He holds the major league record for most innings pitched without allowing a home run in a career (320.1 innings). But it also seems he had a nasty habit of throwing games, “hippodroming” as the newspapers of the day colorfully called it, and was kicked out of baseball for it not once but twice.

When Joe and two other Browns teammates were kicked out of baseball and blacklisted from all respectable leagues in November 1877, it was curtains for repeat-offender Blong. How do you develop a reputation for throwing games and still hold a positive record that lasts forever? Perhaps he had so much pitching control that he was able to serve up only singles and doubles so that it did not look too obvious that he was throwing a game? In that case, still remarkable control for a pitcher.

The modern record is quite a ways off from Blong’s mark: (269.1 Greg Minton, San Francisco Giants reliever – June 1, 1979 through May 1, 1982), symptomatic of home runs that happen about 8 times as often as they did in the eighteen seventies. But nonetheless even if someday someone surpasses 320.1 innings, it is not likely to represent the entire career of that pitcher. Organized baseball did not know what a favor they were doing for Joe when they expelled him in 1877: bestowing him with an almost impossible record of pitching an entire career, consisting of more than 300 innings, without giving up a home run.

Blong is buried in Calvary Cemetery in north St. Louis.

p.s. for Notre Dame fans, one of Blong’s partners in crime was the unfortunately named ballplayer Trick McSorley, his classmate at Notre Dame.

Here is the account from This Game of Games blog.