Jim Boyer

Jim Boyer was born and raised in Maryland. He died in Maryland and is buried there. And when he left the American League’s umpiring staff in 1950 after almost seven seasons, it was to take a job in the Old Line State.

Unfortunately, Boyer never umpired a major-league game in Maryland, since the St. Louis Browns didn’t move to Baltimore until four seasons after he retired. Still, his 1,034 games1 as an AL arbiter included plenty of other memorable moments – three no-hitters, two cycles, one All-Star Game, and some of the most dramatic and celebrated World Series games of their era.

James Murray Boyer2 was born April 21, 1909, in Templeville, Maryland, a tiny community in the state’s Eastern Shore region not far from the Delaware state line.3 Parents Murray and Hettie (née Hill) moved their family, which eventually numbered eight children,4 to Baltimore when Jim was 5 years old.5 Murray worked as a timekeeper for the Bethlehem Steel Bridge Corporation in Sparrows Point.6 Jim graduated from Baltimore City College – despite its name, a public high school – where he played baseball and basketball.7

Two life-changing events followed – an unsuccessful bid to play minor-league baseball as an infielder and an enlistment in the U.S. Navy. While the sequence of the two varies in some accounts, it’s most likely that Boyer’s minor-league tryouts with the Martinsburg, West Virginia, and Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, teams of the Class D Blue Ridge League came first, in 1928 and 1929.8 In some versions of the story, an injured knee cut short his career. In others, it was an inability to hit professional pitching.9 Either way, it became clear that a playing career was not in his future.10

Boyer attained the rank of pharmacist’s mate third class during his stint in the Navy,11 also playing baseball for a team at the Navy’s medical school in Portsmouth, Virginia. He was later stationed at the U.S. Naval Academy in – no surprise – Annapolis, Maryland, where he worked with head athletic trainer A.K. “Doc” Snyder.12 After Boyer entered professional umpiring, the skills he learned working with Snyder and the Navy football teams provided him with offseason employment as a trainer at St. Paul’s School in Baltimore and Western Maryland College.

Boyer returned to Baltimore after his Navy service. Not yet free of the ballplaying bug, he joined the city’s amateur baseball scene. Here, his life turned yet again. During a game in 1935, Boyer turned to veteran local umpire Andy Miller to argue a called third strike. Miller invited Boyer to umpire a game himself if he thought he could do better. (By Miller’s telling, he told Boyer that Boyer could make more money as a good umpire than as a bad shortstop.)13

Boyer began by umpiring semipro games and also worked some preseason games for the Baltimore Orioles, then of the Double-A International League. Orioles general manager Jack Ogden recommended Boyer to Tom Kibler, president of the Class D Eastern Shore League, who hired him for the 1937 season.14 By that time, Boyer had married the former Margaret Foreman and had two children,15 but he still took the leap into professional umping. “Jack said if I gave it a try I was a sure bet to reach the majors in a few years,” Boyer said after reaching the AL. “I’ll always feel indebted to him and am glad I took his advice.”16

Years later, Boyer recalled that first season in the Eastern Shore League as his roughest and most challenging – and one game in Salisbury, Maryland, in particular. On June 20, president Kibler ordered the Salisbury Indians to forfeit 21 wins for using an ineligible player.17 Boyer and colleague Jim O’Connor worked the next night’s game in Salisbury in a highly tense atmosphere that included several ejections and a three-player fistfight that brought 200 fans and city police spilling onto the field. O’Connor had to push his way through the angry crowd at the end of the game, Boyer remembered. “The big leagues are a Sunday school picnic compared to that ’37 Shore League season,” he said in 1948.18 It probably didn’t help that Boyer made a scant $150 per month; he later admitted that he stole cantaloupes to keep himself fed.19

Boyer moved up to the Class A Eastern League in 1938 and 1939. He was promoted to the IL at the start of 1940, but was recalled to the Eastern League in June because of a shortage of umpires at the lower level.20 He moved back up to the Double-A American Association from 1941 through 1943, replacing umpire Lou Kolls after Kolls was killed in a car crash.21

Tracing an umpire’s progress through written reports can be challenging, since sportswriters are most likely to mention umps in the context of rhubarbs or ejections. One such incident occurred in July 1942, when an indignant crowd in Indianapolis pelted Boyer with bottles and cushions for 20 minutes after he ejected manager Gabby Hartnett and player Joe Bestudik. Several fans were injured, and the team’s management announced that beverages at the ballpark would henceforth be sold in paper cups. The local newspaper accused Boyer of “[violating] the dignity of his office” by inciting and antagonizing Hartnett and Bestudik.22

