The Sad Tale Of Bugs Raymond

The Sad Tale Of Bugs Raymond

One of the strangest men to ever play baseball was spitball pitcher Arthur Lawrence “Bugs” Raymond. His nickname was evidently short for “bughouse” which was a term in the early 20th Century used for insane asylum. This reputation was only enhanced by his numerous antics like often navigating to and from the pitcher’s mound by walking on his hands. He also suffered from severe alcoholism and in at least one game had to be carted off the mound in a wheelbarrow.

Bugs started his career with the Detroit Tigers in 1904 where he only pitched in five games then resurfaced with St. Louis Cardinals in 1907 with an unimpressive 2-4 record. But the next year when he refined his spitball and added a new slow underhand pitch, he won 15 for the last place team (which only won 49 total games). St. Louis was shut out 11 times in games Bugs started though he threw five shutouts and finished second in the NL in fewest hits per nine innings (6.55 which was less than Christy Mathewson), third in appearances (48), and fourth in strikeouts (145).

In 1909, he ended up on the Giants after a trade where he went 18-12. Teammate Rube Marquard once said about Bugs: “What a terrific spitball pitcher he was, he drank a lot, you know, and sometimes it seemed the more he drank the better he pitched. They used to say he didn’t spit on the ball; he blew his breath on it and the ball came up drunk.”

Giants Manager John McGraw was confident he could curtail Raymond from his alcohol usage. McGraw gave him pocket money only and paid his salary directly to his wife, who did not send money to her husband. McGraw also paid a detective to trail Bugs to keep him out of bars but unfortunately nothing seemed to work. Evidently, Bugs had enough as well as he quit the team before the end of the 1909 season missing out on the chance to win 20 games.

Even weirder Buggs got a job as a bartender in New York City where he hung his Giants uniform in the window with a sign saying: “Bugs Raymond works here.”

In 1910, Raymond’s life went deeper into a downward spiral. Back on the Giants’ roster, McGraw began to tighten the controls even more. McGraw fined any player who loaned Bugs money and would not even buy him cigarettes as Bugs would in turn trade those for alcohol. As a result, the desperate Raymond began issuing free game passes to anyone who would buy him a drink. On one occasion, McGraw is reported to have punched Buggs in the eye.

But no one could deny Bugs’ pitching potential. Perhaps that’s why McGraw was reluctant to give up on him. Before the 1911 season the Giants sent Raymond to the Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois, to treat his alcoholism but Bugs only lasted a couple of weeks. By midseason, Bugs had disappeared during a game later turning up in a local saloon. That was the final straw for McGraw who cut Buggs from the team. It was particularly disappointing considering that the Giants rallied and won the National League pennant that year.

An outcast from the Giants, separated from his wife and with the death of his five-year old daughter from the Spanish Flu epidemic, Bugs took to the bottle for relief. He ended up in Chicago where he played semipro baseball and found work in a print shop.

Bugs was discovered dead in his bed at the low-budget Hotel Veley. A coroner’s report said that he had died from a cerebral hemorrhage due to a fractured skull. The police arrested a man, Fred Cigranz, who admitted to beating up Bugs several days earlier. Cigranz was never tried for murder mainly because Bugs had also had been in a brawl three weeks prior and had been hit several times in the head with a baseball bat which possibly was the real cause of his death.

When he received word of Raymond’s passing, McGraw simply and unemotionally said “that man took seven years off my life.”