s notice on the baseball world that Frazee and Chance mean business. … .It is hard to see where Frazee got the worst of this latest dicker.” The article went on to say that Russell had been of little use to the Red Sox and was nearly at the end of his string. The Times wrote: “Needing pitching badly, Clark Griffith, the Washington president, decided he could develop the right hander into a regular slabster, but Russell has shown little interest in his major league career.”
As it turned out, the highly touted Goebel never played a game for the Red Sox, while Ruel and Russell helped Washington win two American League pennants.
Although Russell had been used in relief occasionally throughout his career, the Nats made him an almost full-time relief specialist, one of the first in the history of baseball. His ability to go to the mound day after day earned him the nickname Rubberarm. During the 1923 season Russell appeared in 52 games, all but five of them in relief. He led the league in saves and relief wins, and had the circuit’s third best earned-run average.
In 1924 Russell ranked second in saves in the league with eight. In addition he won five games in relief. However, by now his teammate Fred Marberry was emerging as the leading relief pitcher of the decade, and Russell’s appearances became less frequent. Together the two relievers won or saved 39 of Washington’s 92 wins that season as the club won its first American League pennant. Russell made one appearance in the 1924 World Series, relieving in the fourth inning with his team trailing 3-2. He got Hank Gowdy to fly out; then New York Giants pitcher Rosy Ryan came to the plate. With the count two balls and one strike, Ryan hit a home run into the upper tier of the right-field stands, the first homer ever hit in a World Series by a National League hurler. Russell pitched three innings, giving up four hits and two runs, one of which was unearned.
The Senators captured the flag again in 1925, but Russell did not appear in the World Series that year. His final major-league game came on September 19. He did not go out in a blaze of glory. Relieving Tom Zachary in the fourth inning with his team trailing 7-0, Russell pitched one scoreless inning and was blasted in the next, giving up a total of eight hits in 1 2/3 innings. Win Ballou, who relieved Russell, fared little better, being roughed up for nine hits in the remainder of the game. All told, the three Washington pitchers gave up 26 hits and 17 runs, while their mates collected only one hit off Ted Lyons in a 17-0 loss. The sole hit came by Bobby Veach with two out in the ninth inning. After the game, Veach went to the visitors clubhouse and apologized to Lyons for depriving him of what would have been the American League’s first no-hit game in more than two years.
After leaving the majors Russell returned to the International League and pitched without distinction for two more seasons. In the 1930 Census he is listed as a professional ballplayer, and he told the National Baseball Hall of Fame that his last year of professional baseball was 1930. However, there is no record of his having played in Organized Baseball after 1928. It is likely that he played in an independent league in 1929 and 1930. Later he worked for the States Marine-Isthmian Lines in Baltimore as a clerk in charge of deliveries.
Allan Russell died suddenly in Baltimore on October 20, 1972, at the age of 79. He was survived by his wife, the former Myrtle Rebecca Cunningham, whom he had married on July 8, 1915, and by their daughter, also named Myrtle. The man once called “Rubberarm” was buried in Loudon Park Memorial Cemetery in the Maryland metropolis.
January 22, 2011
This account is adapted from the chapter on Allan Russell in Faber, Charles F. and Richard B. Faber. Spitballers: The Last Legal Hurlers of the Wet One (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006.)
Allan Russell’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown.
Personal correspondence with Norman Macht.
Selected issues of the Washington Post.
Palmer, Pete, and Gary Gille