Galveston Sand Crabs · Galveston, Texas · 1909

Extry! Poor Old Man Is Mobbed Once More

Galveston, May 1909: Catcher Quiesser of the Sand Crabs assaults Umpire Derrick, gets removed, and his replacement battery walks in the losing runs. The paper's headline files it under recurring news: Extry! Poor Old Man Is Mobbed Once More.

The headline does the work of a whole editorial: “Extry! Poor Old Man Is Mobbed Once More.” Not a name, not a team, just the poor old man, mobbed, once more, as if the paper kept the type standing because it needed it every week. The poor old man in question is Umpire Derrick, and the dispatch from Galveston is brisk: “The feature of yesterday’s game with the Buffaloes was the assaulting of Umpire Derrick by Catcher Quiesser of the Sand Crabs.”

Note “the feature.” Not an incident that marred the game. The feature of it.

Justice, for once, ran swift and self-inflicted: “Many people attribute the loss of the game to the disturbance, as the removal of Quiesser sent Bradford in the air and he walked enough men to lose the game, forcing two over the plate in the seventh.” Galveston fell to Houston 6 to 3, and the box score records the whole morality play in one line: “Batteries: Bradford and Quiesser and Hellman; Rose and Gordon.” A true bleacherite would never plead for anyone’s gore, least of all an umpire’s, and it is quietly satisfying when the game itself agrees.