Joe Lotz, known respectfully as "Smoky Joe" and "Iron Joe," pitched professionally from 1911 to 1921. With his fine fastball he did many wondrous things in semi-pro ball and the low minor league, but he lacked the zeal that could have made him a star; he did not hone his craft, pitched but briefly in the majors, and had a career record of 65-67 in the minors. But his career outside pro ball really was remarkable; some of his individual games were almost incredible, and he appeared in Ripley's Believe It or Not in 1932 for his prolific pitching.
The story of his career begins in 1910, when he was nineteen years old. He'd pitched a little before then for his college and hometown teams, but without distinction. In the spring of 1910 he pitched for Creighton College of Omaha and also tried out for the Omaha Rourkes of the Western League; the Rourkes offered him a contract but he refused. In the summer he pitched for amateur teams in Omaha and for town teams all over Nebraska and Iowa, and lucky was the opponent that could manage even a half-dozen hits off of him. He dominated his opponents so thoroughly it was almost unbelievable. His success gave him only petty greatness, true, greatness in the context of sandlots and country diamonds, but any kind of greatness is a heady wine for one newly-fledged.
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| Omaha World-Herald, 1910-6-26, p. 7 |
He pitched for two Omaha amateur teams in 1910: the Farrell Syrups and the Storz Triumphs. He pitched for the Syrups for the first half of the season. On May 8th, with a purse of $100 at stake, he struck out 22 Hanscom Park batters. On June 5th, against the Hollys, he struck out 17 batters and didn't allow a hit. He pitched a couple of games for the Triumphs near the end of the season and was good, but not quite so otherworldly. The Farrell Syrups and the Storz Triumphs were captained by brothers, Frank Quigley for the Triumphs and Willard Quigley for the Syrups, and they shared a rivalry. The teams tied against each other early in the season and when they rematched on July 31, Lotz beat the Triumphs 2-1, driving in both runs on a triple.
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| Frank Quigley. Omaha Daily News, 1910-9-04, p.35 |
He had an even greater day on September 18. Pitching for Plattsmouth against Tabor in a tournament, he threw a no-hit, no-walk game, striking out 16 of the hapless Tabor batsmen. He would have had a perfect game if his team hadn't made four errors behind him.
Great as those games were, this post was prompted by a sequence of three of his performances that I find even more amazing.
On June 28 he pitched for Pocahontas, Iowa, against Pomeroy, Iowa, before a crowd of 1500. Pomeroy scored two runs in the second inning and Pocahontas scored two runs in the third, and that was the scoring for the day. Lotz traded zeroes with the opposing pitcher, Liddell, until the game was called on account of darkness after 20 innings. Liddell struck out 19 batters, but Lotz struck out 36! (Or 38. Accounts differ.) And he just got better as the game went on: he struck out the side in the 17th, 18th, and 19th innings.
The teams met on July 16 to play off their tie. The game was scoreless until the twelfth inning when Pomeroy won on an error; even in loss Lotz struck out 18 batters. If you count the second game as an extension of the first game, which some newspapers did, Lotz struck out 54 batters in one 32 inning game. Phew.
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| Omaha World-Herald, 1910-7-17, p. 35 |
The teams met a third and final time on July 22, and Lotz beat Pomeroy 2-1 in 15 innings before a "large crowd." He struck out 22 batters and gave up five hits.
In his three games for Pocahontas against Pomeroy, Joe Lotz struck out 76 batters in 47 innings and allowed just 14 hits. For the seven games of his in 1910 I have strikeout numbers for, he struck out 145 batters.
After a season like that the Omaha Rourkes were not going to let him get away a second time. He pitched twice for them in a post-season exhibition series against the Sioux City Packers, Western League champions of 1910, and won both games.
In his three games for Pocahontas against Pomeroy, Joe Lotz struck out 76 batters in 47 innings and allowed just 14 hits. For the seven games of his in 1910 I have strikeout numbers for, he struck out 145 batters.
After a season like that the Omaha Rourkes were not going to let him get away a second time. He pitched twice for them in a post-season exhibition series against the Sioux City Packers, Western League champions of 1910, and won both games.
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| Omaha Daily News, 1911-2-26, p. 15 |
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| Omaha World-Herald, 1911-3-22, p. 5 |
He didn't make it. By mid-June the Rourkes were sick of his losing and planned to banish him to the Rock Island Islanders of the Three-I League. He refused to report and was suspended for his stubbornness, but was reinstated after just ten days in the desperate hope that he could bail out the Rourkes' disintegrating pitching staff. He spent the rest of the year with the Rourkes but never found his footing. His record for the season was 6-9, with 92 walks issued in 27 games.
