\nA few months ago there died in Georgia, a man well known in Waterville as athlete and schoolman, Ernest Simpson. Although he played football and other sports, Simpson was best known as a baseball outfielder and sensational hitter. In his later life, after his baseball days were over, he was for several years principal of the high school at Adams, Mass. and then sub-master of Waterville Senior High School.<\/p>\n
Ernest Simpson graduated from Waterville H. S. in 1912 and from Colby College in 1916. At both schools he was a baseball star, and at Colby he also played end on the highest-scoring and most successful football team in Colby history – the team which featured the sensational backs, Ginger Fraser, Eddie Cawley, and Jack Lowney.<\/p>\n
Some men kept diaries. Ernest Simpson kept a scrap book. Thanks to his son Tommy Simpson, that scrap book is now a treasured possession of the Waterville Historical Society. In it are hundreds of newspaper clippings about athletic events at the high school and at Colby. One clipping shows Simpson as captain of the W H S baseball team in 1912, his senior year. Its coach was Ginger Fraser, then a sophomore at Colby. At the end of the previous season in 1911, the Waterville Sentinel had said: “After W.H.S. had solt out Lewiston H.S. 9 to 0, Ernest Simpson, Waterville’s speedy left fielder, was elected captain for next year.” In 191,1 the Waterville team had won 12 games and lost only one, a 6-5 thriller with Kents Hill. The longest game was a 5 to 4 victory over Gardiner in 12 innings. It beat Coburn twice, 10 to 3, and 9 to 0. It won two games from Bangor, two from Skowhegan, and squeezed by MCI 4 to 3.<\/p>\n
When Ernest Simpson entered Colby in 1912, his baseball fame was such that he was elected captain of the freshman team. It was the spring of 1915 when he really got going with the Colby team of which Jimmy Jones, a man still living in Florida,was the renowned pitcher. The bat of Ernest Simpson played no small part in Jimmy’s victories.<\/p>\n
Simpson’s home run scored the 6 to 5 ten-inning win over Bates. Of a game against Maine in the same season, won by Colby 2 to 1, the Portland Telegram said: “For four innings Colby battled without a run until Simpson, the midget left fielder, drove the ball for three bases.”<\/p>\n
In that game, Simpson played a fielding part of the most extraordinary kind. This is how the Telegram described it: “A peculiar play occurred in the ninth inning, but it had no effect on the outcome. Cobb of Maine hit a high foul outside the left field line and directly back of automobiles parked close to that line. Running behind the autos, Simpson, the Colby left fielder, made a desperate catch of the foul, but the umpire could not see the play because of the intervening autos, and the play was not allowed. Cheers from the third base bleachers signaled that Simpson had made the catch, but the umpire declared the play a foul strike and ordered the batter to continue. But the Colby team put up a strenuous argument, supported by witnesses in the bleachers. The umpire then took a novel way to settle the dispute. He tossed a coin. Maine won the toss, and Cobb resumed his place at the plate. To the joy of the whole Colby contingent, Jimmy Jones then struck Cobb out.”<\/p>\n
That incident is surely worth recording. I know that many old baseball fans listen to this program. Did any of you ever hear of another instance where an umpire tossed a coin to decide whether a batter was out?<\/p>\n
Of another 1915 game, a 3 to 2 win over Bowdoin on the Colby field in 12 innings, the Sentinel said: “Swipe Simpson chased a long fly out over the running track down into a pit of old lumber, and triumphantly emerged with the ball in his glove.”<\/p>\n
One game that year was called, because of darkness, with Colby and Bates tied 5 to 5. The Sentinel waxed poetical about it. “Just as the shades of night were falling fast over the Bates campus, and the ploughman homeward went his weary way, Bates and Colby were cursing the absence of a modern Joshua to make the sun stand still. The umpire, saying he could no longer see the ball, called the game with the score five all.”<\/p>\n
When Colby beat Bates on their next meeting, the Sentinel said: “One Waterville boy came across in grand style for Colby, the work of Simpson standing out above that of any other player on either team. His home run in the second inning gave Colby its start, and his magnificent throw, cutting off i’albot at the plate, clinched the victory.”<\/p>\n
In that 1915 season, his junior year, Simpson had a batting average of 308 and an errorless fielding average of 1000.<\/p>\n
Then hard luck hit Ernest Simpson. He had been elected captain of the Colby team for 1916 when in November of his senior year the Portland Telegram told the sad story. “The jinx is on the back of Colby’s baseball captain. After being in Sisters’ Hospital in Waterville for four weeks, following a serious operation for appendicitis and hernia, Ernest Simpson is just leaving the hospital today to recuperate at his quiet home on Oak Street, almost within the shadow of the college. Still hopes to lead the Maine college champions through another successful season next spring, but if he does play it will be against his doctors’ wishes.”<\/p>\n
