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Farewell
Sporting News, December 10, 1925
TWO MOUND GREATS RETIRE
This week, two of the finest pitchers in the history of major league baseball announced that they will not be returning to the field this spring.
Roy Hitt, longtime star of the Cincinnati Reds, and Chuck Rose, who excelled for the Boston Red Sox and Washington Senators, have retired after long, distinguished careers in baseball.
Hitt, age 38, began his career in 1907. He was a mainstay of the outstanding Reds teams that dominated the National League during the teens, winning over 20 games six different times. His best seasons were 1912, when he went 29-6 and led the Reds to a World Series title, and 1914, when he matched a 26-8 record with a 2.32 ERA. In both of these seasons, the National League named Hitt its Most Valuable Pitcher.
Hitt was a winner, as demonstrated by a lifetime total of 337 wins that has been surpassed only by the legendary Cy Young and Christy Mathewson. Teams for which Roy pitched won six pennants and two World Series. Only Walter Johnson has struck out more men than Hitt's total of 3,312.
Roy is also given a great deal of credit for helping open up major league baseball to colored men. He led a very successful barnstorming tour to the Western states in the fall of 1920, highlighted by series of games with a touring team of Negro players led by Bruce Petway. The spirited, gentlemanly competition between the two squads did much to dispel fears that white and black men could not successfully mix on the ball field.
Rose, who is 39, broke in with the Yankees in 1911. He was quickly traded to the Red Sox, for whom he immediately began a string of five 20-win seasons. In 1918, the Sox swapped him to the Senators in an exchange of star hurlers, obtaining Walter Johnson.
Still at the top of his game, Rose won twenty games five straight times for the Senators as well, between 1920 and 1924. No twentieth-century pitcher has won 20 games in more seasons than Rose. Chuck retires with a lifetime record of 295-212, and a fine ERA of 3.37.
The Red Sox' Pat O'Farrell, who knows both men well, said of them, "Both Roy and Chuck were outstanding pitchers, and fine men. They were both true professionals, and the game will miss them very much."
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