“And so Buck Ewing is Dead.”
The New York Telegram eulogized in 1906, and pronounced him:
“The greatest ball player of them all, when all that makes a great ball player is taken into consideration.
“There was nothing that Buck Ewing could do on a ballfield without doing it well. Before he became a catcher, he was a fine infielder. After he was a catcher, he was a fine outfielder. When he was a catcher, he was a good pitcher, and there was no time in his life that he was not one of the most intelligent, if not the most intelligent right-hand batters in the history of the game.”
It was acknowledged that “There were others who were greater sluggers,” and players with higher averages, “but there was only one Ewing, whom every pitcher feared when there were men on base.”
In addition, The Telegram said, “No ball player lived who knew more about the inside of baseball,’ and when he threw a ball it was as if:
“He simply handed it to the baseman, with a snap which many a catcher had tried and none has equalled.”
Tom Loftus told the paper when he was managing, he was asked “why his players did not try to steal” against Ewing:
“Steal bases, what’s the use? If you give them two rods handicap for a start the second baseman would be waiting for them before they within twenty feet of the base.
“You could rob a bank easier than you can steal on this man Ewing.”
The eulogy also said, “as a matter of baseball history,” Ewing “probably made” the longest hit on record, in an 1889 game with the Cleveland Spiders.
“Cleveland’s left field fence was so far away from home plate that no one had ever batted the ball over it, and no one expected that a hit would go over it. ‘Darby’ O’Brien, long since dead, was pitching for Cleveland. He tried to fool Ewing with a low curve on the outside corner of the platter.”
The pitcher was not Darby O’Brien, but John “Cinders” O’Brien:
“Buck swung with all his weight on the ball, and when it cleared the top board of that far away left field fence by so many feet that there was enough daylight to have prolonged the afternoon for another hour or so. The crowd in spite of its partisanship stood up and roared.
“The ball was found in the garden of a Cleveland millionaire hundreds of feet from the fence…The measures are in existence to this day, but there is little doubt that it wa the longest hit ever made in the history of professional baseball. Also, New York won because of the hit.”
In addition to identifying the wrong “O’Brien” as pitcher, The Telegram erred in the outcome of the game. Cleveland beat New York eight to six.
The game was June 22, 1889. The New York World described the moment; the Giants loaded the bases in the third inning:
“Then Buck Ewing, captain of the champions of all creation, came to bat and made the longest hit ever made on these grounds.”
The Cleveland Press said:
“(Ewing) drove it high over the left field fence, which is 478 feet from the home plate.”
The Telegram insisted in 1906 that Ewing’s homerun was “the longest hit ever made in the history of professional baseball.”
The 1922 “Spalding Guide” said of Ewing’s home run:
“(W)here the ball went after that (clearing the fence, 478 feet from home plate) never was ascertained, although it was a standing joke in Cleveland that it turned up in the repletion room of a Euclid Avenue mansion, which would not have been wholly impossible if it rolled to the corner of what was once Case Avenue.”
The 1906 eulogy concluded:
“(A) gamer man with a more magnetic personality never played professional baseball. There are thousands to whom Buck Ewing’s death will bring a feeling of sorrow that a personal friend has been taken away.”
Baseball History Daily 