September 13, 1897: The Washington Ladies’ Day Riot that never was

According to a well-worn tale, the National League’s Washington Senators held their first-ever Ladies’ Day on September 13, 1897. Thousands of women took advantage of the free admission simply to watch the dashingly handsome 23-year-old Win Mercer pitch. But the day turned ugly when Mercer was ejected by the umpire. After the game, hordes of angry women descended from the stands and mauled the arbiter, tearing his clothes.

The women ripped out seats, bent railings, and broke windows. The police were called to break up the riot and the umpire, who feared for his life, was smuggled out of the ballpark in disguise. It was decades before Washington held another Ladies’ Day.1

There is just one problem with this account of the Ladies’ Day Riot of 1897: It never happened. This is the story of what really transpired that day.

Ladies’ Day at the ballpark had been popularized in the 1880s, and the concept was well established by 1897.2 Washington’s entry in the American Association held regular Ladies’ Days in its inaugural season of 1891, with great success.3 The team joined the NL in 1892 and the promotion continued unabated until the Senators were contracted by the league after the 1899 season.4 (Washington gained entry to the upstart American League in 1901 and regular Ladies’ Days were reintroduced in 1902.5)

Washington had finished no higher than ninth place in its first six seasons, and the losing continued early in the 1897 campaign. After a disastrous 9-25 start, manager Gus Schmelz resigned and was replaced by veteran outfielder Tom Brown.6 The Senators won 11 of their next 12 games and on June 25 – a Ladies’ Day − the Senators broke the franchise attendance record with a crowd of 11,200 that included many enthusiastic female fans. “And how they did root!” raved the Washington Evening Times. “Every mother’s daughter was up to her toes when the home team was in a hole, and when luck favored the Senators, the dear girls would cheer and applaud with a will.”7

Washington continued to play improved ball throughout the summer. In a Ladies’ Day doubleheader on Labor Day, the attendance record was broken again, with 3,000 women in a crowd of 12,500.8

Ladies’ Days were normally held in Washington on Tuesdays and Fridays.9 Since the last home game in 1897 fell on Tuesday, September 14, an extra Ladies’ Day was added on September 13.10 The Monday game drew 3,000 fans,11 although newspaper reports made no mention of the number or proportion of women present. The Cincinnati Enquirer noted that the grandstand was “packed with fair ones,” which was not unusual for a Ladies’ Day.12

The Senators came into their September 13 game against the Cincinnati Reds with a 54-62-3 record, good enough for sixth place and a coveted spot in the first division.13 The slumping Reds had fallen to fourth place with a 66-49-2 record, 15 games behind the first-place Baltimore Orioles.14

Billy Rhines, a right-handed submarine pitcher, got the start for Cincinnati. The 28-year-old had won the National League ERA title in his rookie season of 1890 and again in 1896. Although Rhines wasn’t as dominant in 1897, he still finished the season with a 21-15 record.15

Mercer, who was by all accounts good-looking, got the start for Washington. He was popular with the Washington fans, regardless of their gender. The righty had gone 25-18 in 1896, which made him the franchise leader in wins.16 Mercer was so beloved in Washington that a local musician wrote a song dedicated to him, “The Win Mercer Caprice,” which was sometimes performed at games.17 He continued to pitch well in 1897, posting a 21-20 record with a 3.18 ERA, sixth best in the NL.

The contest was officiated by 24-year-old Bill Carpenter, who was in his first season of umpiring professionally. Carpenter was hired to replace Tom Lynch, who had suffered facial injuries on August 6 from a head-butt by Baltimore’s pugnacious Dirty Jack Doyle.18 When Carpenter joined the NL, his professional umpiring experience consisted of less than seven weeks in the Maine State League.19

Neither team was able to score in the first two innings.

In the top of the third, the rookie umpire “missed a couple of good balls” and Mercer lost his temper.20 He pulled out a pair of glasses and offered them to Carpenter, which got a laugh out of the fans and players.21 Mercer attempted to put the glasses on him and, not surprisingly, was tossed from the game. (The game stories in the Washington and Cincinnati newspapers did not mention if fans were particularly upset by the ejection.22)

Mercer was replaced by another fan favorite, righty Doc McJames, who co-led the NL in strikeouts and shutouts in 1897.23 Mercer and McJames were a potent one-two punch for the Senators, and the pair logged 58 percent of all innings pitched that season.

