Addie Joss

"Adrian 'Addie' Joss (April 12, 1880 – April 14, 1911), nicknamed 'The Human Hairpin,' was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). He pitched for the Cleveland Bronchos, 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. His 1.89 career earned run average (ERA) is the second-lowest in MLB history. ... 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."
Wikipedia

"For nine seasons Addie Joss was one of the best pitchers in the history of the American League, posting four 20-win seasons, capturing two ERA titles, and tossing two no-hitters (one of them a perfect game) and seven one-hitters. Of Joss's 160 career victories 45 were shutouts, and his career 1.89 ERA ranks second all-time only to his long-time rival Ed Walsh among players with 1,000 innings pitched. An exceptional control pitcher with a deceptive pitching motion, the right-handed Joss employed a corkscrew delivery, turning his back entirely to the batter before coming at him with a sidearm motion that confused most hitters. 'Joss not only had great speed and a fast-breaking curve,' Baseball Magazine observed in 1911, 'but [also] a very effective pitching motion, bringing the ball behind him with a complete body swing and having it on the batter almost before the latter got sight of it.'"
SABR

Addie Joss Perfect Game Box Score
"Addie Joss had an uncanny delivery which started behind his right hip and appeared at the last moment - often with blazing speed. In the middle of a four way pennant race he was called on to face Big Ed Walsh and he rose to the occasion with this, the second perfect game in American League history. ... 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,' and a 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.' The Cleveland Indians were called the Naps during this time frame because their manager was non other than hall of famer Larry 'Nap' Lajoie who managed while playing second base."
Baseball Almanac

Addie Joss on Baseball: Collected Newspaper Columns and World Series Reports 1907-1909
"... Beyond the obvious interest of Joss's newspaper column to an Indians column, Joss and his writing sideline has been known to regular readers for some time. Like most memes, 'Addie Joss was a hack' wasn't started on purpose; it was a off-the-cuff retort by Jay to Chuck in a 2007 game thread, and it kind of grew from there. The phrase has some truth to it; during several offseasons, Joss was a regular columnist and sports editor for the Toledo News-Bee, a paper that was trying to compete with the dominant Toledo Blade. Nigel D. Cochran, the owner of the News-Bee, had gambled that bringing on Joss, a very popular player in his adopted home town, would increase the paper's circulation, and the gamble paid off in spades, with Joss's columns becoming a major draw to the city's rabid sports fans."
Let's Go Tribe

2012 October: The "Joss Game" All-Stars