President Von der Ahe yesterday closed a contract with Manager John Kelly, of the Louisville club, to officiate with either Gaffney or Dorscher in the world's championship series as umpire. There is no better umpire in the profession than King Kelly, as his admirers call him, and he will no doubt give great satisfaction to all concerned.
-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 6, 1887
Edit: I orginally had a picture of Mike "King" Kelly with this post but one of the brilliant readers pointed out that we're dealing with Honest John Kelly and not THE King Kelly. You can read my lame excuse for the error in the comments.
2 comments:
John Kelly is of course not the same person as Mike Kelly, whom you have pictured.
Good catch. That was sloppy on my part but I'm always looking for an excuse to post a picture and when I read "King Kelly" I fixated on Mike Kelly (the one and only King Kelly). The funny thing is that when I was typing the post up I was thinking what an odd choice King Kelly was to ump the series. He was a damn fine ballplayer but I'm not sure I'd want him umping my series. Anyway, I cleaned everything up.
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