With two out in the fourth, Washington center fielder Tom Leahy hit a solid single to left field off Rhines.24 After Leahy stole second,25 third baseman Charlie Reilly smashed a triple into left-center field, giving the Senators a 1-0 lead.

The score was unchanged until the tumultuous top of the seventh. With two out and nobody on base, Carpenter allegedly botched a call on a pitch that had Cincinnati shortstop Tommy Corcoran “plainly struck out.”26 Corcoran walked and the inning continued. After Corcoran stole second and advanced to third on catcher Deacon McGuire’s wild throw, third baseman Charlie Irwin walked and stole second.27

McJames attempted to intentionally walk Bill “Pop” Schriver to get to the pitcher, Rhines. On one of the wide deliveries, Schriver stepped across the plate and swung, fouling it off.28 McGuire lobbied Carpenter to call Schriver out for leaving the batter’s box, to no avail. On the next pitch, Schriver stepped across the plate again, but did not swing.29 Carpenter called him out and the Reds’ bench erupted.

Cincinnati manager Buck Ewing argued that the batter had to hit the ball in fair territory to be called out for leaving the batter’s box.30 Carpenter reversed his decision and sent Schriver to first base with a walk. “There was more than the usual amount of excitement raised [by the angry crowd], the ladies especially hissing the umpire with great unanimity.”31

Perhaps rattled by the controversies, McJames walked Rhines – the fourth consecutive free pass of the inning – and Corcoran scored the tying run.

In the eighth, Cincinnati right fielder Dusty Miller hit a one-out triple.32 Future Hall of Famer Jake Beckley followed with a long fly ball,33 and Miller tagged up and scored the go-ahead run.

In the bottom of the eighth, Rhines held the Senators to a harmless infield single34 and Carpenter called the game on account of darkness, giving Cincinnati a controversial 2-1 victory.35

After the game, a group of female fans vented their frustration with Carpenter’s costly seventh-inning calls. As the Washington Morning Times reported, they waited for him “with drawn parasols and upraised fans” at the spot in the grandstand where the umpire exits the field.36 Carpenter “was assailed with whatever the women had in their hands. One used her fist, and was not slow in telling her companions that she came near hitting him on his solar plexus.”37 Carpenter walked quickly to the Senators’ office, where he met with league President Nick Young and learned that he was to continue umpiring in Baltimore after the Washington series concluded.38

The Washington Evening Times chastised the women for their reaction to Carpenter’s flip-flop. “It was entirely uncalled for, as Carpenter’s reversal of a decision was the only correct thing for him to do when he realized that he had placed the wrong interpretation on the rule.”39

The women also poked some of the Reds with their parasols as they left the field. “Washington can turn out more wild-petticoated specimens of ball cranks than any town in the league,” wrote the Cincinnati Post.40 But there was no property damage, torn clothing, or police involvement.

The first published account of a Ladies’ Day “Riot” may have been in Mac Davis’s book Lore and Legends of Baseball – 56 years later.41 Davis published a slew of sports books that cumulatively sold millions of copies, and the self-described storyteller was known to play fast and loose with the facts.42 He later reprised the dubious anecdote in Sports Shorts (1959) and Baseball’s Unforgettables (1966).43

New generations of baseball fans were exposed to the myth in The Baseball Hall of Shame (1985) and The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (2005), among other books and publications.44 Various internet sites continued to propagate the legend well into the twenty-first century, including some normally reliable sources.45

The next Ladies’ Day in Washington was not decades later – it was the next day. After that final home game, the Washington Post reflected on the continued presence of female fans at Boundary Field. “The pavilion was flowered by a huge bouquet of feminine fans, who, during the past season, have given the game a tone and an inspiration.”46

Author’s note and acknowledgments

The author was inspired to write this article after watching Becky Jenkins’ presentation at the 2021 SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference. In January 2015 blogger Darlene Langley wrote an article questioning the accuracy of the tale of the Ladies’ Day Riot of 1897. She may have been the first to do so.

