James Nolan, Assistant Sports Editor

It’s pronounced Luh-joy.

“I know that’s super Americanized, but that’s just the way my family pronounces it,” Josh Lajoie said, a graduate right-handed pitcher for the Quinnipiac baseball team.

Lajoie is not the most prominent pitcher for the Bobcats. He doesn’t lead the team in any statistical category and he has almost exclusively worked as a middle-reliever in non-conference games in 2026.

That is not to say that his season hasn’t been successful. As of May 3, his 5.68 earned run average is less than half of his final ERA of 12.48 in 2025. That was the highest mark of any Bobcat to throw at least 15 innings.

“I had to learn to focus on the mental side of the game,” Lajoie explained as his biggest adjustment. “Just realizing that baseball is 90% mental.”

It’s a sentiment that has been echoing in baseball circles forever, often credited to New York Yankees great Yogi Berra. Except Berra’s version runs into a glaring mathematical error —

“90% of baseball is mental, the other half is physical,” is what the Hall of Fame catcher is credited with saying.

Calculations aside, Bobcat head coach John Delaney has found himself a reliable bullpen arm. Lajoie is in his second season with the Bobcats, his third team in seven years of college baseball.

“I’m just incredibly thankful to Coach Delaney for this opportunity,” Lajoie said. “I get to continue to play the game that I love.” 

It is that love and dedication for the game that has prevented him from being able to travel to Ohio, to watch a game of professional baseball in the city where the name Lajoie was once featured in the paper every morning.

After the 2021 season, the Major League Baseball team in Cleveland announced it would change its name from the Indians to the Guardians after years of public pushback. The former moniker had been in place for over a century. Before the Indians, the franchise was known as the Naps and before that, the Napoleons.

Napoleon Lajoie was born in the northeast corner of Rhode Island in 1874. He would grow up to become one of the first big names of Major League Baseball, became the third pro ball-player to reach 3,000 hits and he is Josh Lajoie’s great-great-great uncle.

“It’s really cool knowing that I have that connection,” Josh said. “It pushes me to work harder at my own game.”

‘Nap,’ as he came to be known, first spent time with two Philadelphia teams. He came up with the Phillies and spent five years there before a contract dispute caused him to jump-ship to the upstart, cross-town Athletics in their first year. 

Despite winning the Triple Crown (leading the league in home runs, runs batted in and batting average) in his first year with the A’s, he’d only play one game with them in 1902. A ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court prevented him from playing baseball for any team other than the Phillies, but the case could only be upheld in Pennsylvania.

He spent the second half of the 1902 season with the Cleveland Blues, as they were known, and then in 1903 the rebranded to the Cleveland Napoleons. Three years later they would shorten to just Naps in 1906, capitalizing on the success of their French superstar.

He would take over as manager of the team in 1905 and spent five years at the helm, never claiming an American League pennant. In 1908, Nap’s Naps finished an agonizing half a game behind the Tigers, who rattled off a 10-game win streak down the stretch to steal the title.

After the 1909 season, Lajoie stepped down as manager to focus on his own game, his batting average having dipped since becoming the skipper. Right away, his average in 1910 was an American League best .383, giving him his personal high since 1901 and the last of his five career batting titles.

“He’s still talked about here in Cleveland, even though he hasn’t played here since 1914,” said Stephanie Liscio, Ph.D., who is a leadership member of the Cleveland chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

Nap has been a topic of conversation on broadcast of late. Current Guardian Jose Ramirez just set the Cleveland franchise record with his 1,620th career game played for the team. He usurped the previous record holder Terry Turner (1,619) on April 6, just days after he passed the man in third place, Nap Lajoie (1,614).

In 2011, Liscio co-founded a Cleveland Indians blog called “It’s Pronounced Lajaway.” For a French name, uncommonly found west of the Atlantic Ocean, the pronunciation has long been a topic of discussion.

Per the Nap Lajoie biography from SABR, it was often pronounced as LAJ-way during his playing days.

“I know in Nap’s day, the French-Americans said  Lah-ZHWA,” Josh explained.

Liscio anecdotally reported the name being said as Laj-uh-way, akin to her blog name, on Guardians broadcasts and around the streets of Cleveland.

As mentioned, Josh and the modern-day Lajoies pronounce it Luh-joy.

“And it’s definitely not Lah-joe-ee,” he laughed after being asked about the worst attempt to pronounce his last name. “I’ve definitely heard that one a few times.”

Josh has six games left in his college career and potentially more if his Bobcats can hold onto a playoff position and find their way into the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament.

“I’ve also wanted to get over [to Cleveland] and catch a game,” Josh said. “But between the spring season and summer ball, I’ve never really had a good time.”

Maybe, after the season, Josh will finally find his way over to Progressive Field and walk around the city that Nap called home over a century ago.