Terror with a Bat
He was a Cleveland fan favorite
Old-time baseball by C. Philip Francis – June 15, 2005
My wife and I always enjoy walking through a cemetery reading the inscriptions. Once we even spent a day driving to Harrisville, Michigan to locate the tombstone of Hall of Famer Kiki Cuyler who is buried in the local Catholic cemetery. Because of our graveyard interest my mind was recently piqued after finding an article on Joe Vosmik whose gravestone is inscribed with a bat, ball, and glove, and who was a fan favorite and star outfielder for the Cleveland Indians in the 1930’s. I had never heard of Joe Vosmik, and so who was he?
Although his name is seldom mentioned in any books found in my baseball library I did find a Joe Vosmik baseball card in the Conlon Collection, and immediately noted that he was a very handsome man. Joe finished his 13-year big league career with a batting average of .307, almost won a batting title in 1935 with a .348, and averaged over 30 doubles a year from 1935 – 1940. Certainly a hitting machine, but who was Joe Vosmik?
Joseph Franklin Vosmik was born on April 4, 1910 in Cleveland, Ohio. The small, intimate League Park, called Dunn Field from 1916 to 1927, was used by the Indians from 1910 to 1934 when the team shared weekend games with the new cavernous Cleveland Stadium. Vosmik, a Czeck-American, was playing in a sandlot all-star game in League Park with the Cleveland Indians’ General Manager, Billy Evans, in attendance. He had promised to take the three best players to the 1929 spring training, and asked his wife whom she would pick.
“I like that good-looking blond Viking,” she replied referring to Vosmik. The Indians signed “that blond Viking”, and sent him to Frederick, Maryland in the Blue Ridge League where he hit .381. The next year, 1930, Joe was moved up to Terre Haute, Indiana in the Three-I League hitting .397.
After two years in the minors the six-foot outfielder became the regular left-fielder in his rookie 1931 season hitting .320 with 117 RBI’s, and went on to top the .300 mark in six of his next ten seasons. His best year was 1935 when Joe led the American League with 216 hits, 47 doubles, and 20 triples, and 10 home runs. In the same season the right-handed slugger hit .348, only six-tenths of a point behind American League batting award winner Buddy Myer, the second baseman for the Washington Senators.
On the last day of the baseball season Cleveland was playing a double-header at League Park with Joe having a three-point lead over Myer in the batting race. To help win his title Vosmik sat out the first game and part of the second, but after word came that Myer had four hits in his game to vault over Vosmik’s lead Joe was inserted in the last contest of the year. He lined out in his first at-bat, had a bunt-single the next time, and was thrown out his last time at the plate. It was too little and too late. .
That year Joe made the All-Star game held at the Cleveland Stadium, and was given a two-minute standing ovation when introduced in the American League’s starting lineup. In appreciation for his outstanding year, the Indians gave Vosmik a new three-year contract at $15,000 a year.
The following season Joe’s hitting fell off to .287 with 94 RBI’s, and then the popular Cleveland outfielder was traded to the St. Louis Browns on January 17, 1937. Cleveland’s newspaper The Plain Dealer had the story in an eight-column headline across the first page, and the upset and angry Indian fans threatened to boycott the games.
Years later Joe’s wife, Sally, could remember the trade, “Joe wanted to stay in Cleveland, but he took the trade in stride. He said it as just part of baseball.”
Vosmik had a good year in St. Louis hitting a fine .325, but his traveling days were far from over. On December 2, 1937 he was traded to the Boston Red Sox for three players including Bobo Newsom, and where he was expected to win the batting championship with its friendly left-field wall. The former big gun for Cleveland now joined an all .300-hitting outfield that included Doc Cramer (.301) and Ben Chapman (.340). Joe did not win the hitting award, but led the league with 201 hits. After two seasons with the Red Sox who could not overcome the New York Yankees for a World Championship, the Ohio-born power hitter was on the move again, this time to Brooklyn where his career would soon come to a close. By then the Red Sox had an outfielder who hit over .300 for the next 17 years – Ted Williams.
Joe played his last season as a regular outfielder in 1940 hitting .282 before dropping to a .196 in 25 games in 1941. He did not play in 1942 or 1943 before finally finishing his 13-career with 36 at-bats in 14 games for the 1944 World War II Washington Senators.
Vosmik managed Cleveland farm teams in Dayton, Oklahoma City, and Tucson, was inducted into both the Ohio and Cleveland Sports Hall of Fames, and died of lung cancer at the age of 51 on January 27, 1962 in Cleveland.
Joe married his wife, Sally, in 1936 after a seven-year courtship, and said he would always sing the Irving Berlin song, “Always” on their dates. They had first met in a neighborhood drug store when she was in high school, and long remembered him as “…a handsome guy with big dimples when he smiled. People were always saying that he looked like Jimmy Cagney.”
Sally married for the second time 20 years after Joe’s death, but kept those marvelous memories as a baseball wife where she made friendships with such baseball luminaries as Babe Ruth, Earl Averill, Jimmy Foxx, and Lefty Grove who was godfather to one of her three children.