He started out the 1912 season with the Rourkes, but after two games pitched and two games lost he was sent to the Kearney Kapitalists of the class D Nebraska State League. He didn't make the Rourkes' roster in 1913 and spent another season with the Kapitalists, winning 16 games and losing 14.
In 1914 he finally broke through. Pitching for the champion Oshkosh Indians of the class C Wisconsin-Illinois League, he won the pitchers' triple crown with 24 wins, 267 strikeouts, and a 1.96 ERA. By his new-found success he earned both his nickname of "Smoky Joe" and a ticket to the major leagues. On the strength of his fastball, his canniness, and his "coolness under fire," Smoky Joe was signed to a St. Louis Cardinals' contract on August 3rd by the scout Eddie Herr.
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| The Oshkosh Northwestern, 1914-8-04, p. 9 |
1914 was a pivotal year for him off the field as well as on, as he married Nina Drews of Oshkosh in it. They would stay together for 57 years, until his death did them part.
In 1915 he went to camp with the Cardinals and was one of the last two players cut from their roster. Cardinal manager Miller Huggins liked his fiery fastball but didn't like that his only other pitch was a roundhouse curve. Huggins thought that Lotz needed another pitch but that his fingers were too short to throw a sharp curve, and he urged him to learn to throw a spitter. Released to the Seattle Giants of the class B Northwestern League, Lotz opened his season by allowing one run over two consecutive wins. But he stubbornly refused to throw the spitter, contenting himself with his inadequate fastball/roundhouse repertoire, and it was all downhill from there. He lost nine straight games, giving up 44 runs in 71 innings, and Seattle finally released him on June 18.
The Cardinals wanted to assign him to a team in the Three-I League after that, but he dissuaded them. He asked to be carried on the suspended list for the rest of the season, as his wife was very ill and he wished to be home with her in Oshkosh. He pitched a little near the end of the season for the semi-pro Oshkosh Independents.
Because of his unwillingness to acquire a spitter he was not invited down south to the Cardinals' training camp in 1916. On April 27 the St. Louis Star and Times said he was being farmed out to Muskegon of the Central Association, but it doesn't seem like he ever pitched with them. Miller Huggins had said that if Lotz did not learn a spitter he would be released from Muskegon, and it seems like that's what happened. Instead, Lotz played for the Iowa town teams of Remsen, his home town, Cherokee, and Le Mars, a town 10 miles west of Remsen. According to his SABR biography, Lotz threw a 13-strikeout no-hitter for Le Mars on June 25.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals were in the midst of a 7th place season. In desperate need of pitching, they recalled Lotz from his seclusion in Iowa in early July - now that's a plot twist - and he spent the rest of the season with them. He was great in relief, with a 1.27 ERA in 21.1 innings, but his three starts were disasters, and his 7.71 ERA as a starting pitcher gave him a 4.28 ERA for the season. For context, the National League average ERA that year was 2.61.
In 1915 he went to camp with the Cardinals and was one of the last two players cut from their roster. Cardinal manager Miller Huggins liked his fiery fastball but didn't like that his only other pitch was a roundhouse curve. Huggins thought that Lotz needed another pitch but that his fingers were too short to throw a sharp curve, and he urged him to learn to throw a spitter. Released to the Seattle Giants of the class B Northwestern League, Lotz opened his season by allowing one run over two consecutive wins. But he stubbornly refused to throw the spitter, contenting himself with his inadequate fastball/roundhouse repertoire, and it was all downhill from there. He lost nine straight games, giving up 44 runs in 71 innings, and Seattle finally released him on June 18.
The Cardinals wanted to assign him to a team in the Three-I League after that, but he dissuaded them. He asked to be carried on the suspended list for the rest of the season, as his wife was very ill and he wished to be home with her in Oshkosh. He pitched a little near the end of the season for the semi-pro Oshkosh Independents.
Because of his unwillingness to acquire a spitter he was not invited down south to the Cardinals' training camp in 1916. On April 27 the St. Louis Star and Times said he was being farmed out to Muskegon of the Central Association, but it doesn't seem like he ever pitched with them. Miller Huggins had said that if Lotz did not learn a spitter he would be released from Muskegon, and it seems like that's what happened. Instead, Lotz played for the Iowa town teams of Remsen, his home town, Cherokee, and Le Mars, a town 10 miles west of Remsen. According to his SABR biography, Lotz threw a 13-strikeout no-hitter for Le Mars on June 25.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals were in the midst of a 7th place season. In desperate need of pitching, they recalled Lotz from his seclusion in Iowa in early July - now that's a plot twist - and he spent the rest of the season with them. He was great in relief, with a 1.27 ERA in 21.1 innings, but his three starts were disasters, and his 7.71 ERA as a starting pitcher gave him a 4.28 ERA for the season. For context, the National League average ERA that year was 2.61.