Another anecdote involving Boyer and a disputed call was widely reprinted, even reaching The Sporting News. As the story went, Boyer and Johnny Neun worked together as basketball referees in Baltimore in the winter, but found themselves on opposite sides of an argument on the ballfield – Boyer as an umpire, Neun as manager of the American Association’s Kansas City Blues. After arguing his point at length, Neun capped his dissent by declaring, “And you’re a lousy basketball referee!” – whereupon Boyer threw him out of the game.23

That said, Boyer also earned positive attention during his rise through the minors. One writer in Scranton, Pennsylvania, described him as “ably conservative” in 1939.24 A year later, the same writer thanked him for “a difficult job well done” in a crucial series – high praise, given that the Scranton team lost two games.25 In 1941, Boyer was one of four umps chosen to work a game in Minneapolis between an American Association all-star team and the Minneapolis Millers, receiving a gold watch for his work.26 He was also chosen to work the Little World Series, a postseason playoff involving the champions of the AA and IL, in 1942 and 1943.27

World War II helped give Boyer a chance at the major leagues. AL umpire Art Passarella left for military service after the 1942 season, and the league played through 1943 with only 10 umpires.28 Before the start of the 1944 season, AL President Will Harridge hired Boyer and former Southern Association ump Red Jones to restock his umpiring staff. This created a challenge for Harridge when Passarella was discharged in December 1944. Harridge now had 13 umpires to fill 12 jobs and risked being seen as discriminating against a veteran if he didn’t find a spot for Passarella.29 The AL began 1945 with 13 umps; Harridge resolved the logjam on August 1 by firing umpire Ernie Stewart.30

Boyer made his major-league debut on April 18, 1944, three days before his 35th birthday, working third base as part of a three-man umpiring team as the New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 3-0 at Fenway Park. It was the first of 147 games he worked that season, including 48 at home plate. Back at Fenway on July 6, he witnessed a small piece of history, once again from third base, when Boston’s Bob Johnson hit for the cycle against Detroit.

The most notable game Boyer worked in his rookie season was probably the last. On October 1, Boyer was again stationed at third base, this time at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park, as Sig Jakucki, Chet Laabs, and the Browns defeated the Yankees 5-2 to clinch the Browns’ first and only AL championship. Boyer and Jones had previously been assigned to work a key late-season series between the Browns and Red Sox, which The Sporting News interpreted as “a high compliment” to the two rookies.31

One aspect of the umpire’s job was conspicuous in its absence: Boyer didn’t eject anyone from a game in his rookie season. In fact, he didn’t use his thumb until the first game of a doubleheader on August 19, 1945, when he ran Red Sox manager Joe Cronin for arguing a call at first base. Boyer ejected only 11 people across seven seasons, including none in 1944 and 1946 and only one apiece in 1945, 1948, and 1950.32 In interviews, Boyer said he preferred diplomacy over ejections, and he would usually throw out a player, coach, or manager only if they incited the crowd with gestures or swore loudly enough for fans to hear.33 A photo that appeared in newspapers in June 1949 showed Boyer’s equanimity: The ump calmly leaned down and swept the dust off home plate, turning a deaf ear to an ongoing harangue by Yankees manager Casey Stengel.34

The 1945 and ’46 seasons passed with Boyer working full slates of games, including a few highlights. On July 21, 1945, he umped at third base as the Philadelphia A’s and Detroit Tigers played a 24-inning, 1-1 tie at Shibe Park. And on April 30, 1946, Boyer was stationed at first base when Bob Feller threw his second no-hitter, a 1-0 defeat of the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Although he often seemed to be working the infield in his most noteworthy games, roughly one-third of Boyer’s career assignments involved umping behind home plate. Three-man umpiring crews were the norm when he reached the majors, but four-man crews were in use by 1949 and 1950.

