July 22, 2025
DUMP THE UMPIRE
INTO BIG POND.
PLAYERS OBJECT TO SOX, SHIRT
AND DECISIONS.
No One Knows Result of Indepen-
dence Baseball Game Wherein
Henry McCoy Made Home
Run on a Bunt.
No one knows how the baseball game between the business men's and fair association nines resulted at Independence yesterday. It came to an untimely end when the business men's team tossed the umpire into the lake as a protest against his decisions.
The business men objected at the beginning of the game to the umpire, R. D. Mize, an Independence druggist, because he wore green socks and a red shirt. Mize, to quell criticism and enforce his rulings, carried two large horse pistols and a saber. Over his head he wore a tiny parasol.
Mize's decisions were questioned by the business men, and the game was all but lost when Allen Southern went to the bat. Southern, who prides himself on his batting, lined out a hot one over the head of the pitcher. The umpire called it a foul. That settled him for that game. The business men's team marched up in a body, and before the umpire could escape they carried him on their shoulders to the big pond and dropped him in.
Judge Allen Prewitt's uniform also had a tendency to queer the game. Several reefs had been taken in the costume, which was borrowed for the occasion, and the pearl buttons fore and aft fooled the players, who could not tell whether he was running to or from a base.
The most sensational play was made by Henry McCoy, a surveyor, who bunted the ball when he went to bat. The first baseman muffed the ball, and McCoy made second, where the baseman also dropped it. The runner went on to third. The baseman there let the ball slip through his fingers and McCoy made a home run.
R. W. McCurdy, the corpulent ex-mayor of Independence, didn't make a base.
Mayor Jones and members of the city council helped fill out the team. There were some good players on both sides, but the other kind of players went to bat first and the semi-professionals were shut out.
Labels: druggists, Independence, sports
