After John “Kick” Kelly was fired as manager of the Louisville Colonels in June of 1888, he returned to the National League as an umpire.
When he missed the September 21 game between the New York Giants and Detroit Wolverines, most papers reported he was out sick. The Detroit Free Press was more specific:
“Mr. Kelly’s white uniform did not make its appearance yesterday when the signal was given and after a painful pause it was concluded to on with the game minus his presence, and John War of the New York team, was selected to umpire…Kelly’s non-appearance is not hard to explain. The man who has masqueraded as a star umpire has for some time past been attempting the difficult feat of rendering proper decisions on the ball field and at the same time maintain intimate relations with an extensive ‘jag.’ In this effort Mr. Kelly has proven a dire failure, much to the discomfiture of the players compelled to submit to the awful decisions resultant on the aforementioned ‘jag.’”
The paper said Ward acquitted himself well and that Kelly “was not missed to any great extent.”
There was more to the story.
The following day The Free Press said:
“Mr. Kelly was a guest at police headquarters…The cause of Mr. Kelly’s presence at the headquarters was a disagreement between himself and a person whom it would be superfluous to mention by name.”
Their competition, The Detroit Tribune, thought no details of Kelly’s arrest were superfluous:
“Kelly, the League umpire…occupied the “Dead man’s” cell in the Central Police Station about three hours today. For the past three nights Kelly has been painting the town, and last night his hilarity broke out in a house of bad reputation. He and a number of local characters started out in the early part of the evening and went to a house on Antoine Street.”
After drinking “several bottles of wine,” Kelly was said to have told his companions:
“I can lick anybody, an I will pound the first person who says a word.”
The party moved to a local brothel, where after more wine, an attempt was made to remove Kelly from the premises:
“He struck one of the inmates, Emma Gordon, on the head and knocked her down and kicked her. He then struck one of the other inmates, and when the Gordon woman arose, he struck her in the mouth, cutting her lower lip and nocking two of her teeth out. After having asserted his manhood in this way Mr. Kelly was willing to leave and did leave.”
Kelly returned to his room at Detroit’s Hotel Cadillac, where, as he was sleeping, the police “roused him up gently, but forcibly, and led him” to jail.
Kick Kelly
According to the paper “a large delegation from the ‘sporting fraternity’” of Detroit had Kelly quickly released.
Kelly paid the woman he assaulted $75. He worked the September 22 game between New York and Detroit.
Despite paying the woman, Kelly told a reporter for The New York World that had done nothing wrong:
“I was so sick on Friday that I could I was unable to leave the hotel. I was perfectly sober; in fact, I have never abstained from the use of intoxicants so completely as of late. I committed no assault, as the fact of my almost immediate dismissal proved, nor did I receive any injury of any kind…My arrest was prompted by spite. I went out the next day and umpired good ball.”
Kelly said he was the victim of “a thirst to grind the umpire,” and a “love for sensationalism.”
The Boston Post said the story from Detroit was nothing new:
“At Washington recently, Umpire Kelly was too intoxicated to discharge his duties properly.”
The paper said that if the Detroit charges “are borne out by facts, he has disgraced himself and the league and should be discharged at once.”
The Detroit Tribune said of Kelly’s denials:
“Umpire Kelly is telling them in the East that he didn’t drink too much and didn’t abuse and beat a woman in Detroit, adding that the Detroit papers had a spite against him and tried to ‘do’ him. Down in the East they take Kelly’s denial with a grain of salt.”
Kelly was never disciplined further by the authorities in Detroit or by the National League. He and “Honest John” Gaffney were selected to umpire the post season series between the Giants and the American Association champion St. Louis Browns.
During that series, Kelly was accused of a charge that plagued him as frequently as the one about his drinking; his perceived favoritism of the Giants. Browns owner Chris von der Ahe went so far as to charge that “Kelly had money on the New Yorks.”
Kelly responded in a letter that was printed in The Boston Globe:
“Chris von der Ahe is hot because the St. Louis men are being slaughtered by the New Yorks.…He lost his nerve and he wants to be revenged on the umpires.”
The Giants won the series six games to four.
Kelly then did what anyone trying dodge charges of a drinking problem would do; he and Mike “King” Kelly decided to open a bar. The New York World said:
“Umpire John Kelly and $10000 Mike will begin operations in Shang Draper’s (a New York criminal and saloon keeper) old place, corner of thirty-first Street and Sixth Avenue.”
Kelly moved to the American Association the following season.
The business apparently did not operate for long either, the following spring The New York Herald asked:
“With Mike Kelly captain of the Bostons and John Kelly umpire in the American Association, what will become of the New York wine joint—Shang Draper’s old place?”
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