Harry “Bird Eye” Truby’s best days were behind him by 1905. He broke in with Rockford in the Central Interstate League in 1888, had spent part of 1896 and ’96 in the National League with the Chicago Colts and Pittsburgh Pirates, and for the next decade was a solid minor league player. But his skills had eroded and by 1902 he was playing in lesser quality leagues.
Truby started the season in the D-level Cotton States League with the Jackson Blind Tigers, by June he was either released or sold (depending on the source) to the Meridian Ribboners in the same league—he was acquired by the Niles Crowites in the Ohio-Pennsylvania League on September 1—within days his career was over. The Youngstown Vindicator said:
“Harry Truby won’t have a chance to slug any more umpires for a while (sic) unless he makes a special appointment with them.”
In a Labor day game against the Akron Buckeyes Truby punched an umpire named List after he called a Niles player out for not tagging up on a fly ball; The Vindicator said of the resulting melee which involved at least two other players and some fans:
“It was a disgraceful scene, indeed.”
League president Charles Hazen Morton suspended Truby indefinitely; the suspension effectively ended his career.
Harry Truby, 1898
The following season Truby became an umpire, quickly worked his way back to the Big Leagues, and was named to the National League staff at the beginning of the 1909 season; however, he was let go or resigned in July (again, sources disagree). In August Truby became an umpire in the Tri-State League.
Within days of joining the Tri-State, Truby umpired a game between the Williamsport Millionaires and Trenton Tigers in Williamsport, PA. Williamsport argued a number of calls and Truby had already ejected three of their players: Bert Conn, George Therre, Tom O’Hara, when in the seventh inning he ejected a fourth, outfielder Rip Cannell. The Pittsburgh Press said:
“(T)he crowd, enraged by (Truby’s) poor work and apparently uncalled for action against the local team swarmed upon the diamond. He was knocked down…and struck on the nose by a stone. The police quickly ended the disturbance, but after the game the crowd was in waiting and ran the umpire into a shed from which he was rescued by two officers in an automobile. The crowd tried to pursue the automobile but it pulled ahead and at 7 o’clock he reached his hotel.”
Truby worked as an umpire in the Tri-State and Ohio State Leagues through the 1913 season, and seems to have avoided any additional attacks by angry mobs.
He died in 1953 in Ironton, Ohio.
Baseball History Daily 