The Pensacola Journal · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · 1911

Ball Player Suspended

July 1911: Sherwood Magee, star outfielder of the Phillies, punches umpire John Finneran and is indefinitely suspended, in a wire item so terse it fits in a matchbook. The bleachers do not condone, and neither did the league.

Fifty-one words, complete: “Philadelphia, July 12.—Sherwood Magee, star outfielder of the Philadelphia National League baseball club, who, Monday, assaulted and severely injured John Finneran, while the latter was umpiring the game with St. Louis, was today indefinitely suspended.”

That is the entire item as the Pensacola Journal carried it, and the compression is the art. “Star outfielder” is not flattery, it is the point: the National League suspended its reigning batting champion indefinitely anyway. “Assaulted and severely injured” is not euphemism either. John Finneran was a young umpire working a July game, and he took the worst of it.

This site has documented the occupational hazards of umpiring before, most memorably in the job description that is no parlor game, and the parable of the poor old man mobbed once more arrives in these pages this August. The 1911 file adds this: sometimes the league office actually did something about it. Pro-umpire solidarity is house policy in these bleachers. It is nice to learn it was, at least for one July, league policy too.