Ernest Simpson did play for Colby in 1916, leading his team to victories of 14 to 2 over Bowdoin and 10 to 4 over Bates. But the most memorable game of that year was when, with substantial help from Simpson’s bat, Colby beat Harvard. I personally remember that game. When it was played in Cambridge, the school year had ended at Hebron where I was teaching, and being at the home of my parents in Watertown, I rode the trolley into nearby Soldiers Field to see the game.<\/p>\n
The clippings in the Simpson scrapbook are not concerned exclusively with baseball, or even with athletics. Some of them have to do with Simpson’s distinguished service in the school system of Adams, Mass. He went there first as a teacher in the high school, and soon had charge of the evening school for adult education. One clipping tells us: “At the final meeting of the class on citizenship at the evening school, the students presented their instructor, Ernest Simpson with a gold piece and gold cuff links as a token of their esteem.” Soon afterward Simpson was elected principal of Adams H. S. Before that he had become scoutmaster of the town’s largest troop of boy scouts.<\/p>\n
After service in the First World War, Ernest Simpson returned to Adams, where he remained until he came home to Waterville as submaster of the senior high. While at Adams, he was elected President of the Massachusetts Principals Association. Ernest Simpson was a prominent member of the Elks, and in 1937 served as District Deputy.<\/p>\n
One clipping in the book tells of a fire in Waterville in 1916. It was the destruction of a time-honored building on the old Colby campus known as the Hersey House. That old residence stood just south of the old wooden grandstand on the athletic field, with its west side facing College Avenue. It had been built early in the 19th century, and once served as dining place for college students. In the house lived the man who held the franchise as college steward as early as 1828. He was paid no salary, but was allowed to have the fees which the college collected from students for their board. When the first contract was made with the steward in 1828, the board charge was one dollar a week. There is no record of how many students boarded at the Commons, but certainly not all of them. In 1828 they were all boys, girls did not enter Colby until 1871 – and a good many lived at home or got their own meals. Out of the fifty students then in college, the steward
\nprobably served no more than 25. So he could depend on little more than $25 a week to render the service, including buying the raw food. Surely he couldn’t have made much money.<\/p>\n
Now let us see what the paper in 1916 said about the destruction of that century old building where Colby men once had their meals. “Students on the Colby campus who had already sought repose were rudely awakened about midnight on Thursday by the sound of alarm 411.” That number was the college alarm. The brilliant sight of the Hersey House in flames caused bathrobes and slippers to be put into hasty use, and there was a general stampede to the athletic field. The fire was mostly the second floor, and flames were shooting through the roof. Quickly the Waterville Fire Dept. had two streams of water pointed where they would do the most good. As the flames died down, the disappointed pajama brigade began to tend er advice. “Save the grandstand.” “Let Old Hersey burn.’ “Why don’t you spit on it?” The gallant fire fighters retaliated by turning hose on the students, who beat a hasty retreat. Just what will be done with the remains of the old house is not known. Last year it was occupied by the family of Prof. Trefethen, but unoccupied this year it has been a nest for gentlemen of the road.”<\/p>\n
Several months after that account was printed, the college wisely decided to tear down the building, and four years later the spot where it stood was covered by the south end of the new Woodman Stadium.<\/p>\n
One clipping in that scrapbook is very typical of Ernest Simpson, not only as athlete and a teacher, but also a devoutly religious man. The clipping is a prayer, which makes a very appropriate close to today’s broadcast. Here are its words.<\/p>\n
“Teach me that 60 minutes make an hour, 16 ounces a pound, and 100 cents a dollar. Help me to live so that I can lie down at night with a clear conscience, without a gun under my pillow and unhaunted by faces of people to whom I have brought pain. Grant that I may earn my meal ticket on the square. Deafen me to the jingle of tainted money and the rustle of unholy skirts. Blind me to the other fellows’ faults, and reveal to me my own. Guide me so that, when I look across the dinner table at my wife, I shall have nothing to conceal. Keep me young enough to laugh with my children and to lose myself in their play. Finally, when comes the smell of flowers, the tread of soft steps, and the hearse in front of my house, make the ceremony short and the epitaph simply ‘Here lies a man’.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1973<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #956, Broadcast on January 14, 1973<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35313,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}