page_title: Joe Judge (baseball)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Joe Judge (baseball) / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Joe Judge and his father at the World Series baseball game, Washington, D.C., 1924 Abstract/medium: 1 photographic print.
context_page_description: Joseph Ignatius Judge was an American professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball as a first baseman from 1915 through 1934, most notably as a member of the Washington Senators team with whom he won a World Series championship in 1924. Judge set American League records for career games, putouts, assists, total chances, double plays and fielding percentage at first base, and led the AL in fielding average five times, then a record. He also batted over .300 nine times, and hit .385 in the 1924 World Series as the Senators won their only championship. At the time of his retirement in 1934, he ranked tenth in AL history in hits and doubles, seventh in games played, eighth in triples and at bats, and ninth in walks.
context_section_description: Judge, who batted and threw left-handed, was born in Brooklyn, New York City, and grew up on New York's Upper East Side near 66th Street and 1st Avenue on what is now the site of Rockefeller University. He was noticed as a 12-year-old shortstop by a local postman, Bud Hannah, who bought him a first baseman's glove so that he could play at a more natural position. After playing semipro ball in the New York area and having a tryout with the New York Giants in 1911, he signed with the Boston Red Sox in 1914. He hit over .300 as a minor leaguer before his contract was sold to the Senators in 1915, and broke into the major leagues with 12 games late that season. Right fielder Sam Rice, who would be his teammate for the next 18 years, made his debut a month earlier.
  In the early years of his career, Judge was slowed by the dead ball, and by playing his home games in Griffith Stadium, which defied power hitting. In 12 of his 18 seasons with the Senators, fewer home runs were hit there than in any other AL park. Judge hit 2 home runs in 1917, but that was half of the entire team's total of 4 (three of which were hit in road games; also, opponents hit only 3 HRs while visiting Washington); the only major league team since 1900 to have fewer home runs were the 1908 Chicago White Sox, who had 3. Judge ended 1917 with the seventh highest slugging average in the AL at .417, despite having only 2 homers and 15 doubles; however, he also added 15 triples, one of three times he would hit that many. In 1918, he had one of the Senators' five total home runs. In 1919 he set a club record with 81 walks, topping the 1911 total of 74 shared by Clyde Milan and Doc Gessler; Joe Cronin broke his record with 95 in 1929.
  On July 1, 1920, Judge preserved the only no-hitter of Walter Johnson's career by snaring Harry Hooper's line drive down the first base line, tossing the ball to Johnson for the final out of the 1-0 victory over the Red Sox. He ended the season with a career-high .333 batting average, and would hit over .300 every year through 1930 except 1922 and 1926. In 1922 he tied Ed Delahanty's 1902 club record of 10 home runs; Goose Goslin broke the record with 12 in 1924. Judge also passed Howard Shanks to take over the team's career home run record with 27; Goslin moved ahead of him in 1925. In addition, Judge collected 15 triples again along with 32 doubles, and finished eighth in the MVP voting. His 131 double plays that year broke Earl Sheely's AL record of 121 and came within one of George Kelly's major league mark, both set in 1921; Joe Hauser tied the AL record in 1924 before Sheely broke it again with 136 in 1925.
  The Senators had traditionally struggled, finishing higher than fourth place only four times in their first two decades, but now entered the strongest period in their history. Second baseman Bucky Harris had joined the starting lineup in 1920, and shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh had been acquired in 1922, with rookie third baseman Ossie Bluege also arriving briefly the same year. In 1922 Washington set a major league team record of 161 double plays, breaking the mark of 155 shared by the 1921 Giants and White Sox, and in 1923 – the first full season in which all four played together – the Senators shattered their own mark with 182; the record would be broken by the 1928 Cincinnati Reds, with 194. In 1923 the Senators also became only the fifth team in major league history – and the first since the 1912 Philadelphia Athletics with their "$100,000 infield" – to have all four infielders lead the league in double plays. Judge led the AL in fielding for the first time that year with a .993 average.
  In 1924 the Senators won their first pennant, edging the three-time defending league champion New York Yankees by two games. Batting fifth in the World Series against the Giants, Judge scored on Peckinpaugh's double with one out in the ninth inning of Game 2 for a 4-3 victory; he also completed three double plays in the game, one of which ended an inning with the bases loaded. He got three hits each in the losses in Games 3 and 5; Washin
caption: Joe Judge and his father at the World Series baseball game, 1924
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