For three years in 1890s, just before the pitching mound was moved back to its current location, 60 feet 6 inches from home plate, the most dominant pitcher in baseball was a 5-foot 9-inch Yale graduate who pitched as a hobby. His real job was as an agent for the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railroad.
Bill Hutchison wasn’t from Iowa. He was born in Connecticut, the son of a Congregational minister and missionary who had a doctorate in divinity from Yale. Bill decided on Yale for his education as well, and studied engineering while playing for the baseball team, joining a fraternity and a secret society, and apparently participating in pretty much every other privileged Ivy League cliché activity you can imagine, only without alcohol.
He had no real notion of becoming a professional baseball player. Instead he went to Maine after graduation and learned the cotton business, then moved to Kansas City to work for the railroad and ultimately landed in Cedar Rapids. He was 24 the first time he appeared on anyone’s radar as a baseball player, because he’d continued to play for fun in his spare time. The Union Association played its only season in 1884, and the Kansas City Cowboys were launched as part of that league while Hutchison still lived there. He pitched two games for a truly dreadful team (the Cowboys had a record of 16-63-2 that year), and had a 1-1 record.
Then he disappeared from the baseball world again as his railroad career took off and he relocated to Iowa. In 1887, at the age of 27, he spent a full season with the Des Moines Hawkeyes of the Northwestern League, an independent league that fielded teams in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Instantly he was among the best pitchers in the league, posting a record of 27-10 with a 1.80 ERA and 135 strikeouts, all marks that were in the top-5 in the league.
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