My normal method of following the Atlanta Braves these days is to mute the coverage on FanDuel Sports Network South and sync the broadcast from the Braves radio network on 680 AM via the MLB.com app.

I really enjoy listening to Ben Ingram and Joe Simpson. Without the visual component of the television broadcasts, the radio announcers at times have to drop in a few extra nuggets to fill some of the space between pitches and batters. This past Tuesday, Simpson mentioned that on July 1, 1916, Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit the final home run of his career. It was an inside the park homer, and Wagner, who was 42 at the time, still holds the record for being the oldest player to hit such a home run.

Since the Pirates played their home games in spacious Forbes Field, I wasn’t totally surprised that Wagner’s last homer did not reach the stands. I was curious for more details, so I searched Newspapers.com for an account of the home run. I opened an article from the July 2, 1916 edition of the Pittsburgh Press and was surprised to read this headline:

Hans Wagner Hits Homer Into Bleachers—O’Brien’s Single Drives in Winning Run for Buccaneers

What? How is hitting a ball into the bleachers an inside the park home run?

The dateline for this article identified Cincinnati, O. as the location of the game. Redland Field being much smaller than the Pittsburgh home venue, I began to wonder whether Simpson may have been mistaken about the date of Wagner’s final home run.

Down in the middle of the article, the unnamed writer said, “The other Pirate run was the result of Wagner’s deep drive to right in the fourth inning.

Following the article, an inning-by-inning summary of the game said, “Wagner drove a home run to the right field bleachers.”

So, this article had not one, not two, but three references to Wagner’s home run landing in the bleachers.

I decided to check the account of the game in the Cincinnati Enquirer, which had this literary description of Wagner’s homer:

After (Max) Carey and (Ray) O’Brien had flied out in the fourth, Wagner hit a hot one to right field. It went past (Fritz) Mollwitz (1B) and (Tommy) Griffith (RF) like a shot and rolled clear to the fence. The Flying Dutchman is not so fast as he used to be and he should have been held to three bases, but Griffith had a lot of trouble in picking up the ball, made a poor return, which (Baldy) Louden (2B) failed to handle cleanly and Honus just naturally ran in with his tally.

My favorite account of the home run was in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Honus poled what is ordinarily a three-base drive, but as he rounded third he noted that Mollwitz was slow in handling Griffith’s relay of the ball. Mollwitz has a rather weak throwing arm, and that thought shot through the German’s brain as he dashed for the plate. He beat the throw with the run needed to tie. Anxious hands were waiting to swing the towels over that venerable brow as Honus struggled to the dugout.

That’s two accounts for and one against an inside the park home run. I was left to conclude that the Pittsburgh Press did not send a reporter to Cincinnati to cover the game and took a bit of poetic license when writing their account of Wagner’s homer.

In any event, the newspaper accounts of baseball games used to be a lot more interesting than they are these days.