Mena White Seals · Mena, Arkansas · 1906

One mysterious home run and the carpenters threw up the sponge

Mena threw itself a tenth birthday party with two ball games: a real one the White Seals won 11 to 10 and a comedy act between the carpenters and painters. The paper covered both with equal seriousness.

For its Tenth Anniversary celebration in August 1906, Mena scheduled base ball twice. In the forenoon the hometown White Seals edged a team from Poteau, just over the line in Indian Territory, by a score of 11 to 10. A tidy little border game.

The afternoon was the main event. The town’s carpenters played the town’s painters, and the Star reported that these men were good hitters with the hammer and brush but failed to make connections with the pig skin, getting hooted and jeered “for the manner in which they sliced up the atmosphere.” Finally one of the painters in some mysterious manner hit the ball and made a home run, which so badly rattled the carpenters they threw up the sponge.

Every word of that is the newspaper’s. You cannot improve on 1906 sportswriting, you can only reprint it.