The Legend of Wild Bill Setley

Throughout baseball’s long history, colorful and eccentric characters have left their mark on our national pastime. Many major league players—including Dizzy Dean, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych—added to the game’s lore. There were also minor league players who were just as colorful (if not more so). But since they never made a name for themselves in the major leagues, history has forgotten them. One of the most unusual players in this group was William Warren “Wild Bill” Setley. Few people led a life as eclectic as Wild Bill.

Bill Setley played ball for over 50 teams—ranging from the highest minor leagues in organized baseball to the lowest semi-pro or amateur teams—sometimes in the same season. After his playing days ended, he became an umpire, a policeman, a security man at the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and a promoter of exhibition games—including the game pitting the “Big Six” (Christy Mathewson) against the “Big Train” (Walter Johnson). He traveled to Cuba with the Cincinnati Reds and appeared on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not radio show with Lou Gehrig. At the time of his death in 1956 (at age 97), he may have been the oldest living former professional baseball player—at least that’s what he claimed.

Setley received the nickname “Wild Bill” around 1898, about a decade into his pro career. It was in reference to the stories he told about his time in the “Wild West” and to his general nature. Setley was playing in New York state (for about seven teams during that summer), and the newspapers loved the stories he told. One of the best was his description of growing up on a ranch near St. Joseph, Missouri. One of the neighboring ranches was that of Frank and Jesse James. Bill told an intricate tale about how the James boys used to come over to teach him to ride horses and shoot their pistols. Once the legend of “Wild Bill” was born, Setley wasn’t about to ruin it by telling everyone that his stories were mostly just tall tales. He was actually born in New Jersey and grew up in Philadelphia—far from Frank and Jesse James.

He started playing ball in Philly, eventually developing into one of the finest amateur pitchers in the city. His fine performances pitching in exhibition games against the National League’s Phillies led him to the minor leagues. He played some in the South (New Orleans, Savannah, Staunton, Richmond, and Charleston) and a lot in the East and Northeast—especially in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Altoona, Harrisburg, York, Allentown, Shenandoah, Reading, and more) and New York state (Amsterdam, Utica, Ilion, Canandaigua, Oswego, and more).

Wild Bill’s 1898 season was perhaps his finest, and also gives a good idea of what his entire career was like. He started the season playing in the South for New Orleans and then Savannah. After being released, he made his way north, where he had played before. He signed with Utica of the New York State League (NYSL) and had the finest six-week stretch of his career. Wild Bill went 10-2 for a Utica team that had won only 10 games in the six weeks before his arrival. But Bill’s antics both on and off the field got him suspended and then released by Utica. He would pitch for a couple of semi-pro teams in the area before being briefly signed by both Oswego and Auburn of the NYSL. Finally, Canandaigua—his fourth NYSL team of the season—picked him up for their pennant run. The 38-year-old Setley captured the pennant for the Rustlers by leading them to four victories over Oswego in four days. For the season, he posted a 14-4 NYSL record.

After the season, he was playing a semi-pro game in Herkimer, NY, when he pulled his “potato trick” for at least the second time in his career. He would take a peeled potato to the mound with him. With a runner on first base, he threw over a couple of times to hold the runner close to the bag. Then he would take out the potato and throw it over the first baseman’s head. The runner would see the overthrow and start for second—only to be met halfway there and tagged with the ball by Bill. In Herkimer, the umpire sent the runner back to first. A few years earlier, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Wild Bill had pulled the potato trick in a Central Pennsylvania League game. The umpire called the runner out, saying there was nothing in the rules to prevent it, and if he didn’t know the difference between a ball and a potato, he deserved to be out. 

In an odd coincidence, the most recent time the potato trick was pulled in organized baseball occurred in 1987 by a player playing for a Williamsport team. Dave Bresnahan was a catcher for the Williamsport Bills who overthrew third base with a potato and tagged the runner out at home. The umpire called the runner safe, and Bresnahan was removed from the game and fined $50. He was released the next day, but was honored the following year when Williamsport held Dave Bresnahan Day. Admission to the game was one dollar … and a potato. Wild Bill would probably have appreciated that.

