Item #BEV001 Umpire Bill Evans’ Simplified Baseball Rule Book and Plays That Puzzle. Billy Evans.

Umpire Bill Evans’ Simplified Baseball Rule Book and Plays That Puzzle

Price: $250.00

[No place]: The Evening Herald, 1922. First Edition. Fine.

First edition. Publisher’s off-white stapled wrappers printed in navy, The Evening Herald advertisement to rear wrapper. About fine, with a tiny crease to lower right corner of front wrapper and previous owner’s name written lightly in red pencil at top of front wrapper. Overall, an excellent and fresh copy. In this booklet, Billy Evans outlines the rules of the game, addressing such issues as “Dropped Third Strike,” “Passing a Preceding Runner,” and “Plays Requiring Appeal.” Additionally, there’s a Q&A formatted “Plays that Puzzle” section at the back. Billy Evans umpired in the American League from 1906 to 1927 during the Deadball Era. While renowned for his fairness and “ability to bear no malice,” he famously got in a fist fight with Ty Cobb under the stands in a 1921 game. Off the field, Evans wrote newspaper columns and authored an important umpiring manual titled Umpiring From the Inside (1947). Evans was inducted posthumously into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, making him just the third umpire to receive that honor. Item #BEV001