He spent 1917 with the Rochester Hustlers of the International League, and went 7-14 with 119 walks in 32 games. The next three seasons he pitched for town teams in Iowa.
To quote his SABR biography: "In the spring of 1918, his wife Nina required surgery because of a life-threatening internal hemorrhage. Her hospitalization and recuperation no doubt curtailed his baseball activities. Early in 1919, he managed the Kass family mercantile store in Alta, Iowa. [Nicholas Kass, the store's owner, was Joe's step-father.] But that summer, he was back pitching in his native Northwestern Iowa."
Away from the heavy hitters of pro ball he dominated once again. Pitching for his hometown Remsen in late June of 1919, he threw five games in one week and won four of them. For those five games he averaged three hits allowed and 14 struck out, and walked a total of two batters. On August 30, pitching for Moville in a tournament in Mapleton, he threw a 15-strikeout no-hitter. Pitching for Denison on September 14, he lost a pitchers' duel to "Lefty" Powers of Dow City 4-2. Lotz allowed five hits and struck out 15, but Powers struck out 16 and allowed two hits.
He pitched for Wagner of the South Dakota Sunshine League in 1920. On July 19 he beat Platte 4-3 in 14 innings, winning his own game with a sacrifice hit, in late July he struck out 17 Geddes batters in a 4-0 win, and on August 1 the Sioux City Journal reported that he had a record of 12-1 for Wagner. "Iron Man" Lotz had not lost his strength.
In January 1921, the Sioux City Packers of the Western League bought Smoky Joe's contract from Houston of the Texas League. He had been sold to Houston the previous spring but had never reported. I suppose Sioux City figured Lotz would be more likely to report to a team located 40 miles from his home town instead of in far-off dusty Texas.
Lotz did report to Sioux City and had a mediocre year, winning seven, losing nine, and giving up 123 runs in 126 innings. The Western League may have been an extreme hitters' league in the 1920s, but giving up 8.79 runs per nine innings was still outside the realm of accepted taste.
Despite his rough year he began 1922 with Sioux City again and did well, winning three games and losing one out of seven starts. Despite his success, he retired from pro ball on May 11 and returned to his home in Remsen. But he didn't stop pitching; he would continue to pitch in semi-pro ball well into the 1930s. He was even featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not on August 28, 1932, for having pitched 1213 complete games.
The Sioux City Journal profiled him on the same day and gave a more detailed account of his career. They claimed that in 1920 Lotz had thrown 82 complete games between May and September (I really doubt that); that he had pitched eight complete games in six days on two different occasions; that once, "in a period of ambition, he pitched 15 complete games in 15 days. He won 13 of 'em and was shooting for 30 straight games in as many days but he ran out of engagements." He had thrown a perfect game, too, and twelve no-hitters.
The profile also told of how Lotz had been injured in a bad car crash in 1931 and had subsequently fallen into a deep depression. Despondent, he fell out of baseball. But he found his way back to life, and returned to the diamond in 1933, making the commute from his Remsen home to Sioux City to manage a new semi-pro team called the Cornhuskers. He was 42 years old and 220 pounds by then, up from the 175 pounds of his playing days, but he still took an occasional turn on the mound. He pitched the first six innings of a 7-2 win versus Wagner, South Dakota, on "Joe Lotz Day" on June 8.
The Cornhuskers included in their lineup such future and former pros as former White Sox pitcher Biggs Wehde, former White Sox catcher Jimmy Long, former Western League pitcher Harold Bornholdt, former Mississippi Valley League catcher Clayton Thompson, and future Pacific Coast League pitcher John Lotz, Joe's eighteen-year-old son.
He pitched for Wagner of the South Dakota Sunshine League in 1920. On July 19 he beat Platte 4-3 in 14 innings, winning his own game with a sacrifice hit, in late July he struck out 17 Geddes batters in a 4-0 win, and on August 1 the Sioux City Journal reported that he had a record of 12-1 for Wagner. "Iron Man" Lotz had not lost his strength.
In January 1921, the Sioux City Packers of the Western League bought Smoky Joe's contract from Houston of the Texas League. He had been sold to Houston the previous spring but had never reported. I suppose Sioux City figured Lotz would be more likely to report to a team located 40 miles from his home town instead of in far-off dusty Texas.
