Charles Benjamin “Babe” Adams appeared washed up at age 34. After posting a 2-9 record and 5.72 ERA in 1916, the Pittsburgh Pirates released him. But, Adams wasn’t done.
He won 20 games in the Western League in 1917 and was 14-3 with a 1.67 ERA for Kansas City Blues in the American Association when the Pirates reacquired Adams in July of 1918.
Babe Adams
Adams was 49-29 with a 2.17 ERA from his return through the 1921 season, and now turning 40, talked about his success with Roy Grove, a cartoonist, and writer for The Cleveland Press:
“A ballplayer has lots of time in which he can do himself harm.
“A fellow can’t disregard nature and get away with it. He can kid himself along for a while but finally, he’ll snap…A fellow my years has to dig some to get by the young chaps.”
But, said Adams, baseball had changed a lot since his debut in 1906,and most younger pitchers could never approach his longevity:
“The pitching game isn’t what it used to be. In my day, I used to have to sit down and figure out the different things that go to make pitching and then go out and practice them hard. The young pitcher today can pick the game up in a few weeks. He has two or three coaches, with modern methods of tricks and systems and so forth that have been accumulated through years of experience. That‘s the reason I think they crack so fast. They don’t get the right seasoning during youth to stand the grinds of the years.”
But in the end, Adams said he was just smarter than most:
“It’s not so much the old pitching arm these Twentieth Century days as it is the pitching head. After all, it’s the noodle that throws the ball, not the wing. There are some fellows I can throw a high inside ball to and they won’t touch it, and then let some other pitcher come up and do the same thing and that same player will knock it outa the lot.
“If a fellow were to stop thinking out there in the box and resort to strength, he’d darn soon find out he was losing all his friends.”
A Roy Grove cartoon that accompanied the article.
Adams’ “Noodle” and excellent control (18th all-time lowest walks per nine innings) kept him in the National League for five more seasons, until he was 44.
Baseball History Daily 
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