Joan Joyce: Baseball, Softball

 American Star of the Women’s International Sports Hall of Fame

Known as “the finest women’s softball player of all time,”¹ Joan Joyce not only excelled on the diamond, but on the courts, the links, and the lanes as well. A former teammate from the Connecticut Falcons, Kathy Neal, said Joyce “really was the Babe Didrikson Zaharias of her era.”²

 

Born August 1, 1940, in Waterbury, Connecticut, Joan Joyce was introduced to sports by following her father, Joe, to the ball fields. Interested in baseball, young Joan began honing her skills by throwing a ball against a wall of her family home, which her mother soon outlawed. Undeterred, Joan built herself a backstop with chicken wire strung across two trees. At the tender age of 16, Joyce had become good enough to join the Raybestos Brakettes, the most legendary and powerful team in women’s softball. An injury to the Brakettes’ starting pitcher in 1958 launched Joyce into the spotlight as the team’s new hurler. Just 18 years old, she led the team to a national championship, pitching a dominant no-hitter in the title game.

 

Joyce’s dominant pitching career had just begun. Her pitching philosophy was simple and effective: “keep the umpires out of it. That meant to pitch to the area where the batter didn’t want to swing.”³ During her time with the Brakettes, Joyce won 429 games while losing only 27. She struck out 5,677 batters in 3,397 innings pitched, and threw 105 no-hitters and an incredible 33 perfect games. In 1974, she led the Brakettes to a world title in the third International Softball Federation (ISF) Women’s World Championship. Joyce holds a career pitching record of 753 wins and 42 losses, including 150 no-hit, no-run games and 50 perfect games.

 

To the dismay of her opponents, Joyce was as great a hitter as she was a pitcher, carrying a career batting average of .327. She led the Brakettes in batting average six times and once achieved a single season average of .406. Joyce played on 12 national championship teams, was an 18-time Amateur Softball Association (ASA) All-American, and won or shared the MVP award in the Women’s National Championship eight times. She has been inducted into the ASA National Hall of Fame (1983) and the ISF Hall of Fame (1999).⁴ The legend continues.

 

The moment that Joyce considers the most notable and favorite of her career came in August 1961 at Municipal Stadium in Waterbury, Connecticut. In front of a record crowd, Joyce was set to face off against the greatest hitter of all time, Ted Williams, to benefit The Jimmy Fund. The battle began. Some people claim that Williams hit a few to the outfield but Joyce disagrees. She recalls, “Ted was at bat for 10 to 15 minutes, he fouled off three. Dom DiMaggio came down with Ted and I let up on him so he could hit a few, but Ted? No. He swung and missed a lot. He finally got so disgusted he threw the bat down and walked away.”

 

The two legends met again five years later. Just as she had done the first time, Joyce threw rise balls, exploiting the fact that baseball players have never seen a pitch that moves upward. After Williams struck out, he went to the mound and gave Joyce a hug, waving to the crowd as he left. At the age of 81, when asked about facing the great Joyce, Williams confirmed that “the story is all true. Joan Joyce was a tremendous pitcher, as talented as anyone who ever played.” Joyce was able to add another baseball legend to her no-hitter list when she struck out Hank Aaron in an exhibition in West Hartford in 1978.⁵

 

As if her achievements on the softball diamond weren’t enough, Joyce excelled at volleyball, bowling, basketball, and golf. As a teenager, she carried a 180 average on the bowling lanes. In basketball, she was a three-time Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) All-American at Chapman College (now Chapman University), setting a national tournament single game scoring record with 67 points. Joyce was also a four-time Women’s Basketball Association All-American and played on the U.S. National Team in 1965. Following her playing career, she served as an official for 15 years, officiating three collegiate national championship games. As a volleyball athlete, Joyce served as a player/coach on the Connecticut Clippers of the United States Volleyball Association. She competed in four National Tournaments and was named to the All-East Regional team. Adding to this already lengthy list of achievements are her golf accomplishments. Joyce was a 19-year member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) from 1977 to 1995, recording a low round of 66. She was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the lowest number of putts in a single round (for both men and women) with 17. In a tribute to her overall athleticism, Joyce twice participated in the popular “Superstars” television specials, competing and succeeding against some of America’s best male and female athletes.⁶

 

In 1994, Joyce began a new chapter in her athletic career when she was hired by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) to build a softball program from the ground up. The Owls achieved success immediately, earning Joyce her first Atlantic-Sun Conference Coach of the Year award. In only their third season, the Owls captured their first A-Sun Championship, also the first for the FAU athletic program. Joyce was again honored as A-Sun Coach of the Year. In 1999, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) awarded an automatic bid to the A-Sun Conference champion for the NCAA tournament. The Owls won their third championship in a row and with it their first ever NCAA tournament appearance. Joyce and her staff were named the Southeast Region Coaching Staff of the Year by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association. Since she began the program in 1994, she has amassed nine A-Sun Conference Championships and one Sun Belt Conference Championship.

 

In addition to her duties as the skipper of the softball team, Joyce also serves as the head coach of the women’s golf team. During her tenure she has coached three A-Sun Golfers of the Year. As she has done throughout her career, Joyce excelled in many areas outside of softball, in the same year she took on the golf team she also stepped up to the plate to take on the position of senior women’s administrator. She held the latter position until 2001.⁷

 

Joan Joyce is truly a legend in women’s sport. Her versatility and natural athleticism are largely unrivaled, regardless of gender. Although she has been inducted into a total of seven Halls of Fame, including the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame, it is difficult to encapsulate and fully honor her athletic prowess. She has contributed significantly to women’s athletics through her play, her officiating, and now her coaching. Regardless of all her achievements, Joyce will always be best remembered as the “girl” who struck out two of Major League Baseball’s greatest.

 

Notes

1 Robert Condon, Great Women Athletes of the 20th Century (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 1991).

2 Tom Yantz, “The Missing Legend; Tom Couldn’t Touch Joan.” The Hartford Courant, December 30, 1999.

3 Ibid.

4 Joan Joyce, ASA National Softball Hall of Fame Member, ASA

5 Tom Yantz, “The Missing Legend; Tom Couldn’t Touch Joan.”

6 Joan Joyce, Biography, Florida Atlantic University Softball Media Guide, 2008.

7 Ibid.

This excerpt was written by Catherine Lahey.