Baseball and A Cracked Head
Submitted by Kay Mason <KLMPIANO@aol.com on May 17, 2000

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Pages 223-224: 
          
"In summer the young men around Cannonsburg made up a sort of ball club 
and played neighboring village clubs on Saturday & Sunday afternoons.  
While the quality of game played was not very high the effort and enthusiasm were 
terrific and rooters and players were fiercely loyal to the home teams. 
 
One afternoon, about 1903 or 1904 - late Aug. or early Sept., Cannonsburg 
played a team from Normal, a small place on the Ohio River below 
Catlettsburg.  The grounds were in an old pasture - a part of the Geiger Farm 
in a nicely shaded spot.  The local boys got the idea that the Normal team 
looked down on them as "Country Jakes" and so feelings were not good to start 
with. 
 
Right soon after play one SCOTT, in running the bases, collided with 
ALBERT JORDAN of the local team and knocked him off third base and continued 
on to home plate.  {ALBERT] JORDAN floowed and made the charge that the 
collision was intentional and SCOTT claimed it was accidental.  After a short 
wrangel, the game was resumed and played out without further dispute of notice. 
             
As the crowd dispersed a boy handed a bat to [ALBERT] JORDAN and, as he 
walked away with it, he became aware that someone was walking by his side 
and, glancing to see who it was, saw that it was SCOTT - who answered his 
look with a scowl.  The look so angered [ALBERT] JORDAN that he suddenly 
swung the bat and struck SCOTT across his right eye and diagonally upward to 
the hairline above the left eye - leaving a dent in the flesh and bone. 
SCOTT dropped instantly.  I was only a few feet away and saw his friends 
gather him up and place him in a buggy.  He looked like a dying man to me. 
 
Mr. [ALBERT] JORDAN went home and, expecting to be arrested, he kept out 
of sight.  As he was our friend, ELIZA [MCDAVID MASON] and I decided to help 
get him out of the County till matters became more settled.  So after a talk 
with him we left in our buggy at night and drove up into Elliott County and 
made arrangements for him to stay at my nephew's - (CALVIN SPARKS) - but he 
couldn't make himself stay - just too far in the country - so when I went 
home he went also.  He soon went to his mother at Milton, W. Va., and from 
there to Wickersham, Washington - and lived there and in that section till 
his death in 1948.  He was honest & truthful and a true firend, but had a 
very high temper. 
 
In 1935 ELIZA [MCDAVID MASON] and I were at his place in Skagit County, 
Wash. for about 2 hours while pasing through the country and in 1938 he and 
his 4th & last wife stayed overnight with us here [Long Beach, CA]. 
 
The man SCOTT was shot and killed in a brawl several years after we came 
west.  Lucky for me [ALBERT] JORDAN was not arrested, as I had volated the 
law by trying to hide him from the officers." 
 
Kay Mason