Addie Joss - Journalism and Engineering Interests

Journalism and Engineering Interests

Joss was concerned about supporting his family after his baseball career, since many players of the day had little education and few marketable job skills beyond their abilities on the diamond. Joss was hired as a sports columnist after the 1906 season for the Toledo News-Bee. 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. His increased popularity as a result of his sportswriting led him to gain an advantage when negotiating contracts with the Naps before the 1907 season, and the club agreed to pay him $4,000 ($99,771). (In 1910, for example, player salaries averaged $2,500.)

He later also wrote for the Cleveland Press and covered the World Series for the News-Bee and Press from 1907–1909. The Press introduced Joss in columns this way: "Of all the baseball players in the land, Addie Joss is far and way the best qualified for this work. A scholarly man, an entertaining writer, an impartial observer of the game." As Joss' writing became more well known, Joss biographer Scott Longert wrote, "the writer was becoming as well known as the ballplayer." An editorial in the Toledo Blade appeared: "In taking his vocation seriously 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."

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.