Billy Evans Marquee Hall of Fame 1973

His first game behind the plate was on April 20, 1906, ten weeks after his twenty-second birthday. The logs name him there 1,676 times through October 1, 1927, across twenty-one seasons, which is eighth-most in this archive and is a floor rather than a total.

He was hit in the head by a thrown bottle at St. Louis in 1907 and nearly died of it. He wrote a syndicated newspaper column while still umpiring, which no one else was doing, and published a book on the rules.

He never played professionally. After he left the field he ran the Cleveland farm system, was general manager at Detroit, and was president of the Southern Association, which is an unusual career for a man who spent two decades being shouted at. The Hall of Fame elected him in 1973, seventeen years after he died.