Amateurs and world champions

On Friday, 8 January 1897, in the Jersey City Handball Court on Mercer Street, Michael J. Egan beat Napoleon Lavoie of the St. Roch Athletic Association of Quebec and William Schmidt of the Brooklyn club, four straight games against each, and took the first national amateur championship of the Amateur Athletic Union, the first held in America. The Jersey City News of the next day said the three had won the preliminary round on Thursday and played off that afternoon, and that Egan gave away none of the eight games. The New York Journal, reporting the opening day, called him the youngest in the field at nineteen and said that Jimmy Dunn of Brooklyn, "the recognized champion," had stayed out with a bruised hand.

The Union's board of governors had authorized the Jersey City club to hold a national amateur tournament on 17 November 1896 and adopted the Sun's rules of competition, as the last chapter tells. Jersey City's paper claimed the credit for the club: on 5 December the News said handball had probably never crossed the Union's mind before the local club applied, and that the opening was set for Thursday, 7 January. The court at 223 Mercer Street belonged to John Egan, who, the News reported in October, had challenged James Dunne Jr. of Brooklyn on behalf of his brother Mike for the amateur championship of America and had no reply. In April 1898 the second championship began at Jersey City and moved to Brooklyn, where Egan lost to Dr. Tommy Gillen but led on total games; the Worcester Daily Spy printed a wire of 29 April that he still held the title, having won the final by default at Casey's court.

The professional title meanwhile passed by stake match. On Sunday, 4 July 1897 William Carney, a Chicago resident from Swineford, County Mayo, beat James Fitzgerald of Tralee, County Kerry, at Phil Casey's court in Brooklyn, the second half of a fifteen-game rubber that a New York wire in the Worcester Daily Spy said decided "the world's championship"; the first half, at Kennedy's court in Chicago, had gone to Carney six games to one. On 14 November a Chicago dispatch in the Kansas City Journal had him defending the title against Fireman Louis Keegan. In January 1900, by a Chicago wire in the New-York Tribune, Fitzgerald, the Irish champion, and Keegan beat Carney and his partner, Captain Ward, three games of five.

The two lines crossed in Egan. The Jersey City News reported on 10 July 1899 that James Fitzgerald of Brooklyn, backed by Alderman Dunne for $1,000, had challenged Egan, a former amateur champion for three consecutive years who had turned professional and now claimed the championship of the world because Carney had refused his challenge. No match was reported. In November 1901 the News said Egan had offered Jim Fitzgerald of Denver $1,000 a side and that both men claimed the championship; on 9 December it said Egan claimed it because Fitzgerald refused to meet him. The Tribune of 25 November called Egan "the strongest candidate for the championship" since Casey abandoned the title several years before.

In May 1902 the title became a series under conditions the papers printed. Egan gave out that he and Oliver Drew, the Irish champion, would play for the championship of the world on 22 and 30 May at 223 Mercer Street, for $250 a side. On Thursday, 22 May Drew, a left-hander from Cork, won the first seven games four to three, and the News printed the terms: 21 aces, service from any part of the floor inside a short line, "not from a centre space as in the former championship matches," the alley-cracker ball, and each man free to use a ball of his own. Whether center-space service was the earlier rule is not shown beyond that sentence. On 28 May the News reprinted an item from the Sun, which said that Drew had written that the second series was postponed indefinitely and added, on its own, that Egan appeared not to have kept his conditions. The News answered that the series had not been postponed and stood for Friday at Mercer Street. No report of it has been found, nor of a further match announced in January 1904 and put off to April.

On 21 March 1903 a San Antonio paper announced a series for $200 a side against Louis Keegan of Chicago, to decide the national title; on 12 April a Chicago wire in the Courier-Journal said Egan had won seven straight in Jersey City and took the "handball championship of the United States" by winning one of two games in Chicago. On 23 June, at Egan's court, he beat Timothy Twohill of Kanturk seven games to none in the first half of a match for $1,500 that the wire called international, with Casey refereeing; the second half was announced for Kanturk on 12 July, and no report of it is in this record. In San Francisco Egan beat James Fitzgerald of the Olympic Club, six games of seven on Sunday, 27 March 1904 and two of three on 3 April, eight of fifteen taking the title and a gate of nearly $800, by the San Francisco Call.