When not pitching, Wild Bill occasionally played outfield—displaying the same gift for eccentricity. He would catch pop flies behind his back (drawing fines) and once took his potato trick out with him. In one game, a player hit a line drive into the gap. Setley ran to field the ball and came up throwing, gunning the hitter down at second base. The batter couldn’t believe Bill could get to the ball that quickly, so he asked to see it. When he and the umpire checked the infielder’s glove, they found a potato, which Bill had hidden in the outfield grass for just such an occasion.

But Bill could also be a smart ballplayer. In 1898, he issued perhaps the first intentional walk in NYSL history. In a game in Cortland, a good Cortland batter, Armstrong, came to the plate late in the game with two men on base. Here’s how the Cortland Evening Standard described the scene, beginning with Setley’s first pitch: 

“One strike”, yelled Kelley, the umpire. Armstrong’s teeth froze together, and he hit the rubber [home plate] an awful crack with his club. Setley beckoned to Toft to get away from behind the bat. He moved about five feet to the right and Setley threw him four easy ones. Armstrong did not attempt to reach any of them, and he was sent to his base on balls. The three bases were filled and the audience began to feel gloomy. Great things were expected of Shincel, who next came to bat. He fanned the air twice, and then Setley let him have a nice one. He hit it high in the air, but the ball dropped right into Mulhall’s hands. The visiting team all said the play was one of the cleverest and most daring ever seen.”

It was the first intentional walk any of them had ever seen. The intentional walk had been around for about a decade, but was very rarely used. One examination of major league games of the era found it was used less than one time per one hundred games. During his travels with many teams, Bill may have seen or heard about it. Or possibly he thought of it on his own. Setley’s pioneering use of the strategy showed he had a good knowledge of the game. And to load the bases with the walk showed Bill was extremely confident—or foolhardy.

Bill Setley was also something of a lovable rogue off the field. More than once he was chased ( or ran) out of town with accusations of bad debts, missing funds, or disputes with managers. But not only wasn’t he banned from baseball, he often returned in later years to play in the same town or for the same manager. He seemed to be able to talk himself out of these incidents and from scrapes with the law. The most serious of these occurred in 1903, when he was arrested for bigamy and abduction.

With his career as a player completed, Bill needed work. He found it in a familiar place. In March 1903, Setley became the baseball coach at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, just west of Utica. Less than three weeks later he would be in jail, disgraced. Shortly after he arrived at Hamilton, Wild Bill put together a card game where hundreds of dollars changed hands. After winning several hundred dollars, Bill found himself in police court and was compelled to return most of his winnings. Things got worse (and really strange) after that.

On April 11, the 43-year-old Setley “eloped” with a 17-year-old Clinton resident, Veronica (Vera) Prockup, and they were married in Utica. She was a domestic on College Hill ( according to the Clinton Advertiser) and Bill said she told him she was 19. When they returned home to Clinton, Vera’s parents (who had learned that Bill was still married to his first wife) preferred charges of abduction against Setley and had him arrested. The Utica newspapers had extensive coverage of the many court dates and testimony by Bill’s first wife, Alice. After Alice divorced him, and before he could go to trial for bigamy and abduction, the charges were apparently dropped. There is no mention of why in the newspapers. Just months later, in the spring of 1904, Wild Bill umpired an exhibition game for Utica’s NYSL team. Not only was he free, he was as popular as ever.

Shortly afterward, the Setleys decided to get a fresh start, and Bill and Vera moved to the Oklahoma Territory. After rebelling against authority during his playing career, Wild Bill’s next jobs were ironic. He became a policeman in Tulsa and an umpire for several western leagues. Oklahoma wasn’t yet a state when the Setleys moved there—and an oil boom fueled huge population increases. Wild Bill was in the right place at the right time as he helped tame the “Wild West”—both on and off the baseball field. He umpired in several different leagues, including the “Three Eye,” Western Association, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and Southwestern.

As an umpire, Wild Bill earned a reputation for handing out $5 fines to players and managers who argued with his calls. Twice he was beaned by balls thrown by players and often was harassed or attacked by fans of the rough and tumble world of baseball in the “Old West.” Setley was often called the best umpire in many of the leagues he worked in, although he would invariably make calls against teams that would get their hometown newspapers upset, leading to bad press and even implications that he fixed games as an umpire.

