Joseph Edward "Wagon Tongue" Adams (October 28, 1877 – October 8, 1952) was a Major League Baseball player and minor league manager. He was also known as "Old Wagon Tongue."
A 6'0" pitcher from Cowden, Illinois, Adams appeared in one game for the St. Louis Cardinals on April 26, 1902, at the age of 24. He pitched four innings and allowed nine hits. He also walked two players, hit another, and gave up six runs (four earned), resulting in a career ERA of 9.00. Adams also had two at-bats, but did not reach base either time.
Adams also played semi-pro baseball in both Illinois and Iowa. He later served as a minor league manager, and in 1911 managed future Hall of Famer Ray Schalk in his first professional season with the Taylorville Christians. Adams had previously managed the Pana Coal Miners in 1907 and the Shelbyville Queen Citys in 1908, both in the Eastern Illinois League. According to the 1908 Spalding Guide, Adams was the "godfather" of the Eastern Illinois League, which began in 1907 in Pana.
Besides Shalk, other baseball figures Adams was associated with included Hall of Famer Frank Chance and minor leaguers Bert King and Dick Kinsella. By 1932 Adams owned a restaurant in Jackson, Missouri. Adams died in Montgomery City, Missouri at the age of 74 and is currently buried at Myers Cemetery in Herrick, Illinois.
Adams' nickname of "Wagon Tongue" has been regarded by multiple baseball writers as one of baseball's all time great nicknames.
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or adams:
“While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You seem to think that I am adapted to nothing but the sugar-plums of intellect and had better not try to digest anything stronger.... a writer of popular sketches in magazines; a lecturer before Lyceums and College societies; a dabbler in metaphysics, poetry, and art, than which I would rather die, for if it has come to that, alas! verily, as you say, mediocrity has fallen on the name of Adams.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)