The 1947 season brought integration to the National and American Leagues, and for Boyer, it was the busiest35 and highest-profile year of his career. On July 8, he worked the first All-Star Game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, shuttling between first base and second base as the NL won 2-1. He worked two more no-hitters, umping at third base during Don Black’s no-no for Cleveland against Philadelphia two days after the All-Star Game and at first base on September 3 as Philadelphia’s Bill McCahan no-hit the Washington Senators.36

Boyer then benefited from a change of policy regarding World Series umpiring assignments. From 1940 through 1946, each league supplied two umpires who worked on the field, plus a third “alternate” ump who sat in the stands to be ready if needed. Starting in 1947, the alternate arbiters were brought onto the field to work down the two foul lines – creating the six-member umpiring crew that, as of 2023, is still used in the postseason.37

So it was that alternate ump Boyer, instead of watching the ’47 Series from the stands, worked all seven games of the New York Yankees’ victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers. He worked down the right-field line for Game One on September 30, the first AL-NL World Series game to include a Black player, Jackie Robinson. He umped in left field for Game Four, when the Yankees’ Bill Bevens carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning but lost both the no-no and the game on a two-out double by the Dodgers’ Cookie Lavagetto. And in Game Six, Boyer was in left field to make the “out” call when Brooklyn’s Al Gionfriddo made a legendary catch of Joe DiMaggio’s deep drive to left-center field.38

As he went back to Baltimore to coach basketball over the winter,39 Boyer could bask in the knowledge that Commissioner Happy Chandler had called the 1947 Series the best-umpired World Series in history, an opinion shared by J.G. Taylor Spink, editor of The Sporting News. “Players, managers, fans, spectators – and even the umpires themselves – admitted the men in blue did a good job,” Spink wrote.40

Unfortunately, the early weeks of the 1948 season brought a disappointment as bitter as the World Series had been sweet. Boyer was working home plate for a Yankees-Browns game in New York on May 6 when the Yankees’ Bobby Brown slashed an eighth-inning fly ball down the right-field line. According to news reports, Brown took a few steps and stopped, while Yankee coach Chuck Dressen signaled baserunner Bud Stewart that the ball was foul.41 But Boyer, apparently alone in his opinion, signaled Brown’s drive fair for a two-run homer that won the game for New York. Newspapers reported that even the fans seated near the foul pole said the ball was foul,42 but Boyer would not reconsider. New York newspapers blasted the call just as harshly as their St. Louis counterparts. A New York Daily News headline called the homer a “Foul HR,” and reporter Joe Trimble described Boyer’s decision as “atrocious,” adding: “St. Louis was robbed.”43

Interviewed a decade later, Boyer made clear that the well-publicized incident still dogged him. He called it his “most humiliating moment,” adding, “It worried me so much I walked the streets for hours.” True to an ump’s code, though, Boyer insisted the ball had curved foul after passing the foul pole. He also claimed that the Browns’ players told him the next day he had gotten the call right. “Everyone knew it was a fair ball except this one sportswriter. I still haven’t gotten over that dirty dig,” Boyer said.44 (About two weeks after the game, Boyer worked a Yankees-White Sox game in which DiMaggio hit for the cycle.)

The 1949 season brought another passing controversy, when the September issue of Sport magazine ran a tell-all article titled “Confessions of a Big League Umpire.” In it, Boyer came in for less criticism than other umps, but was described as disliking players and being chronically angry.45 Closer to home, he received more favorable treatment at St. Paul’s School, which presented him with a silver plate as he retired as basketball coach.46

On September 2, a line drive by Philadelphia’s Sam Chapman caught Boyer on the foot as he worked at third base, forcing him to leave in the eighth inning.47 He was back on the job the next day. It was far from the first time he had been injured. While working in the AA in June 1943, he’d missed more than a week after an errant between-innings practice throw hit him in the head and knocked him cold.48 Also, an August 1946 column in The Sporting News included Boyer in a list of umpires who had missed time with injury that season.49

Boyer began the 1950 season shouldering his usual workload, and nothing in the public record indicates illness or injury.50 But he later said he was suffering from low blood pressure, sleeplessness, and loss of appetite.51 An incident in his final game might have convinced him that it was time to move on. Working at first base in the second game of an Indians-White Sox doubleheader in Chicago on August 13, Boyer called Cleveland’s Luke Easter out on a bang-bang double play that ended the game. Indians manager Lou Boudreau, coach Al Simmons, and players mobbed Boyer in what was described as a “near-riot.” Eventually, the other three umpires restrained Boudreau and Simmons long enough to allow Boyer to sprint for the clubhouse, with Boudreau and Simmons following.52

