People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1894 — WELCOMED THE CHAMPIONS. [ARTICLE]

WELCOMED THE CHAMPIONS.

Great Reception to Baltimore's Successful Baseball Club. Baltimore. Md., Oct. 3. —Fifty thousand nun and women packed the streets about the Baltimore & Ohio railroad station Tuesday evening to welcome home the champion baseball team. Business houses closed and thousands of workingmen took a half holiday to celebrate. Everybody wore the Oriole colors. It was a baseball carnival. The bursting of firework bombs announced the arrival of the team. Then a dozen brass bands began. The thousands of men and boys started to jell and blow tin horns, j cannon torpedoes roared, and the air was filled with fireworks. Meanwhile a long procession had ! been formed. The players, in new black hats and white linen dusters covering full dress suits, would have been hugged out of breath and shape by the crowd of cranks but for the squad of policemen, who finally got them to their carriages. The parade line contained hundreds of pleasure clubs' grotesque tableaux on floats. About 7 o'clock the procession finally got under way. First came a wagon with fireworks, then members of the reception committee on horseback, still others in carriages, and after them the Orioles themselves. In the first carriage, drawn by four horses, sat Treasurer Vonderhorst, Chairman Johnson, President Ned Hanlon and Vice President Walz. No Roman conqueror ever entered a city more proudly than the Orioles did their native heath. The applause was deafening and the general din almost indescribable. The carriages of the players were as many triumphal cars, so surrounded by enthusiastic “rooters” that the horses could badly make headway. Every equine was gaylv caparisoned with the Maryland colors and many of the organizations in line had provided themselves with fancy costumes. The parade took over one hour aud a half to pass a given point. The most amusing thing in line was a live rooter, a 500-pound squealing porker from Hagerstown, mounted on an English drag. There were numbers of tally-ho coaches and big ’buses filled with young men and women in fancy dress. Nearly all the amateur baseball clubs in the state were in line. The route of the procession was illuminated with colored fires. Baltimore street was so packed with people that the procession could not get tliroughin tiie regular order intended. Women fainted and children were nearly crushed in the jam. After a reception at the armory, at which the governor and mayor complimented the team and the players shook hands with thousands of cranks, a grand banquet concluded the festivities. One serious accident occurred during the parade. At Lexington and Howard streets a team of six horses became frightened at the fireworks and plunged into the midst of the crowd, trampling people under foot. There was a perfect jam of humanity at this point and it is a wonder more were not injured. As it was, eleven persons, mostly women and children, were found to be injured after officers had secured the horses. Florence Ingle, aged 18, was taken out from under the horses’ feet unconscious and has since remained in that condition. It is feared her skull is fractured. Henry Kruschlen, aged 15, had both his arms so badly crushed that amputation xvill be necessary. Those two may die. The above-named are the only ones known to be hurt beyond bruises and cuts.