Okay, this is good. So apparently in 1913 a Washington ten-year-old boy named Granville Dickey ran away from home, hopped a train to Charlottesville where the then-Washington Nationals were practicing, and lived for two days with a UVa. student he befriended at the train station while checking out his beloved baseball players. Dickey even asked manager Clark Griffith if he could be a bat boy. The creepiness of an “attractive” ten year old sleeping in a dorm room with a college student aside, Granville Dickey’s safe return is lauded by the Washington Post as the first recovery of runaway that was aided by the new technology of telephony. Kinda neat.

The Post, in an editorial, also argues that proper punishment for Dickey is to be banned from attending the Nationals’ opening game in Washington, to which my (very) great grandfather wrote:

Editor Post: In your editorial “The Lost Boy Found” in this morning’s Post you end up with the sentence, “He should be kept from the opening game of the baseball season,” referring, of course, to the Dickey boy. Mr. Editor, in all my life I have never yet heard of such downright cruelty, such meanness to a fan, nor do I think that history recalls through all the ages as great a punishment to man, woman, or child as you propose to mete out to young Dickey. My dear sir, if you really want to punish the little fellow, go take him out to Fort Myer and let the cavalry run over his body; if he still lives, burn his little feet, singe his eyebrows, chop off his fingers; but refuse to let him see the opening game—never, never, never!

When you and I are gone, when the Capitol shall have crumbled to dust, when men will be reading newspapers from Mars, our boys will be walking the same path to Charlottesville, their dreams in the spring will be of Charlottesville, and their one great aim in life will be to see the opening game. Young Dickey has taught them the way to this wonderful little town. From now on we shall see a beaten track down in Virginia. Dickey has set a precedent, and nothing short of stopping the youngsters from seeing the opening game will keep their feet off this beaten track in the spring. Yours for the opening game.
IRVING M. GREY.
Washington, March 20.

Thanks to my aunt for digging up another instance of brilliant, public, questionably jokingly hyperbolic family writing. I’m hoping that’s my great grandfather’s sense of humor shining through and not, like, you know, syphilis.

Links to images of WaPo article (image above is page 1):

• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3
• Page 4
• Editorial
• Letter to the editor