| Overall UK Wins: 1 | Overall UK Losses: 1 | Win % 50 |
Date of Birth: March 22, 1880
Date of Death: December 10, 1960
Hometown: New Castle, NB (Canada)
Alma Mater: Kansas

For a generalized listing of officials, please consult this page.

Obituary - The Sporting News (? ?, ?)

Quigley, Long-Time Umpire and Grid Official, Dies at 81

Vet Covered 100,000 Miles Annually in His Heyday as Big-Time Man in Blue

By Frederick G. Lieb

Baseball lost one of its elder statesmen and finest gentlemen when Ernest C. (Ernie) Quigley, National League umpire from 1913 to 1936, died in his home in St. Mary's, Kan., December 10. Quigley, who was born in New Castle, New Brunswick, Canada, was 81 years old.

Ernie Quigley was strictly high class in an era when John McGraw, George Stallings and Johnny Evers still roared often profanely, from the bench; some umpires traded vulgarities with ball players, and tobacco-chewing athletes squirted their cuds as close to an umpire's black-polished shoes as they dared.

They never got away with much with Quigley, who spoke with the diction and proficiency of a college professor. In fact, during the 14 years he spent as director of athletics and coach of all sports at St. Mary's (Kan.) College, he also taught courses in English, history and mathematics.

Unless it was Bill Klem, no National League umpire of his day commanded as much respect as did Quigley. He could wither a player with a glance, and he had a way of turning sharply on a muttering manager or player and asking sternly, "Now just what was it you said?" If the player repeated the remark, and often it was uncomplimentary, he was immediately out of the game. Few of them ever repeated the offensive remark.

Fast Retort for McGraw

"Don't put on any airs with me," John McGraw once shouted at him.

Quigley squelched him with: "One doesn't put on airs by speaking good English."

Club owners, managers and players respected not only his decisions, but his expert knowledge of the game. No play or situation ever confused his trained, active mind. It is doubtful if any man ever had the rules of baseball, football and basketball at his finger tips as died Quigley.

He was a year-round sports official. In the early struggling days of professional football, when the college game still had the full spotlight in the fall, Quigley was such an outstanding official that he had the pick of his games, and frequently officiated at such classics as Army-Navy, Yale-Harvard, Michigan-Illinois and the Rose Bowl. He was equally efficient as a basketball referee.

No Off Season for Ernie

During the baseball season, he was one of the National League's top officials. He went right from baseball to football, taking games from coast to coast. The football season over, he turned promptly to basketball. He would leave his home at St. Mary's on a Sunday night to travel to some point 300 to 400 miles from his home. Then he would work back to St. Mary's, taking a game a night.

Sometime in the fall he would arrange to spend a solid week at home with Mrs. Quigley, and she would arrange to come East for a week during the summer while Ernie was umpiring in New York, Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

He once figured he traveled nearly 100,000 miles a year officiating sports contests. "How does Mrs. Quigley like your work, the kind that keeps you away from home 325 nights in a year?" Judge Landis, the first baseball commissioner, once asked the sports official, half in jest.

Mrs. Quigley likes it fine," said Ernie. "We're constantly getting reacquainted. She's a perfect wife for a traveling sports official."

Though Quigley was born in Canada, he grew up in Kansas and graduated from Concordia (Kan.) high School. It was at Concordia that he first attracted attention as an all-round sports figure. He next matriculated at the University of Kansas, where he attended the law school after completing the regular college course.

At Kansas, he was an outstanding athlete in track, football, baseball and basketball. He was very fast and was a dashing halfback. In baseball, he was an infielder and outfielder, and was a good batter.

He had thoughts of becoming a lawyer, but Ernie always was sports-minded, and when an offer came to coach and teach at St. Mary's, he promptly accepted.

"That experience at St. Mary's was invaluable to me in my later experience in baseball," Quigley once said. "I got to know boys and young men and how they reacted to good breaks, bad breaks, to victory and defeat. I learned that ball players, though a few years older, reacted the same way. And they needed understanding as well as discipline."

While still on the staff of St. Mary's, he started umpiring during the summer months. "I guess I never was one to sit on my hands," he once explained. He umpired his first two seasons in the Wiscosin-Illinois League, then one season in the old New York State League and half a season in the International League.

Reached Majors in 1913

Then President Tom Lynch of the National League, himself a former umpire, heard of Quigley's quiet dignity and good work and brought him into the National League in midseason of 1913.

He remained an active umpire until 1936, and then spent several years in the office of then League President Ford Frick as head umpire. Ernie arranged the umpire schedules, helped solves some of the disputed plays on the field, and frequently straightened out umpires in their personal affairs.

Ernie umpired in five World's Series, and in 1928 he was a member of a baseball mission to Japan. Some of the instructions he then gave Japanese umpires still are remembered today.

Around the time of World War II, Quigley left the National League to put full time in his favorite state, Kansas. He again became interested in St. Mary's, was active on war boards and Kansas and St. Mary's Alumni associations and also dabbled in politics. After the war, he wrote treatises on sports officiating.

He is survived by two sons, 16 grandchildren and four great-grand-children.

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