A handwritten note in Boyer’s clip file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum indicates that Boyer told Harridge he was resigning on August 17.53 The news was announced to the public on September 1 and was framed in the context of a job change: Boyer announced he had accepted a full-time position as an athletic trainer and coach at Western Maryland College. The skills he learned in the Navy, which had kept him busy in past offseasons, now provided him with an exit ramp from the stressful world of umpiring. “I have been contemplating this move for some time,” he told the Baltimore Evening Sun. “I have not been feeling very well and it is my belief that the change will be beneficial.”54

Curiously, Harridge told a different story in October 1951 while testifying at a hearing of the Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power, a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary, which was studying monopoly power in organized baseball. As part of a discussion of Ernie Stewart’s 1945 dismissal, Harridge was asked by subcommittee counsel E. Ernest Goldstein about the firing of other umpires. Harridge said the AL “released” Boyer for “lack of ability.”55 Apparently, no one in the room recognized the discrepancy from earlier public statements, and the testimony moved on to other matters.

Boyer served as head coach of Western Maryland’s baseball team from 1950 to 1956, compiling a 38-50 record with one tie.56 While the college – renamed McDaniel College in 2002 – had produced 11 professional baseball players and five major-leaguers as of 2023, none attended the school during Boyer’s tenure.57 Rumors arose in the early ’50s that the defunct Eastern Shore League might be resuscitated, and Boyer – apparently unbothered by his difficult stint umpiring there – put himself forth as a candidate for its president. The league, however, did not get off the drawing board.58

Boyer also remained active in amateur umpiring and umpire instruction after leaving the majors. A 1958 story noted that Boyer had umpired most of the Naval Academy’s home games that spring.59 Closer to the home front, his wife, Margaret, opened an antiques store around this time and operated it for 20 years.60

By the late 1950s, however, Boyer’s health had shown signs of declining. A heart attack in late February 1957 placed him in critical condition and ended his tenure as Western Maryland’s baseball coach, though he returned to his trainer duties.61 On the afternoon of July 25, 1959, another heart attack suffered at his home in Finksburg, Maryland, ended Boyer’s life at 50 years of age. He was survived by his wife and three children, two grandchildren, his mother, and seven siblings. Following services at St. John’s Catholic Church in Westminster, Maryland, Boyer was buried at Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville – also the resting place of other former major-leaguers with Maryland ties, from 19th-century player and umpire Boileryard Clarke to former Orioles outfielder and coach Curt Motton.62

Western Maryland/McDaniel later presented a Jim Boyer Memorial Award to baseball players who showed a commitment to excellence on the field and in the classroom.63 Boyer was also inducted into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996.64

Acknowledgments

This article was reviewed by Rory Costello and Natalie Montanez and fact-checked by Karen Holleran. The author thanks the Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, as well as SABR member Vince Guerrieri, for research assistance.

Photo credit: Salisbury Times, July 27, 1959.

Sources

In addition to the sources credited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for background information on players, teams, and seasons.

Notes

1 This total includes 1,026 regular-season games, seven World Series games, and one All-Star Game. It does not include exhibitions or preseason games.

2 Boyer’s Sporting News umpire card spells his middle name Murry, as do Retrosheet and other sources that presumably base their spelling on the umpire card. This article uses the more common Murray, which was used in (among other places) Boyer’s 1959 death announcement in the Baltimore Sun; the March 1969 marriage announcement of Boyer’s son, James Murray Boyer Jr., also in the Baltimore Sun; January 1987 legal advertisements regarding the sale of land formerly owned by Boyer in Finksburg, Maryland, in the Carroll County Times of Westminster, Maryland; and Boyer’s widow’s April 1990 obituary in the Hanover (Pennsylvania) Evening Sun. U.S. Census and military records indicate that Boyer’s father was named Murray, with an A. Also, a Newspapers.com search in October 2023 for “James Murry Boyer” turned up no matches in any newspaper in the database.

3 As of October 2023, he was the only major-league player, coach, manager, or umpire born in Templeville, according to Retrosheet.

4 A Familysearch.org page for Murray H. Boyer listed 12 children as of October 2023, but several of them were clearly duplicate listings. Jim Boyer’s 1959 obituary in the Baltimore Evening Sun also said he was survived by two brothers and five sisters.

5 “Jim Boyer Attains Ball Goal; To Umpire in American League,” Baltimore Evening Sun, February 7, 1944: 17.

