Addie Joss
Adrian "Addie" Joss (April 12, 1880 – April 14, 1911), nicknamed "the Human Hairpin",[1] was an American professional baseball pitcher. He pitched for the Cleveland Bronchos of Major League Baseball, later known as the Naps, between 1902 and 1910. Joss, who was 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) and weighed 185 pounds (84 kg), pitched the fourth perfect game in baseball history (which, additionally, was only the second of the modern era). His 1.89 career earned run average (ERA) is the second-lowest in MLB history, behind Ed Walsh, while his career WHIP of 0.968 is the lowest of all-time.
Addie Joss
Joss was born and raised in Wisconsin, where he attended St. Mary's College (later part of Wyalusing Academy) in Prairie du Chien and the University of Wisconsin. He played baseball at St. Mary's and then played in a semipro league where he caught the attention of Connie Mack. Joss did not sign with Mack's team, but he attracted further major league interest after winning 19 games in 1900 for the Toledo Mud Hens. Joss had another strong season for Toledo in 1901.
After an offseason contract dispute between Joss, Toledo and Cleveland, he debuted with the Cleveland club in April 1902. Joss led the league in shutouts that year. By 1905, Joss had completed the first of his four consecutive 20-win seasons. Off the field, Joss worked as a newspaper sportswriter from 1906 until his death. In 1908, he pitched a perfect game during a tight pennant race that saw Cleveland finish a half-game out of first place; it was the closest that Joss came to a World Series berth. The 1910 season was his last, and Joss missed most of the year due to injury.
In April 1911, Joss became ill and he died the same month due to tuberculous meningitis. He finished his career with 160 wins, 234 complete games, 45 shutouts and 920 strikeouts. Though Joss played only nine seasons and missed significant playing time due to various ailments, the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Board of Directors passed a special resolution for Joss in 1977 that waived the typical ten-year minimum playing career for Hall of Fame eligibility[2] and he was voted into the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1978.
Major league career[edit]
Cleveland Bronchos/Naps (1902–1907)[edit]
Joss made his major league debut with the Cleveland Bronchos (also known as the Bluebirds) against the St. Louis Browns. The Browns' Jesse Burkett hit a shallow pop fly in the direction of right fielder Zaza Harvey. Home plate umpire Bob Caruthers ruled that Harvey did not make a clean catch, so Burkett was credited with a hit.[9][10] (Harvey and witnesses said the ball never hit the ground.)[12] Joss finished his major league debut with a one-hitter.
Journalism and engineering interests[edit]
Joss was concerned about supporting his family after his baseball career ended; many players of the day had little education and few marketable job skills beyond their abilities on the diamond. As sportswriter Franklin Lewis wrote, "Only a handful of players in the rough, stirring, early days of the major leagues arrived from campuses. And when they did, sometimes the shock was too great for them. Some grizzled holdovers from the 1890s were around and they bore down heavily on the eardrums of the so-called college-boy set."[14]: p.55 Joss was hired as a sports columnist after the 1906 season for the Toledo News-Bee.[9][35] He also served as their Sunday sports editor. His writings proved so popular that sales of the paper increased and a special phone line was installed in his office to field the large volume of calls he received from fans. The increased popularity gave him an advantage when negotiating with the Naps before the 1907 season, and the club agreed to pay him $4,000 (equivalent to $131,000 in 2023).[9] (By 1910, player salaries averaged only $2,500.)[36]
He later also wrote for the Cleveland Press and covered the World Series for the News-Bee and Press from 1907 to 1909.[5] The Press introduced Joss in columns this way: "Of all the baseball players in the land, Addie Joss is far and away the best qualified for this work. A scholarly man, an entertaining writer, an impartial observer of the game."[10] Biographer Scott Longert wrote that "the writer was becoming as well-known as the ballplayer."[10] An editorial in the Toledo Blade said, "In taking his vocation seriously, [Joss] was, in return, taken seriously by the people, who recognized in him a man of more than usual intelligence and one who would have adorned any profession in which he had elected to engage."[33]
During the 1908–1909 offseasons, Joss worked on designing an electric scoreboard that would later be known as the Joss Indicator. The Naps decided to install the scoreboard, which allowed spectators to monitor balls and strikes at League Park.[9]
Recognition[edit]
Boston Globe sports editor Jason Nason campaigned for Joss' induction into the Hall of Fame starting in the 1950s.[40] Sportswriter Red Smith wrote in 1970 in support of Joss. "Could you write a history of baseball without mentioning Joss? Nobody ever has. That ought to be the measure of a man's fitness for the Hall of Fame, the only measure."[41] However, Warren Giles, then-chairman of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee, pointed out to baseball historian Bob Broeg in 1972 that induction to the Hall required "participation in ten championship seasons." Joss had been on the Cleveland roster in 1911 and participated in spring training, falling ill just before regular season play commenced. Hence it was argued he had "participated" in the 1911 season, his tenth.[42] The Hall's Board of Directors waived the eligibility requirements for Joss.[2][43] Joe Reichler, a member of the Commissioner's office, worked to allow Joss to become eligible for the Hall and succeeded in 1977.[40] Joss was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978.[6] He is the only player in the Hall of Fame whose regular season playing career lasted less than 10 years.[10]: p.51
In 1981, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. They described what they called "the Smoky Joe Wood Syndrome", where a player of truly exceptional talent has a career curtailed by injury or illness. They argued that such a player should still be included among the greatest all-time players, in spite of career statistics that would not quantitatively rank him with the all-time greats. They believed that Joss' career ERA was proof enough of his greatness to be included. Baseball author John Tierney wrote: "Joss is remembered for a remarkably low career ERA, but he pitched in a time before earned runs were compiled as an official statistic, and his career ended in 1910, before the American League introduced its new baseball in 1911, leading to a nearly 25 percent increase in runs scored."[44]
Joss was inducted into the Cleveland Guardians Hall of Fame on July 29, 2006.[45] He was inducted in the same class as Ray Chapman, Rocky Colavito, Al López, Sam McDowell, Al Rosen and Herb Score.