In July 1884, the Providence Grays baseball club expelled one of its two pitchers. The other one walked into the manager's office and made an offer: he would pitch every remaining game of the season himself. I will win the pennant, he said, or pitch my right arm off. He then went out and did both.

His name was Charles Radbourn, and they called him Old Hoss. Understand the job in 1884: pitchers threw underhand or sidearm, from fifty feet, essentially barehanded, and a club carried exactly two of them. Providence's two hated each other. Radbourn had just come off suspension for his temper when his rival, Charlie Sweeney, turned up drunk, refused to leave the field, and was thrown off the club entirely. The Grays were suddenly one arm short of a whole season, and the directors talked seriously about disbanding. Radbourn named his price instead: the balance of Sweeney's salary on top of his own, and his freedom at the end of the year. Then he took the ball, and for three months, he simply did not give it back.

He started nearly every game the rest of the way and went thirty five and four. The mornings were the price. His manager remembered that Radbourn often could not raise his right arm high enough to comb his hair, and teammates helped him dress. He would arrive at the park hours early and begin by tossing the ball just a few feet, then a little farther, backing up step by step until he was throwing from short centre field, and by game time the arm would consent to work. He finished with fifty nine wins. Some record books say sixty, and the argument is half the fun. Six hundred and seventy eight innings. Providence won the pennant, then met the New York Metropolitans in the first World Series, and Radbourn pitched all three games and won all three.

The arm never truly forgave him, and he pitched for years afterward on pure cunning. In the Boston team photograph of 1886 he can be found at the edge of the frame, extending what is believed to be the first middle finger ever caught on camera. He died in 1897. The record stands at fifty nine, or sixty, depending on your book. Either way, no arm has ever been asked for that much again, and none has ever answered.

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