This Date In Baseball History- December 15, 190- Worst Trade in Baseball history? This trade doesn’t get mentioned often possibly because it was so long ago- but its hard to find a worse deal than when the New York Giants traded future Hall of Fame pitcher Amos Rusie to the Cincinnati Reds for a 19 year old pitcher named Christy Mathewson. Rusie was 30- and had won 245 games over a 9 year period. The problem was he had missed the previous two seasons with arm problems. After the trade Rusie never won a single game. Christy Mathewson meanwhile would go on to become one of the most celebrated pitchers in the history of baseball- winning 373 games.
slicethelife 
well you never know in trades , but even now trading an established starters with arm troubles for a young promising one seems risky… and that’s with Tommy John surgery and other treatments available undreamed of back then.
he’d missed two years– I don’t think they could do much for arm problems back then- they must have believed in miracles..
I guess. Back then I think their idea of treating arm problems was A) be a man and keep pitching anyway, B) quit and work in a factory or C) hey doc, bring over that hacksaw will ya?
they probably iced it a lot— i recall back in high school the athletic trainer– any injury- ‘ice it’- broken bone sticking through your leg- ‘ice it’
This had to be one of the most lopsided trades ever…it makes Pedro’s deal sound good by comparison. Mathewson and Walter Johnson I guess were the great pitchers of that time. I read in the Johnson book that McGraw could have signed Johnson…they would have won more World Series with the both of them…geez.
That would have been a dominating team with those two- and then even after Matty left- having Johnson..
McGraw just missed out on a couple of titles by fluke things…Snodgrass and Merkle…Johnson and Mathewson would have probably changed things