And Joost Iced For All

Eddie Joost, who had the lowest batting average for any player with 400 or more at-bats in a season, has died at the age of 94. The slick-fielding shortstop spent 17 years in the majors, helping to fuel a brief revitalization of the Philadelphia Athletics in the late 1940s after Connie Mack had sold off anyone worth watching, dooming the A’s to the second division for 12 years in a row. After years of dwindling attendance and the cross-town Phillies relevant for the first time in a generation, Joost led the team to a winning record and a franchise record attendance in 1948. The resurgence was short-lived and Joost served as the player-manager of the team in 1954, their last before moving to Kansas City and ceded the city to the Phillies, a decision that would pay off with a World Series parade just 26 years later. He played one more season with the Boston Red Sox before retiring. No longer an athlete, Joost was an active Athletic supporter, as a frequent guest of Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society events, and throwing out first pitches in Philadelphia and Oakland as the abomination of interleague play brought the Phillies and Athletics franchises together again. Joost was also notable as one of the few baseball players to wear glasses in the field to correct an astigmatism, as toric IOLs were a half century away, was the last living player to have played at Baker Bowl, the Phillies home from 1895 to 1938, and was the last surviving member of the 1940 World Champion Cincinnati Reds, the earliest World Series winner that still had a surviving player. With his death there are just 37 surviving players from the Philadelphia A’s.