Addie Joss Day

Ninety-five years ago today, a legendary baseball game was played. In fact, the following day, the newspapers called it the greatest baseball game ever. The game remains the greatest pitching duel under the pressure of a penant race that the game has ever seen.

On October 2, 1908, with five games left in the season amidst a furious four-way pennant race, the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Naps (later to be the Cleveland Indians) faced each other in Cleveland. Two of the most dominant pitchers of the day, Cleveland’s Addie Joss (shown at right) and Chicago’s Big Ed Walsh, took the mound, each knowing that any pitch could cost their team the championship. Walsh, who would go on to win 40 games that year, was outstanding, giving up only four hits, and striking out a Major League record 15 batters in eight innings. But that wasn’t enough, as Joss was perfect, retiring all 27 batters he faced. The only run scored on a passed ball, and the Naps won 1-0, pulling them within one-half game of the first place White Sox. How tense was the crowd in this battle of immortals? One reporter wrote, “A mouse working his way along the grandstand floor would have sounded like a shovel scraping over concrete.” Half century later Arthur Daley of the New York Times described the performance by Addie Joss with, “the most astonishing clutch job baseball has had.”

Walsh would go on to win 40, starting 13 of his team’s last 16 games, but could not start on the final day of the season. The White Sox lost, and Detroit went on to the World Series. Joss would finish the season with a remarkable 1.12 ERA. Careerwise, Walsh finished with the best lifetime ERA ever, 1.82. In second place, lifetime, was Addie Joss, at 1.88. Joss pitched only nine years, losing his life to tubercular meningitis two days before the 1911 season began. Joss’s Cleveland teammates refused to start the season on time, instead attending the funeral. On July 24, 1911, in an extreme sign of respect for the man, the Naps faced a team of American League All-Stars to raise money for Joss’s widow and children.

Joss was selected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1978. He is buried in Toledo; you can view his simple grave here.