6 World War I draft registration card for Murray Boyer, accessed through Familysearch.org in October 2023. The 1920 U.S. Census listing for the family, also accessed through Familysearch.org, lists Murray as unemployed and his wife, Hettie, working as a timekeeper for the bridge corporation; the author assumes this was an error on the census-taker’s part.

7 “Jim Boyer Attains Ball Goal; To Umpire in American League;” “Why City?” Baltimore City College website, accessed October 2023. https://www.baltimorecitycollege.us/why-city

8 Boyer’s Sporting News umpire card gives this timing for his minor-league tryouts. In “Jim Boyer Attains Ball Goal; To Umpire in American League,” printed in 1944, Boyer told a reporter that he’d first served in the Navy, then tried out in Martinsburg and Waynesboro in 1930 and 1931 after his enlistment. However, Baseball-Reference shows no record of a team in Martinsburg in 1930, nor any Blue Ridge League play in 1931, and newspaper sources from those seasons agree. Examples: “Blue Ridge League,” Franklin Repository (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania), July 9, 1930: 6; “Famous Blue Ridge League Is Disbanded,” Oakland (California) Tribune, February 10, 1931: 35.

9 Injured knee: “Jim Boyer Attains Ball Goal; To Umpire in American League;” poor hitting: “Jim Boyer Dies at 50,” Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1959: 2D, and other obituaries. As of the fall of 2023, Baseball-Reference had no record of Boyer playing in a regular-season game for either team.

10 The 1930 U.S. Census, accessed via Familysearch.org, found Boyer in an in-between place, apparently after his baseball ventures but before the Navy. He was living with his parents and siblings in Baltimore, and his profession was listed as “first aid man” at a gas tubing company. According to the census, he was not a military veteran at that time.

11 According to Boyer’s Sporting News umpire card.

12 “Jim Boyer Attains Ball Goal; To Umpire in American League.”

13 Stuart B. McIver, “Umpires: In a Class by Themselves,” Baltimore Sun Magazine, May 15, 1949: 6; J.E. Wild, “Jim Took Andy Miller’s Advice and Made Good,” Baltimore Sun, March 12, 1944: 22. Boyer placed the game in 1935 during the McIver story, which was printed almost 15 years later. Of course, it’s possible that he may have been off by a few years.

14 “Jim Boyer Attains Ball Goal; To Umpire in American League.”

15 The 1940 U.S. Census, accessed through Familysearch.org, reported that daughter Beverly was 7 years old and son Warren was 4, which means both children were born before 1937. The Boyers’ third child was a son, James Jr.

16 Ed Nichols, “Jim Boyer Went About the Business of Major League Umpiring in a Professional and Dignified Manner,” Salisbury (Maryland) Daily Times, August 7, 1958: 9.

17 “Club Appeals Forfeiture of Games,” Salisbury Times, June 21, 1937: 1.

18 Ed Nichols, “Shore Sports,” Salisbury Times, January 3, 1948: 6. It should be noted that the Salisbury paper’s game coverage accused O’Connor and Boyer of blowing several important calls, which only raised the fans’ collective tension. “Salisbury Loses Weird Game to Cards 8-4,” Salisbury Times, June 22, 1937: 7.

19 Nichols, “Jim Boyer Went About the Business of Major League Umpiring in a Professional and Dignified Manner.”

20 Associated Press, “Umpire Jim Boyer to Report Here Today,” Scrantonian (Scranton, Pennsylvania), June 2, 1940: 27.

21 Paul Menton, “No Player Knows when End Is Near,” Baltimore Evening Sun, March 5, 1941: 23. Kolls had been an AL umpire from 1933 until receiving his release from the league in November 1940.

22 Lester P. Koelling, “Officious Ump Makes Tribe’s 50th Defeat One to Be Remembered,” and “Bottles to Be Kept Out of Hands of Victory Field Fans,” both Indianapolis (Indiana) News, July 18, 1942: 4.

23 Among other citations: Jerry Nason, “Rickey Comes Up with Something (!) in Lengthy Schultz,” Boston Globe, September 15, 1943: 20; “Neun Strikes Umpire Boyer Below Belt with an Insult,” The Sporting News, August 5, 1943: 17.

24 Chic Feldman, “Not All Umpires as Erratic as Williams,” Scranton (Pennsylvania) Tribune, July 13, 1939: 16.

25 Chic Feldman, “Hanging Out Monday Morning’s Wash,” Scranton Tribune, August 19, 1940: 12.

26 George Barton, “Landis Given Big Ovation at Game,” Minneapolis (Minnesota) Morning Tribune, July 17, 1941: 13.

27 “Jim Boyer Attains Ball Goal; To Umpire in American League.”

