Thomas Henry Connolly (December 31, 1870 – April 28, 1961) was an English-American umpire in Major League Baseball. He officiated in the National League from 1898 to 1900, followed by 31 years of service in the American League from 1901 to 1931. In over half a century as an American League umpire and supervisor, he established the high standards for which the circuit's arbiters became known, and solidified the reputation for integrity of umpires in the major leagues.

Early life

Connolly was born in Manchester, England, and played

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

as a boy. It was not until his family emigrated to the United States in 1885, settling in

Natick, Massachusetts Natick ( ) is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is near the center of the MetroWest region of Massachusetts, with a population of 37,006 at the 2020 census. west of Boston, Natick is part of the Greater Boston area. ...

, that he saw the game of baseball played for the first time, but he was quickly fascinated and resolved himself to learning as much about the game as he could. He immersed himself in the rule book, and within a few years was umpiring for local games. While working in YMCA games, he was discovered by major league umpire

Tim Hurst Timothy Carroll Hurst (June 30, 1865 – June 4, 1915) was an American sports official who worked as an umpire (baseball), umpire and manager (baseball), manager in Major League Baseball and as a referee (boxing), boxing referee in championship f ...

, who obtained a position for Connolly in the New England League, where he umpired from 1894 to 1897.

MLB career

In 1898, the National League (NL) brought Connolly up to the majors, but he was angered by the league president's reluctance to back up umpires' decisions on the field, and resigned in the middle of the 1900 season, then signed with the fledgling American League (AL) in 1901. That league's president, Ban Johnson, was eager to create a reputation for the AL as a solid challenger to the NL, and he gave umpires a greater measure of support than they had previously received, demonstrating that attacks upon umpires would not be tolerated and that their judgment was final. On April 24, 1901, Connolly had the privilege of umpiring, as its sole arbiter, the first AL game ever played. Although he had begun his career by showing that he was willing to remove players from the field — he ejected more than 10 in his first AL season — he came to earn great respect from the players, and once went 5 full seasons (1925–1929) without ejecting a player. He also showed an ability to stand firm against the toughest players in defense of the rules; on September 11, 1912, he called Ty Cobb out for stepping across home plate while batting, after Cobb had batted in a run during an attempted intentional walk. During the ensuing argument, Connolly was struck in the mouth by a bottle thrown by a spectator. His reputation earned him prominent game assignments, including the first AL games ever played at

Comiskey Park Comiskey Park was a baseball park in Chicago, Illinois, located in the Armour Square neighborhood on the near-southwest side of the city. The stadium served as the home of the Chicago White Sox of the American League from 1910 through 1990. Buil ...

, Shibe Park, Fenway Park, and Yankee Stadium. Connolly was also the sole AL umpire chosen to work in the first World Series in 1903. In 1931, new AL president Will Harridge was concerned about widespread complaints that the quality of umpiring in the league had deteriorated, and Connolly retired from active field work to become the league's first supervisor of umpires. Traveling throughout the league to work with other umpires and ensure that everyone's work was meeting the same high standards, he remained in that post until 1954, and came to be known as the nation's foremost expert on baseball rules. In his career, Connolly worked in an AL-record eight World Series:

1903 Events January * January 1 – Edward VII is proclaimed Emperor of India. * January 19 – The first west–east transatlantic radio broadcast is made from the United States to England (the first east–west broadcast having been ...

1908 Events January * January 1 – The British ''Nimrod'' Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton sets sail from New Zealand on the ''Nimrod'' for Antarctica. * January 3 – A total solar eclipse is visible in the Pacific Ocean, and is the 46 ...

(even-numbered games),

1910 Events January * January 13 – The first public radio broadcast takes place; live performances of the operas '' Cavalleria rusticana'' and ''Pagliacci'' are sent out over the airwaves, from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York C ...

1911 A notable ongoing event was the Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions, race for the South Pole. Events January * January 1 – A decade after federation, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory ...

1913 Events January * January 5 – First Balkan War: Battle of Lemnos (1913), Battle of Lemnos – Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it will not ven ...

1916 Events Below, the events of the First World War have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 1 – The British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion, using blood that had been stored and cooled. * ...

1920 Events January * January 1 ** Polish–Soviet War in 1920: The Russian Red Army increases its troops along the Polish border from 4 divisions to 20. ** Kauniainen, completely surrounded by the city of Espoo, secedes from Espoo as its own ma ...

and

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...

. He was also the home plate umpire for Addie Joss' perfect game on October 2, 1908, one of four no-hitters in which he called balls and strikes.

Later life

Connolly was named in the Honor Rolls of Baseball in 1946, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953, one of the first two umpires (the NL's

Bill Klem William Joseph Klem, born William Joseph Klimm (February 22, 1874 – September 16, 1951), known as the "Old Arbitrator" and the "father of baseball umpires", was a National League (NL) umpire in Major League Baseball from 1905 to 1941. He worked ...

was the other) given that honor. Connolly and Klem are the only two umpires in history to have worked in five decades; Connolly's record of 31 years umpiring American League games was broken by Larry Barnett in 1999. Connolly died in 1961 at age 90 in

, survived by seven children, and predeceased by his wife, who had died in 1943.

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