balk. He fooled me so badly one day that I never even attempted to get back to first base. And he certainly also has the best control of any pitcher in this league.”
    During the 1885 season, Galvin left Buffalo and joined Pittsburgh of the American Association. He remained in the city until a National League franchise was awarded the team two seasons later, and he won the first two games in the team’s history. In his first four years in Pittsburgh, not counting the partial season of 1885, Galvin averaged nearly 26 victories a season. By 1890, though, his fastball was fading fast. Two years later, after splitting time between Pittsburgh and St. Louis, Galvin retired and opened a big-time saloon in Pittsburgh, which was so large that it had nine bartenders. Unfortunately for Galvin, the bartenders usually took home more money nightly than he did. It looked “as though he had found a sure road to prosperity,” the Pittsburgh Gazette reported, “but Galvin was not a man of business.”
    The right-hander died penniless in a rooming house on the north side of Pittsburgh in 1902. He was only 45, and news of his death was
overshadowed by the flooding of the Ohio River, which left thousands homeless.
    The fastest of all time? It’s hard to say. As Feller would say, Galvin was certainly in the ballpark. Few in modern times appreciate Galvin’s accomplishments, and he wasn’t elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown until 1965. In reality, Galvin should be remembered as the fastball pitcher who bridged the gap from the underarm delivery of the game’s beginnings to the conventional overhand method of today.
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    I n a perfect world, Amos Rusie would have been recognized as one of the game’s true pioneers, too, and inducted into Cooperstown while he was still alive to enjoy the honor. Instead, he was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977—34 ½ years after he died. In a way, Rusie has become baseball’s version of Forrest Gump: a guy who was always around the action, but whose own accomplishments are overshadowed by the events and history he helped put into motion.
    No doubt about it, though, Rusie threw hard. Legend has it that as a boy he started going hunting without a gun. When his father asked where his rifle was, Rusie replied that he didn’t need one.
    When the hunting party came upon a jack rabbit, Rusie pulled a stone out of his pocket before his father or brother could fire. And with deadly accuracy, Rusie threw it, nailing the rabbit dead in the head.
    â€œWhere’d you learn to do that?” his father asked.
    â€œPracticing,’” Rusie answered.
    There are several versions of how Rusie came to play big-league baseball. In one, the Indianapolis Athletic Club had to replace a sick pitcher at the last minute. Rusie was summoned and did so well that the Indianapolis National League team picked him up. My favorite has one of the proprietors at the state fair hearing about Rusie’s throwing prowess. The two of them worked up a scheme in which the barker would charge folks 25 cents apiece to have the honor of witnessing Rusie throw a ball through a wooden fence from about 20
yards away. It was a stunt that would become part of the game’s lore. Steve Dalkowski, for example, once won a bet from a teammate by doing pretty much the same thing. Rusie was supposed to go easy every now and then, so that the ball didn’t bust through the board right away. This was supposed to work up a bigger crowd. But he