Addie Joss and the HOF

[icurnmedic]

My newest....

[paul]

I may be mistaken, but I don't think the HOF made an exception specific to Joss. I believe the HOF amended its rules to say that the 10 year minimum does not apply to players whose career is cut short by death or injury. I'm sure they had Joss in mind when they passed this rule, but others like Dave Orr should be eligible under this rule.

[michael3322]

Fascinating thread, as usual, with great contributions.

"Addie Joss pitched in the majors only eight seasons and part of a ninth, but his record was so extraordinary that he was elected to the Hall of Fame (in 1978), despite his short tenure. With Cleveland from 1902 to 1910, he won 160 games, lost 97, and compiled an ERA of 1.88 (second on the all-time list). He pitched a perfect game on October 2, 1908, defeating Big Ed Walsh, 1·0, with first place on the line. Joss had another no-hitter on April 20, 1910, also against the White Sox, just before his health began to fail.

Joss made only 13 appearances in 1910, and still felt weak when he went south in 1911. He collapsed on the bench during an exhibition game at Chattanooga, Tennessee, then became ill again when the team reached Cincinnati. Doctors said it was pleurisy and sent him home to Toledo. On April 14, 1911, two days after his team had opened the season in St. Louis, he died at the age of thirty-one. The cause of his death was given as tubercular meningitis. Famed ballplayer-preacher Billy Sunday presided at his funeral, said to have been the biggest ever seen in Toledo."

From MLB's Historian John Thorn's Tragedies and Shortened Careers (Oct 14, 2015)

If you haven't already checked it out, see:


Joss was a uniquely well-rounded individual, who wrote fascinating stories about what it meant to play baseball at the time.

"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."
- McFarland's publisher site


On the same train of thought though, it is worth looking at George Sisler again. We know of Ruth's ‘Bellyache Heard ‘Round the World’ (SABR article) and Ty Cobb's glaucoma

A physician, professor and Sisler biographer wrote this piece for SABR in 2008: George Sisler: A Close Look at Vision Problems that Derailed Him



Who knows what modern medicine could have done for Sisler, Joss or what Tommy John surgery could have done to prolong Koufax's career? These athletes were truly products of their time.