Lotz did report to Sioux City and had a mediocre year, winning seven, losing nine, and giving up 123 runs in 126 innings. The Western League may have been an extreme hitters' league in the 1920s, but giving up 8.79 runs per nine innings was still outside the realm of accepted taste.
Despite his rough year he began 1922 with Sioux City again and did well, winning three games and losing one out of seven starts. Despite his success, he retired from pro ball on May 11 and returned to his home in Remsen. But he didn't stop pitching; he would continue to pitch in semi-pro ball well into the 1930s. He was even featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not on August 28, 1932, for having pitched 1213 complete games.
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| Sioux City Journal, 1932-8-28, p. 11 |
The profile also told of how Lotz had been injured in a bad car crash in 1931 and had subsequently fallen into a deep depression. Despondent, he fell out of baseball. But he found his way back to life, and returned to the diamond in 1933, making the commute from his Remsen home to Sioux City to manage a new semi-pro team called the Cornhuskers. He was 42 years old and 220 pounds by then, up from the 175 pounds of his playing days, but he still took an occasional turn on the mound. He pitched the first six innings of a 7-2 win versus Wagner, South Dakota, on "Joe Lotz Day" on June 8.
The Cornhuskers included in their lineup such future and former pros as former White Sox pitcher Biggs Wehde, former White Sox catcher Jimmy Long, former Western League pitcher Harold Bornholdt, former Mississippi Valley League catcher Clayton Thompson, and future Pacific Coast League pitcher John Lotz, Joe's eighteen-year-old son.
The two Lotzes worked together in tandem twice at least. In one game, trailing 5-4 in the eighth inning to the Broadway Clowns, a black team, Lotz Sr. inserted himself as a pinch hitter and dunked a single into center. He pinch-ran his son for himself, and Lotz Jr. promptly stole second and scored the game-tying run on a single by Biggs Wehde. The Cornhuskers ended up winning 6-5.
Less happily, Lotz Sr. and Jr. combined on the mound to lose a game 14-1 to Alvord, Iowa, early in June.
I'll let Lotz' SABR bio sum up the rest of his life:
"Appointed scout for the Sioux City Cowboys Western League team in 1937, Joe also took on the job of managing the semipro Le Mars Orioles that same year. By 1940, he was managing the Storm Lake, Iowa, White Caps. Then his son Jack, who continued pitching for minor-league clubs, including Sioux City in 1936 and 1937, moved with his new wife to California in 1941. Joe and Nina followed shortly thereafter. In 1943, both Lotz families were living in Oakland when Jack started playing for the Class AA Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks. The iron man’s offspring remained with the team for two more years, earning his best won-lost record of 18-13 in 1944.
"Living in California during his declining years, Joe Lotz took pleasure in the sports achievements of his grandchildren. Jack’s sons, Dick and John, developed successful golfing careers, turning pro in 1963. With the PGA tour, Dick won the 1969 Alameda Open, the 1970 Kemper Open, and the 1970 Monsanto Open. Then, on January 1, 1971, following a lengthy illness, 80-year-old Joe Lotz died of a massive heart attack at his home in Hayward, California. He was survived by his wife Nina, his son Jack, three grandsons, and one granddaughter. The “Iron Man Pitcher” was buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Hayward."
I had originally planned to just write about Joe Lotz' 1910 season, but the more I read about "Smoky Joe" the more I became interested in him, and this piece soon grew into a story of his life. It's an incomplete account - I left out an entire ten years in the telling of his career because I just wanted to finish this piece up, and of course even the years I did cover are dealt with imperfectly - and I'll probably revisit his life another time.
I'll close this piece with one last tale of Joe Lotz' greatness. In the middle of September 1922 Lotz led Modale, Iowa, to the first prize in the Harrison County Fair tournament. He pitched three games on three consecutive days, beating Council Bluffs 11-0, Little Sioux 6-0, and Missouri Valley 4-0. He gave up a total of five hits across the three games.
Believe it or not.
I had originally planned to just write about Joe Lotz' 1910 season, but the more I read about "Smoky Joe" the more I became interested in him, and this piece soon grew into a story of his life. It's an incomplete account - I left out an entire ten years in the telling of his career because I just wanted to finish this piece up, and of course even the years I did cover are dealt with imperfectly - and I'll probably revisit his life another time.
I'll close this piece with one last tale of Joe Lotz' greatness. In the middle of September 1922 Lotz led Modale, Iowa, to the first prize in the Harrison County Fair tournament. He pitched three games on three consecutive days, beating Council Bluffs 11-0, Little Sioux 6-0, and Missouri Valley 4-0. He gave up a total of five hits across the three games.
Believe it or not.