28 Retrosheet, “The 1943 Umpires by League,” accessed October 2023. The National League employed 12 umpires that season — though one, Ziggy Sears, only worked 50 games. https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1943/YPU_1943X.htm

29 Associated Press, “Surplus Found: Of Umpires,” Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald, December 17, 1944: 1B.

30 Bob Considine, “Stewart to Sue Harridge for $100,000,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, August 16, 1945: 16.

31 J.G. Taylor Spink, “Looping the Loops,” The Sporting News, October 26, 1944: 1.

32 According to Retrosheet records as of October 2023. Of course, umpires’ ejection totals are influenced by the luck of the draw: If two teams with long-simmering animosity get into a beanball war, the umpire assigned to work home plate that day will probably make some ejections, no matter how patient or even-tempered he is. Still, Boyer’s career average of fewer than two ejections a season, combined with his remarks on the subject, suggest that he was in no hurry to use his thumb.

33 Tommy Fitzgerald, “Sweet William Is Bad Bill to Umps,” Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, June 13, 1943: 4:5; McIver, “Umpires: In a Class by Themselves.”

34 One especially clear version of the photo can be seen in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 27, 1949: 3C. Boyer did not eject Stengel.

35 Boyer’s workload of 166 regular-season games was the largest of his career, and he also worked the All-Star Game and World Series for the only time.

36 Boyer narrowly missed working another historic moment in 1947. He umped a four-game Detroit-Cleveland series from July 2 through 4; worked a Detroit-St. Louis doubleheader on July 6; then picked up the Indians again on July 10 against Philadelphia after the All-Star break. He missed, by a single day, working the July 5 game in which Cleveland’s Larry Doby integrated the American League.

37 Larry Gerlach, “Umpire Honor Rolls,” Society for American Baseball Research, 1979 Baseball Research Journal, accessed online October 2023. https://sabr.org/journal/article/umpire-honor-rolls/

38 Rory Costello, “1947 Dodgers: Al Gionfriddo’s Memorable Game Six Catch,” The Team that Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, Lyle Spatz, editor (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, Nebraska), 2012.

39 Stuart B. MacIver, “Boyer, Big-League Umpire, Cage Coach in Off-Season,” Baltimore Sun, December 21, 1947: Sports: 2.

40 J.G. Taylor Spink, “Series Tops in Thrills, Low in Kicks – McGowan,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1947: 11.

41 Ray Nelson, “Browns Become Victims of ‘Foul’ Play in Loss to Yankees,” St. Louis Star-Times, May 7, 1948: 28.

42 One St. Louis newspaper even printed direct quotes from fans seated near the foul pole. Their comments included, “Foul all the way.” “New York Fans and Press Say Umpire Erred Against Browns,” St. Louis Star-Times, May 7, 1948: 28.

43 Joe Trimble, “Yanks’ ‘Foul HR’ Nips Browns, 6-5; Fans Boo,” New York Daily News, May 7, 1948: C17; Associated Press, “Most N.Y. Writers Concede Ump’s Ruling ‘Fouled’ Browns,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 1948: 4D.

44  Nichols, “Jim Boyer Went About the Business of Major League Umpiring in a Professional and Dignified Manner.” Boyer appears to be referring to the Daily News’ “Foul HR” headline here – although criticism of his call appeared in all the New York papers.

45 Michael J. Rodden, “Sports Highways,” Kingston (Ontario, Canada) Whig-Standard, August 24, 1949: 10; Burton Hawkins, “An Umpire Looks at His Co-Workers,” Washington Evening Star, September 10, 1949: B15.

46 “St. Paul’s Five Honors Jim Boyer at Dinner,” Baltimore Sun, April 9, 1949: 13.

47 Hy Hurwitz, “Sox 2½ Games Back after 8-4 Victory,” Boston Globe, September 3, 1949: 1.

48 Associated Press, “Brews Gain Full Game; Win 7 to 3,” Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times, June 16, 1943: 14; Paul Menton, “Boyer Home After Blow on the Head,” Baltimore Evening Sun, June 26, 1943: 8.