This article was fact-checked by Thomas E. Merrick and copy-edited by Len Levin. Thanks to Cassidy Lent of the Giamatti Research Center in Cooperstown for providing a copy of Bill Carpenter’s Hall of Fame file.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Stathead.com, and the SABR biographies of Billy Rhines and Tom Lynch. Unless otherwise noted, all detailed play-by-play information for this game was taken from the article “He Forgot the Rule” in the September 14, 1897, edition of the Washington Evening Star.

Photo credits

The image of Bill Carpenter was taken from the September 19, 1897, edition of the Wilkes-Barre Sunday Leader. The box score appeared in the September 14, 1897, edition of the Washington Evening Star.

Notes

1 Mac Davis, Baseball’s Unforgettables (New York: Bantam Books Inc., 1966), 78-80; Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo, The Baseball Hall of Shame (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), 182.

2 Peter Morris, A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 121-122.

3 “Baseball Notes,” Washington Post, July 10, 1891: 6.

4 Washington was one of four AA teams that merged with the NL in 1892. “Baseball!” Washington Post, July 18, 1899: 9.

5 “Ladies’ Day at Ballpark; Manager Lofton Re-Inaugurates the Popular Innovation,” Washington Evening Times, May 29, 1902: 2.

6 “Gus Schmelz Resigns,” Washington Post, June 8, 1897: 8.

7 “Dual Battle Was a Draw,” Washington Evening Times, June 26, 1897: 6.

8 This attendance record was still standing when the Senators were contracted after the 1899 season. The AL’s Washington Senators/Nationals did not have a larger crowd until May 30, 1905. “The Field of Sport,” Washington Evening Star, September 7, 1897: 9.

9 “Gala Days for the Ladies,” Washington Evening Times, September 16, 1896: 3.

10 “Nearing the Close,” Washington Evening Star, September 13, 1897: 9.

11 The Senators averaged 2,221 fans per home date, which ranked 10th out of the 12 NL teams.

12 “Smash! They Hit the Umpire,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 14, 1897: 2.

13 The Senators finished in a tie for sixth place with a 61-71-3 record in 1897. The Brooklyn Grooms had a 61-71-4 record. It was Washington’s only first-division finish in franchise history (1891-99).

14 Baltimore (80-33-5) was 5 percentage points ahead of the second-place Bostons (83-35-3) after the games of September 12, although the Orioles trailed Boston by a half-game. The Reds had gone 7-17-1 from August 16 to September 12, including a costly five-game sweep at the hands of the Orioles from August 26 to August 30. Cincinnati finished the season in fourth place with a 76-56-2 record, 17 games behind the pennant-winning team from Boston.

15 Rhines’s ERA jumped from 2.45 in 1896 to 4.08 in 1897. He was injured for a significant amount of time in 1896 and had an 8-6 record in just 19 appearances.

16 Mercer had compiled 55 wins in his first three big-league seasons (1894-96), all of which were with Washington. When the franchise was contracted after the 1899 season, Mercer had won 95 games for the franchise. No other pitcher won more than 38 games for Washington in those nine seasons. His contract was sold to the New York Giants in January 1900.

17 “Baseball Notes,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 6, 1896: 3; “Exploded; The Pet of the Senators,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 27, 1896: 2.

18 Rich Eldred, “Umpiring in the 1890s,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 18 (1989), https://sabr.org/journal/article/umpiring-in-the-1890s/, accessed May 16, 2025.

19 The unclassified Maine State League ceased operations after games of July 5, 1897. Its season began on May 20. Carpenter went on to have a long and successful career in the minor leagues, and he was the longtime umpire-in-chief of the International League. He also umpired 55 games in the AL and 87 games in the NL in 1904. Carpenter was a full-time NL umpire in 1906 and 1907. “Maine State League,” North Adams (Massachusetts) Transcript, July 6, 1897: 1; “Popular with Players,” Boston Globe, August 8, 1897: 5.

20 “He Forgot the Rule,” Washington Evening Star, September 14, 1897: 7; “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It,” Washington Post, September 14, 1897: 8.

21 “Smash! They Hit the Umpire.”

