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William George Evans ( February 10 1884 - January 23 1956 ) was an American Umpire in Major League Baseball , working in the American League from 1906 to 1927. He was elected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1973 , the third umpire ever selected. Evans was born in Chicago, Illinois . When he was still a child, his family relocated to Youngstown, Ohio , where Evans' father accepted a management position in a Carnegie steel plant. Evans proved to be a standout athlete at the local high school and went on to play football and baseball at Cornell . After two years, his law studies and college sports career came to a halt, however, with the sudden death of his father. Evans returned to Ohio and accepted a job as a sports reporter at the Youngstown Daily Vindicator. In 1904, while covering a baseball game between the local club and a team from Hermitage, Pennsylvania , Evans was approached by the manager of the Youngstown ball club, ex-major leaguer Marty Hogan , and asked to fill an umpire vacancy. His performance earned him a spot as a full-time league umpire. The following year, Evans received a spectacular career boost from another Youngstowner, ex-ballplayer Jimmy McAleer , who was so impressed with the young man's ability that he recommended Evans to American League president Ban Johnson . At 22 years of age, Evans was the youngest umpire in major league history; furthermore, he was among those very rare umpires who broke into the major leagues with no prior professional experience. He was an umpire for six , 1912 , 1915 , 1917 , 1919 and 1923 . Working in an era during which most major league games used no more than two umpires (and sometimes only one), Evans single-handedly umpired seven double-headers in eight days during the 1907 season. He was the base umpire for Charlie Robertson 's Perfect Game on April 30, 1922. After he retired from umpiring, he became the general manager of the Cleveland Indians (1927-35) and the Detroit Tigers (1947-51), and also served as an executive in the minor leagues; he also authored articles and a book, ''Umpiring from the Inside''. He died at age 71 in Miami, Florida . EXTERNAL LINKS
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