This day in history: Bat boy gets ejected

Tim Hagerty

This day in history: Bat boy gets ejected image

Apparently there aren't age restrictions for ejections.

At least two bat boys have been thrown out of professional baseball games.

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June 24, 1948: Salisbury Cardinals manager Gene Corbett was booted from a Class D Eastern Shore League game and later used 13-year-old bat boy Paul Murrell as a messenger, instructing the kid to tell an umpire to "get in the game and keep your eyes open." Murrell relayed the message, got ejected too and sulked with Corbett in the clubhouse, according to the Eastern Shore Baseball Museum.  

There was another dugout detention 36 years later.

May 27, 1984: Fourteen-year-old Portland Beavers bat boy Sam Morris was kicked out for refusing to pick up a chair. Portland manager Lee Elia chucked a folding chair into right field during an animated post-ejection tirade. Umpire Pam Potesma was equally mad and refused to clean up after Elia, ordering Morris to pick up the chair. Morris declined out of loyalty to Elia, so Potesma ejected Morris too.

"There is one benefit from it," Morris told the Associated Press from his junior high school. "Now all the players know my name."

Current Orioles' bench coach and former Portland outfielder John Russell also was ejected in the squabble.

Triple-A ejections came with $25 fines back then, but the Pacific Coast League made an exception for Morris. "How do you fine a bat boy?" PCL president William Cutler asked.

Will there be another on-deck outlaw someday? Time will tell.

Hey, it could be worse, a Bakersfield Dodgers' bat boy got bit by a gopher.

Tim Hagerty is the broadcaster for the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas, and is on Twitter at @MinorsTeamNames . He is also the author of "Root for the Home Team: Minor League Baseball's Most Off-the-Wall Team Names." 

 

Tim Hagerty