22 The author reviewed the game stories published on September 14 in the Washington Evening Star, Washington Post, Washington Morning Times, Washington Evening Times, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Cincinnati Post.

23 Mercer and McJames both tossed three shutouts in 1897. McJames struck out 156 batters, tying him with Cy Seymour of the New York Giants.

24 Leahy had been signed by Washington in August after he was released by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Leahy hit .385 in 19 games with Washington; he hit just .261 in 24 games with Pittsburgh. “Smash! They Hit the Umpire”; “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It.”

25 “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It.”

26 Even the Cincinnati Enquirer felt that Corcoran should have been called out on strikes. “Smash! They Hit the Umpire”; “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It.”

27 “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It.”

28 “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It.”

29 “Dr. James Loses the Game,” Washington Morning Times, September 14, 1897: 6.

30 “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It.”

31 “Base Ball Gossip,” Washington Evening Star, September 14, 1897: 7.

32 “Smash! They Hit the Umpire.”

33 Rookie right fielder Jake Gettman made a spectacular running catch near the wall – with his back to the plate − to retire Beckley.

34 “Gave Reds the Game; Corcoran Struck Out, but Umpire Overlooked It.”

35 The author deduced that the game was called on account of darkness. The September 14 contest was called because of darkness after six innings and the duration of both games was similar. “The Last Game at Home,” Washington Morning Times, September 15, 1897: 6.

36 “Dr. James Loses the Game.”

37 “Dr. James Loses the Game.”

38 “Dr. James Loses the Game”; “Bold Act,” Cincinnati Post, September 14, 1897: 8.

39 “Senators Lost the Third,” Washington Evening Times, September 14, 1897: 7.

40 “Bold Act.”

41 In May 2025 the author searched all newspapers on newspapers.com and genealogybank.com and found no mentions of a Ladies’ Day Riot in Washington − until 1963. The author also searched Sporting Life and The Sporting News. The author searched all books in the Internet Archive in May 2025. The earliest book to mention the “riot” was Lore and Legends of Baseball, which was published in 1953. Basil Rice, “As I See It,” Delaware State News, June 18, 1963: 12; Mac Davis, Lore and Legends of Baseball (New York: Lantern Press Inc., 1953), 37-38.

42 Davis’s sports stories were also broadcast on hundreds of radio stations in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Mac Davis, Hall of Fame Baseball (Cleveland: Wm. Collins + World Publishing Co., 1975), 147; Joseph Overfield, “The Other George Davis,” Baseball Research Journal (1989), https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-other-george-davis/, accessed May 16, 2025; Stew Thornley, “Andy Oyler’s Two-Foot Home Run: Is It Okay to Destroy a Legend?” Baseball Research Journal (Fall 2020), https://sabr.org/journal/article/andy-oylers-two-foot-home-run-is-it-okay-to-destroy-a-legend/, accessed May 16, 2025.

43 Mac Davis, Sport Shorts: Astonishing, Strange, But True (New York: Bantam Books Inc., 1959), 136; Davis, Baseball’s Unforgettables, 78-80.

44 Nash and Zullo, The Baseball Hall of Shame, 182; Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005), 522; Bruce Fenton and Mark Fowler, Felton & Fowler’s Best, Worst, and Most Unusual, (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1975), 111; “Annals of Misbehavior,” Time Magazine, August 21, 1995: 18.

45 Andrew C. Sharp, “Win Mercer, 1890s’ Heartthrob, Two-Way Star of the N.L. Senators,”  Washington Baseball History, December 1, 2022, https://washingtonbaseballhistory.com/2022/12/01/win-mercer-1890s-heartthrob-two-way-star-of-the-n-l-senators/; Shakeia Taylor, “The Case for Bringing Back Ladies’ Day,” The Hardball Times, December 14, 2016, https://tht.fangraphs.com/the-case-for-bringing-back-ladies-day/; Tobias Seamon, “No One Is Innocent,” The Morning News, August 13, 2013, https://themorningnews.org/no-one-is-innocent/; “Win Mercer,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win_Mercer, accessed May 19, 2025; William Akin, “Win Mercer,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/win-mercer/, accessed May 19, 2025.

46 “Gallant Finish Won,” Washington Post, September 15, 1897: 8.