Arthur “Bugs” Raymond, obtained by New York Giants at the end of 1908 in the trade that sent Roger Bresnahan to St. Louis, was a great talent but long considered second only to Rube Waddell as baseball’s most eccentric pitcher.
Manager John McGraw was convinced he could succeed with Raymond where other managers had failed. James Hopper, college football coach, turned novelist and journalist, wrote about Raymond’s first spring with the Giants in “Everybody’s Magazine:”
“’Bugs’ Raymond belongs to the old type of professional baseball player. He is a big child, thoughtless, improvident, a wonder of efficiency at his craft, but totally irresponsible outside of it. He has been pitching for several years on ‘tail-ender’ clubs—indifferently, in spite of natural gifts, because always out of condition… (McGraw) thinks he can ‘handle’ him. And he is doing so, thus wise;
“He does not let him have any money. ‘Bugs’ is married and his wife is an invalid. The contract between (The Giants) and ‘Bugs’ provides that the latter’s salary each month shall go in toto to Mrs. Raymond…Result, a perpetually penniless ‘Bugs’ living an enforced simple life.”
Bugs Raymond
As a result, Hopper said Raymond had behaved and “gradually regained the lithe lines of an athlete,” during the spring in Marlin Texas.
And, six weeks into the 1909 season, it appeared McGraw’s strategy was working. Raymond won five of his first seven decisions for a team that was 17-17 at the end of May.
Most of what was written about Raymond that season was superficial; many of the stories apocryphal, nearly all of them portrayed him as a simple-minded clown. One exception was a profile written in May by Sid Mercer of The New York Globe—it remains one of the only articles about Raymond that doesn’t reduce him to a caricature:
“It isn’t necessary to introduce Mr. Arthur Raymond. Everybody knows the Human Insect. He’s the easiest fellow to get acquainted with that you ever met. Just at present, he is the leading pitcher of the Giants, although that is not much of an honor, considering the position of the team. However, the Chicago citizen is delivering the goods in large packages…Raymond is one of the great pitchers of the country, yet he does not take baseball seriously.
Bugs
“He never has got over being a boy, although he is close to 30-years old. He gets lots of amusement out of the ordinary things of life and of course, his escapades are usually exaggerated. But do not take the eccentric twirler for a simple fellow. Raymond has no use for money except to spend it, but he is nevertheless fairly well educated, and when his mind turns to serious thoughts he is quite a different person than the fans imagine he is.
“’I may be crazy,’ he once remarked. ‘but I ain’t as crazy as Rube Waddell, and I’m no fool.’
“While it cannot be said on good authority that Raymond is a total abstainer, yet he seldom pitches a bad game. Whatever his faults or weaknesses he earns the salary that is paid to him. His rollicking disposition long ago developed in him a distaste for the accumulation of wealth, so the most of his salary goes to Mrs. Raymond and three children ([sic] Raymond had just one child) in Chicago, while Bugs gets along on a little and has just as good a time as if he handled it all.
“Raymond was originally a pressman on a Chicago newspaper and he has already visited the press rooms of most of the New York papers. There is nothing of uppish about him and the pressmen are all strong for him…With the bleacherites Raymond is a big favorite. He is one player who likes to talk baseball to the fans, and his disposition is one that makes friends. The big fellow is big hearted and generous and there isn’t a mean streak in him.”
Raymond did not finish the 1909 season with the Giants. He was 18-12 with a 2.47 ERA in mid-September when he left the club, or was asked to leave, or left by mutual agreement, depending on the source.
He was said to be tending bar in New York in late September—but that story is questionable as most contemporary accounts say he was with the Giants when they arrived in Pittsburgh on September 27 and returned to his home in Chicago on September 29. He told The Chicago Daily News:
“I was fined again and again and suspended until I couldn’t stand it any longer. My salary for the year was $4500 but McGraw fined me $1700 on one pretext or another, so I’ve got only $2800 for my work this year.
“I was unjustly suspended a short time ago, and this was the last straw. McGraw didn’t seem inclined to give me a chance to work, and so I quit the team and came home to Chicago. I may pitch a few games here for some local teams.”
McGraw tried and failed two more times with Raymond—he was 10-15 in 1910 and ’11 with the Giants. He was dead 15 months after his final game with New York.
Baseball History Daily 
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