In 1908, the Cincinnati Reds made a barnstorming trip to Cuba to play several games against Cuban teams. Setley must have made a pretty good impression during games seen by major league scouts, because the Reds asked Wild Bill to accompany them to umpire all games the Reds played against Cuban teams and act as umpire. Setley and his wife and daughter all made the trip. Cincinnati won a series of games against a Havana team, but didn’t fare as well versus the Almendares Blues club. The Reds went only 1-5-1 in the series with that powerful Cuban team. One of the leaders of Almendares was their 20-year-old pitcher, Jose Mendez. Mendez later earned the nickname “The Black Diamond,” and once struck out Babe Ruth three times in a game. Against the Reds, he pitched two shutouts, with a no-hitter going into the ninth in one game, when he gave up one hit.

John McGraw later said that Mendez was the best pitcher in baseball. Setley recalled, “We saw something on that Almendares team. They had a pitcher, Mendez, a big Cuban Negro, and he pitched 24 consecutive shutout innings against the Reds. He set the Reds down with one hit in the first game. Frank Bancroft, the Cincinnati business manager, who was acting as manager on the trip, said, “Whitewash that Mendez and I could sell him for $20,000.”

Five years later, Wild Bill was involved with the organizing and promotion of an exhibition game between New York Giants and Chicago White Sox. The game was played October 28 in Tulsa—where it was cool enough to briefly snow. The exhibition game was played to raise money for the Giants/Sox round-the-world tour. Oklahoman Walter “The Big Train” Johnson was signed for $500 to pitch against “The Big Six,” New York’s Christy Mathewson. Johnson outpitched Matty, winning 2-0 while allowing eight hits and striking out eight Giants. That the game was played at all was amazing, because just before it was scheduled to start, the first base section of the grandstand collapsed. Soldiers had been marching under the bleachers and one was killed instantly. More than 50 fans were seriously injured—some of whom reportedly died later. Yet after the wounded were taken away and the scene brought to some semblance of order, the game went on.

Wild Bill told (and was the subject of) many baseball stories. The most famous was the one about the “closest game ever played”—a game that ended with the score of 2½-2. There were several versions of the story, but the one he told on Ripley’s Believe It or Not radio show was heard by the most people.

The game was played between two minor league teams, the Allentown Killers and the Pottsville Colts, and the score was tied 2-2 in the bottom of the 11th inning. Mike “King” Kelly, the Allentown player/manager, had just broken the last bat that either team owned. Umpire Tim Hurst told Kelly that the game was over and would be a tie, but the stubborn player would have none of that and walked over to a nearby shed. Kelly returned with an ax, intending to bat with it. “You can’t use that,” said Umpire Hurst. “Sure I can,” said King Kelly and he got his way. Kelly swung and missed at two pitches and then connected on the next one. The ax sliced right through the ball’s center, with one piece flying foul over the grandstand, and the other half going out into left field. Kelly circled the bases and headed for home with the winning run. The outfielder threw the ball in to the relay man, and he fired it in to the catcher, who applied the tag on the sliding Kelly at home plate. “You’re out!” hollered Umpire Hurst, and Kelly answered, “The hell I am. I’m only half out. He’s just got half of the ball!” The umpire pondered this for a moment, and then decided to give Allentown half a run to make the final score 2½ to 2 in Allentown’s favor. 

In some versions of this story, Wild Bill himself is the umpire or the outfielder. The teams and players involved also changed over the years. Extensive research by Tony Kissel and myself has failed to turn up any evidence that such an event occurred. If it did, the teams and players involved are almost certainly obscure semi-pro or amateur ones—not involving Tim Hurst or King Kelly.

Setley’s appearance on Robert Ripley’s radio program was sort of overshadowed by Lou Gehrig’s famous on-air commercial mistake. When asked what cereal he ate for training, Lou replied, “Wheaties” (he had previously endorsed them) rather than the correct sponsor, Huskies.

Finding complete statistics for minor league players of Wild Bill’s era is, as you can imagine, quite difficult. His record in organized baseball (at least what stats are available) was 65-56. In 1896, he posted a 20- 16 record in professional games—with an additional 4-1 record in semi-pro or amateur games. That season just four National League pitchers topped his 113 strikeouts, and all of them pitched more games than Wild Bill. But Setley’s career (and life) can’t be measured by mere statistics. He did more in his lifetime than some men would in ten lives, and it is unlikely we’ll ever again see a player/umpire/promoter/policeman like Wild Bill Setley.

SCOTT FIESTHUMEL is the co-author (with Tony Kissel) of The Legend of Wild Bill Setley, which is currently available.