A Bloody Collision at the Ballpark
A brutal outfield collision between two Seattle players leaves them both senseless and costs the team the game against Tacoma.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Seattle had the unlucky end through most of the game and was practically beaten by an unfortunate accident in the first inning. Hernon and Lange, while running for a fly ball, crashed into each other, and both were knocked senseless, allowing three runs to come in. The make-up that the Seattles presented was a badly patched up one, with four men playing out of position. The two injured fielders soon recovered consciousness after the application of cold water, but both carried aching heads for the rest of the day. The chilly weather kept the attendance down to a very small number and the faithful few present preserved a gloomy silence through most of the slow, uninteresting game. When, however, the team they wanted to win made its garrison finish in the eighth and ninth, the rooters in the stands woke suddenly to life.
“The shock threw both of them on their backs and they lay stretched out insensible for fully ten seconds.”
This 1892 account captures the raw, rough-and-tumble era of Pacific Northwest baseball, long before the modern era of professional stadium safety. It reminds us that even early civic life was punctuated by moments of intense physical danger and local team loyalty that echoes in today's Seattle sports culture.
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