49 Robert L. Burnes, “Umpires’ Dignity – and Shins – Get Bruised,” The Sporting News, August 7, 1946: 10. Boyer worked 151 games in 1946, and a look at his day-by-day log on Retrosheet does not show any extended absences. He was, however, called back to Baltimore in late July after his wife gave birth to an 11-pound baby and suffered medical complications. Joe Trimble, “Yanks Blank Chisox, 7-0; Hit Three Homers,” New York Daily News, July 21, 1946: 34C.

50 A month-by-month search of the 1950 baseball season of newspapers archived in Newspapers.com, conducted in October 2023, found no printed reference to Boyer missing time for illness or injury.

51 Nichols, “Jim Boyer Went About the Business of Major League Umpiring in a Professional and Dignified Manner.” This article, published in 1958, inaccurately dates Boyer’s resignation as following the 1951 season.

52 Harry Jones, “Indians Rally in Eighth to Beat White Sox, 5-2, Then Lose 2nd Game, 7-5,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 14, 1950: 21.

53 It’s not clear who wrote the note or when.

54 “Boyer Resigns Umpire Job for W. Md. Post,” Baltimore Evening Sun, September 1, 1950: 37. In another article, Boyer added that he complemented his new job at Western Maryland by raising livestock at his farm in Finksburg, Maryland. Nichols, “Jim Boyer Went About the Business of Major League Umpiring in a Professional and Dignified Manner.”

55 Hearings before the Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, First Session: Serial No. 1, Part 6: Organized Baseball. Boyer’s dismissal is briefly discussed on pages 940-941. https://books.google.com/books?id=_lZFAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA936&lpg=RA1-PA936&dq=%22jim+boyer%22+umpire&source=bl&ots=zIogHL-H8Q&sig=ACfU3U1jFV-Z-4fkDUmWX2IMn0nmkVuhIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjByIei59CBAxUdl4kEHfhDDig4PBDoAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22jim%20boyer%22%20umpire&f=false

56 “Baseball Coaches,” McDaniel College Athletics website, accessed October 12, 2023. Western Maryland was renamed McDaniel College in 2002. https://mcdanielathletics.com/sports/2022/7/28/baseball-coaches.aspx

57 “McDaniel College (Westminster, MD) Baseball Players,” Baseball-Reference, accessed October 12, 2023. https://www.baseball-reference.com/schools/index.cgi?key_school=a0b20509

58 Ed Nichols, “Baltimore Has Franchise but Needs Ball Club,” Salisbury Times, October 3, 1953: 12. According to Baseball-Reference, the league folded in 1941, then resumed operations from 1946 through 1949.

59 “Jim Boyer to Head Southern Umpires,” Baltimore Sun, June 3, 1952: 24; “Ex-Major-League Arbiter to Officiate Pony Tourney,” Salisbury Times, July 24, 1958: 11. Several news articles from Boyer’s pro career involved him giving umpiring advice or teaching umpiring lessons, including an address to the Negro Baseball Umpire Association of Baltimore in March 1944. “Jim Boyer Addresses Negro Umpire Meeting,” Baltimore Sun, March 10, 1944: 12.

60 Margaret Boyer operated the store, My House Antiques, from 1955 to 1975. She died in 1990. “Margaret K. Boyer, 81, Westminster” (obituary), Carroll County Times, April 18, 1990: A2.

61 “Jim Boyer Hospitalized,” Baltimore Evening Sun, March 2, 1957: 9.

62 “Jim Boyer Dies at 50,” Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1959: 2D; “Jim Boyer, 51, Former Big League Ump, Dies,” Hanover (Pennsylvania) Evening Sun, July 27, 1959: 11. The latter obituary includes a few factual errors, including a description of Boyer as “a veteran of two World Wars.”

63 Two examples: “Letters, Awards Given at WMC Baseball Team Banquet,” Carroll County Sun, June 5, 1988: 33; “Colleges,” Baltimore Sun, June 4, 1989: 4B. A search of the McDaniel Athletics website in October 2023 did not turn up any indication that the award had been given recently.

64 “Green Terror Athletics Hall of Fame,” McDaniel College Athletics website, accessed October 12, 2023. “Green Terror” is the idiosyncratic name of the college’s athletic teams. https://www.mcdaniel.edu/alumni/connect/alumni-council/sports-hall-fame Incidentally, Boyer’s Sporting News umpire card described him as a graduate of Western Maryland College, but research for this article found no proof or report of his graduating from the school. Boyer’s 1940 U.S. Census listing, cited above, reported that his education ended with high school.