Joe Borden: The First No-Hit Pitcher and National League Winner

Ask nearly any baseball fan to identify Joe Borden, and the response is predictable. Joe Who? It’s true, Joe Borden is not a name that is instantly recognizable. To most people, in fact, it isn’t even remotely familiar. But, although he wallows in the depths of obscurity, Borden does, nonetheless, have an important place in baseball history.

There was a time when Borden was briefly one of the premier pitchers in professional baseball. That was in an era long before we ever heard of Sandy Koufax or Nolan Ryan. It was even way before Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson ascended the stairway to baseball deity. Borden’s time was in the 1870s. In that decade of professional baseball’s infancy, the 5-foot, 9-inch, 140-pound right hander not only hurled the first major league no-hitter, he also won the first National League game ever played. The two landmark events in major league history occurred less than one year apart and were the highlights of Borden’s short-lived baseball career.

In Borden’s day, pitchers had to keep their arms below the belt when they delivered a pitch. They stood just 45 feet from home plate. And batters could request where they wanted a pitch to be thrown. Pitchers had to keep both feet on the rubber, it took nine balls to walk a batter, and catchers received pitches while standing several feet behind home plate. Although the rules favored the hitter, Borden and other pitchers found ways to get around the restrictions imposed on their craft. They learned to throw underhanded fastballs, curves, and drops. They even started using pitchouts and brushbacks.

Born May 9, 1854, in Jacobstown, New Jersey, Joseph Emley Borden learned the art of deceiving hitters at an early age. By the time he was 21, having been plucked from an amateur team in Philadelphia, he was pitching in the big leagues with the Philadelphia Pearls of the National Association, the first of baseball’s major leagues. At the time, the Pearls were one of three Philadelphia teams ( the others were the Athletics and the Centennials) playing in the National Association.

According to The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball by David Nemec, Borden replaced Cherokee Fisher, who had been cut from the Pearls for “drunkenness and general misbehavior.” Borden made his big-league debut on July 24 for a Pearls team that would go on to a fifth-place finish in the 13-team National Association. Because his family, a prominent one in mid-New Jersey, did not approve of his playing baseball, Borden initially used pseudonyms, pitching under the name of Nedrob (Borden spelled backward) or Joe Josephs. On July 28, 1875, pitching as Joe Josephs, the rookie fired major league baseball’s first no-hitter while blanking the Chicago White Stockings, 4-0, at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Park. It would be the only no-hitter in the National Association’s five-year existence.

The numbers of Borden’s strikeouts and walks against a Chicago team that eventually finished in sixth place, losing 7 of 10 games to the Pearls, are not known. But a report in a Philadelphia newspaper claimed, “Borden tossed the Chicago team up and down in a blanket.” The game was played in one hour and 35 minutes and was umpired by Nicholas E. Young, who later served as president of the National League from 1885 to 1902. Absorbing one of his seven losses (against six wins) that season, Chicago pitcher Mike Golden gave up seven hits; all four Philadelphia runs were unearned. 

Borden finished the season with a 2-4 record in seven games, each of which he started. He finished all seven, and both of his victories were shutouts. Working in 66 innings, he gave up 47 hits, struck out nine, and walked seven (statistics from Total Baseball).

When the National Association folded after the 1875 season, Borden moved to the Boston Red Caps in the newly formed National League. Unimaginable as it may seem for so long ago, some accounts claimed that Boston, believing it had obtained one of the best pitchers in the country, gave Borden a three-year contract.

History visited Borden against on April 22, 1876, when manager harry Wright named the slender hurler as his opening day pitcher against the Philadelphia Athletics. The Athletics were one of several teams that over the years carried that name. This particular version, however, failed to finish the season, getting thrown out of the league after refusing to make a late-season road trip. The game, also played at the 5,000-seat Jefferson Park, which was located in the north side of Philadelphia in an area that was crammed with notable ballparks, was the first National League game ever played.

With an estimated crowd of 3,000 watching, Borden, now playing under his own name, pitched the Red Caps to a 6-5 victory, giving him and Boston the distinction of earning the new league’s first victory. Borden went on to post an 11-12 record in 218 innings and 29 games for the fourth-place Red Caps. While registering a 2.89 ERA , yielding 257 hits, and striking out 34, he led the league with 51 walks (statistics from Total Baseball). But at the age of 22, he was curiously released before the end of the season. In a brief biography by Randy Linthurst in SABR’s Nineteenth Century Stars he is said to have received a cash settlement. Joe wound up serving as a groundskeeper at South End Grounds, the Red Caps’ home park. 

The little pitcher who made baseball history never appeared in another major league game. Having lived in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, during his brief career as a player, Borden eventually found his way to West Chester, another Philadelphia suburb. There he established a business manufacturing boots and shoes. An article in the West Chester Local News said that Borden married Henrietta Sebastian Evans on February 4, 1891. The bride was a member of a prominent local family. Her father was the publisher of another West Chester newspaper and also served two terms each in the state assembly and the state senate, and her grandfather was a highly regarded botanist, historian, and financier.

Eventually Borden closed his shoe business and took a job as first assistant to the secretary of a major assistant to the secretary of a major bank in Philadelphia. The former pitcher died October 14, 1929, at the age of 75 at his daughter’s home in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. He was buried in a cemetery in West Chester. Borden’s grave site was unkempt and unnoticed for many years until located by SABR member Tom Taylor. The unadorned tombstone at the site makes no mention of a baseball career in which Borden was the first no-hit hurler in major league baseball and the National League’s first winning pitcher.

RICH WESTCOTT has been a writer and editor for 40 years, and was the founder, editor, and publisher of Phillies Report He is the author of 15 baseball books, including No-Hitters: The 225 games, 1893-1999 (with Allen Lewis) and most recently Great Home Runs of the 20th Century and Winningest Pitchers: Baseball’s 300-Game Winners.