Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 190, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1910 — UMPIRE SHERIDAN QUIT BECAUSE EYES ARE BAD [ARTICLE]

UMPIRE SHERIDAN QUIT BECAUSE EYES ARE BAD

John F. Sheridan, the American league umpire, who suddenly announced his intention of quitting the game just before the contest between Washington and New York recently, told President Johnson at Chicago that his eyes are going back on him and that as he would have to wear glasses, he had decided to quit the game for good. Mr. Johnson sent the umpire to an eye specialist and hopes that Jack can be influenced to don umpire togs again. i “An accident common to ball players started me on the downward path path of umpiring,” says Sheridan. “In youth I aspired to be a bold athlete, and got along very well until I went to Chattanooga, Tenn., to play second base with a pig iron arm. That was in the spring of 1885. Early in the season they used the acid test on the arm and it was a case of tin can for me. They had passed the iron age in Dixie. Henry Grady, the silvertongued statesman, was president of the Southern league at that time. He must have thought my voice sounded ripe for the business, so he offered me. a soft snap umpiring at $75 per month. I needed the money, but had I known then what I know now I would not have needed the money. Sometimes a fellow can get along without it. However, I was a youngster far from my sunny California home, and the $75 per looked good before I got busy,' • I was assigned to Macon, Ga., as the society papers say, and I umpired since then.”