Versailles Merchants · Versailles, Missouri · 1905

Each game was liberally patronized by lovers of the national sport

Three games in three days between the Sedalia Sentinels and the Versailles Merchants: a 5 to 4 heartbreaker Friday, a 19 to 4 avalanche Saturday and a 5 to 2 finish Sunday, umpired throughout by a professor the losing team praised for fairness.

The Sedalia Sentinels came to Versailles in the summer of 1905 for “another series of three games with the Merchants on their home diamond,” and the Morgan County Democrat reports that “each game was liberally patronized by lovers of the national sport here.” Friday went to the visitors the hard way: the score stood tied in the eighth, Sedalia scratched out the winning run in the top of the ninth “and by good head work blanked the home team,” 5 to 4.

Saturday the series turned into a landslide. Bradfield, whom the paper identifies with the full bluntness of 1905 as “the deaf and dumb pitcher,” started for Sedalia and “it soon become apparent that he was ‘easy’ for the home team, as they began slugging him hard,” eight runs by the fifth. Brill relieved him and “proved to be an easy mark for the Merchants, as eleven more scores were piled up as a result of the change.” Final: 19 to 4, Versailles.

Sunday’s finish “proved the best of the three,” Yeager holding Sedalia to two runs in a 5 to 2 Merchants win. But save a cheer for Prof. J. M. Stith, who umpired all three games, “was equal to the emergency and filled the position to the satisfaction of both players and spectators.” The Sedalia team, “who are a gentlemanly bunch,” said his umpiring “was far above the ordinary in point of fairness.” Praise for the umpire, from the team that lost the series, is about as rare as a clipping gets.