Addie Joss On Baseball

Addie Joss (1880-1911) mowed down batters for the Cleveland Broncos/Naps from 1902 to 1910 before his career was cut short by his tragic death from tubercular meningitis in 1911. With a career ERA of 1.89 and two no-hitters, Joss earned Hall of Fame election despite a career that lasted less than ten years, the only player to do so. In the off-season, Joss also excelled as a sportswriter for the Toledo News-Bee and the Cleveland Press, filling the empty winter months penning stories about the game he knew firsthand. This collection of Joss's newspaper columns and World Series reports is a treasury of the deadball era with intimate first-person observations of the game and its players from the first decade of the American League. Informative annotations, archival photographs, and a brief biography complete the work.

Addie Joss (1880-1911) mowed down batters for the Cleveland Broncos/Naps from 1902 to 1910 before his career was cut short by his tragic death from tubercular meningitis in 1911. With a career ERA of 1.89 and two no-hitters, Joss earned Hall of Fame election despite a career that lasted less than ten years, the only player to do so. In the off-season, Joss also excelled as a sportswriter for the Toledo News-Bee and the Cleveland Press, filling the empty winter months penning stories about the game he knew firsthand. This collection of Joss's newspaper columns and World Series reports is a treasury of the deadball era with intimate first-person observations of the game and its players from the first decade of the American League. Informative annotations, archival photographs, and a brief biography complete the work.

As a seven-year-old growing up in the small town of Juneau, Wisconsin, Adrian "Addie" Joss had one ambition: To be a ballplayer. He excelled at the high school level, town ball, semi-pro and one year of college. Through hard work and a tremendous fast ball, he earned a tryout with the minor league Toledo Mud Hens. He made the best of the opportunity, and in 1902 became a member of the American League's Cleveland Blues. In his first Major League start against the St. Louis Browns he allowed only one hit, a disputed pop fly single. Weeks later he nearly had a no-hitter against Detroit. In the ninth inning, angry Tiger fans stormed the field, taunting the twenty-two-year-old pitcher. The Tigers got a hit, yet notice was served that Addie Joss had the goods. From 1905 through 1908, Joss won twenty games each season, with a high of twenty-seven in 1907. He had established himself as an elite pitcher, going head-to-head with Rube Waddell, Eddie Plank, Ed Walsh and Walter Johnson. Fans in their suits and straw hats were spellbound watching Addie mow down batter after batter. Even with tiny wooden ballparks and fans standing in the outfield, Joss continued to rack up the wins, including a legendary perfect game in the midst of a fantastic 1908 pennant race between Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago. Addie Joss was not just a Hall of Fame pitcher. He was an accomplished sportswriter, editing the Sunday sports page for the Toledo News Bee. He wrote features for newspapers all around the United States. Addie had a magnetic personality with friends in every Major League city. Tragically, he only lived to be thirty-one-years-old, dying of tubercular meningitis before the start of the 1911 season. King of the Pitchers takes the reader back to a golden time before radio, television and the earliest computers. A time when fans left their jobs early and boarded a streetcar to get to the ballpark. Scott Longert's book is a must read for baseball fans of any generation.

Among baseball achievements, the perfect game--one in which no runners reach base--remains the greatest. Though many have come close, only 20 pitchers have achieved such perfection in more than a century of baseball. This exhaustive compendium examines the fascinating story behind every perfect game and uncovers details both great and small, illuminating the majesty of these titanic achievements. The faithfully narrated record of all 20 games--punctuated by statistics, trivia, little-known anecdotes, and personal memories from both witnesses and the pitchers themselves--gets inside the minds of the players who made baseball history. In addition to profiling some of the game's greatest pitchers, such as Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, and Randy Johnson, or others including Charley Robertson who had otherwise unremarkable careers, this updated edition features new chapters devoted to Dallas Braden, Mark Buehrle, and Roy Halladay, the three latest pitchers to throw a perfect game, and a comprehensive appendix profiles several pitchers who almost achieved perfection.

A courageous team of World Series winners

"Baseball is a sport with its own lingo and jargon, a colorful patois that developed over decades and millions of games. Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, storyteller, commentator, voice - delves into the language of the national pastime: from Vin Scully's philosophy on no-hitters to Red Barber's classic turns of phrase to a definitive listing of broadcasters' trademark home run call." -- Back cover.

Cy Young was one of the hardest-throwing pitchers of all time. He recorded three no-hitters—including a perfect game—and accumulated more than 2,800 strikeouts on his way to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Scott H. Longert uses Young’s life story to introduce middle-grade readers to the game, explaining balls, strikes, and outs in an easy-to-understand way. Longert narrates each season and each milestone game with an enthusiastic play-by-play that is sure to draw readers into the excitement on the field and in the crowd, fostering a better understanding of and a passion for baseball. Baseball fans today know Cy Young’s name chiefly through the award given in his honor each year to the best pitcher in the National and the American Leagues. Denton True “Cyclone” Young won more than five hundred games over a career that spanned four decades, a record that no other major league pitcher has come close to matching. In addition to being the winningest pitcher in baseball history, he was also a kind, self-effacing, and generous man. Born into a farm family in rural Ohio, he never lost touch with the small-town values he grew up with.

In 1937, the Great Depression was still lingering, but at baseball parks across the country there was a sense of optimism. Major League attendance was on a sharp rise. Tickets to an Indians game at League Park on Lexington and East 66th were $1.60 for box seats, $1.35 for reserve seats, and $.55 for the bleachers. Cleveland fans were particularly upbeat--Bob Feller, the teenage phenomenon, was a farm boy with a blistering fast ball. Night games were an exciting development. Better days were ahead. But there were mounting issues facing the Indians. For one thing, it was rumored that the team had illegally signed Feller. Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was looking into that matter and one other. Issues with an alcoholic catcher, dugout fights, bats thrown into stands, injuries, and a player revolt kept things lively. In Bad Boys, Bad Times: The Cleveland Indians and Baseball in the Prewar Years, 1937-1941--the follow-up to his No Money, No Beer, No Pennants: The Cleveland Indians and Baseball in the Great Depression--baseball historian Scott H. Longert writes about an exciting period for the team, with details and anecdotes that will please fans all over.