[greymule]

I happened to come across this fortuitously this morning, from Rich Marazzi's Rules and Lore of Baseball.

"In the third game of the 1925 World Series played between the Pirates and Senators, the umpires had to rule on a controversial catch concerning Sam Rice.

"In the eighth inning, Fred Marberry went in to pitch for the Senators. Marberry proceeded to strike out the first two Pirates. Then Earl Smith stepped to the plate and drove a long fly to right-center field. The Senators' flychaser backpeddled as far as he could against the wall, and then suddenly the player, the ball, and the crowd all merged into one confusing picture. Sam Rice had fallen into the bleachers. The question was, did he catch it? There was a delay by Rice in getting out of the stands, and manager Bill McKechnie of the Pirates charged out of the dugout, protesting that Rice had dropped the ball and that it had been recovered for him by a spectator.

"After a long debate, the four umpires (McCormick, Moriarty, Owens, and Rigler) decided that Rice had caught the ball before he fell into the bleachers."

Cohen and Neft describe the play this way:

"Smith flied out on a very controversial play to Rice in the right-center field bleachers. Rice leaned over the fence, threw up his glove, and speared the ball. However, it looked like a homer as Rice failed to immediately return the ball. Umpire Rigler called the batter out as the Pirates argued that a fan must have given Rice the ball."