No body awarded the title these papers called the world's championship, and the papers did not agree on who held it. In March 1904 the Call named Fitzgerald the world's champion and Egan the challenger, a San Francisco dispatch in the Salt Lake Tribune called Egan the present claimant, and in July 1899 the News had called Carney the acknowledged champion while reporting that Egan claimed the title. The man in the Salt Lake dispatch is joined to the amateur of 1897 by one biography: born in County Galway on 29 September 1878, as the dispatch prints it, he joined his brother John, who owned a Jersey City court, and won the 1897 amateur championship from seventeen entrants. The date would make him eighteen in January 1897, not the nineteen the Journal gave. Joining him to the author is weaker. Notices of January 1904 said the world's champion had written a book called The Official Handball Guide. A Spalding list of August 1905 advertised its No. 13, a handball manual, as by "the world's champion" Michael Egan of Jersey City, and the title page of a Spalding handbook of 1903 names Michael Egan as author, though a notice at the back of the same book gives No. 13 to M. W. Deshong and names Michael Egan of Jersey City only as the subject of its photographs. Those are publishers' and press claims, and nothing found ties the author's hand to the court. A signed preface naming the Jersey City club, or a Spalding record, would settle it. In March 1905 the Olympic Club held benefit games for Egan, and a Waterbury paper said he was in the early stage of tuberculosis and that the club's directors had given him a purse.

A wire of 23 June 1903 in the Worcester Spy said Casey, the referee at Jersey City, had held the world's championship for thirty years until he resigned it seven years before. The Tribune's obituary a year later made it twenty-five years, given up of his own accord about seven years earlier. He died at home on Degraw Street, Brooklyn, on 12 July 1904, by the next morning's Tribune, which put his age at fifty-six; the stone over him, as a grave memorial shows it, says the 11th, and which is right is not settled. A Degraw Street building and handball court "known as Casey's Ball Court" was reported sold in a real-estate column of 3 January 1908.

In January 1905 at Tarrant's court, Jersey City, Drew beat Francisco Ordoizoiti for an international championship, playing straight handball against the French game. A wire of 2 April 1906 said he was "fast coming to be recognized as the champion handball player of the world," after he beat John Howes and Jack Flaherty, two against one. The Washington Times reported on 31 July 1908 that Martin J. Carney of County Mayo, late of Philadelphia and now of Chicago, had beaten Drew, five games to four, at Chambers' court in Chicago, and claimed the title. The last series billed as Ireland against America, Bowles against Kelly in 1909, belongs to the Irish chapter.

The amateur side meanwhile collected authority. In April 1905 the New Haven Union reported that a dispute over Yale's handball champion had gone to the handball expert of the A.A.U. The Union's "Revised Handball Rules" of 1903, fourteen rules for the national singles championship, appear in a Spalding handbook. They fixed the full regulation Spalding ball at 1 7/8 inches and 1 5/8 ounces and debarred the foot, so that a short serve could no longer be kicked back. Whether that ball was rubber or the leather-covered Irish type the same book advertises is open. By August 1908 the Union's own handbook listed handball among the sports under its jurisdiction. In May 1913 the Newark Evening Star told a correspondent that the regular A.A.U. handball was 1 5-8 inches across, a figure that is not the 1903 rule's, and added that Michael J. Egan was the champion, with no event named.

The Tribune reported on 7 April 1915 that James Dunne, an alderman of old Brooklyn and founder of its handball club, had died the night before at seventy-three, and said he had become amateur champion of the world at handball. A paragraph in the Chicago Eagle of 5 February 1916 said that Lambert Prettyman of Yale had invited Columbia's athletic director to enter a team in an intercollegiate league "now being formed," and on 13 December the Sun reported handball adopted as a sport of the Public Schools Athletic League. In February 1917 the Detroit Times said that Cincinnati and Buffalo players at a Detroit tournament were handicapped because the ball there differed in weight and speed from theirs.

No result of an A.A.U. national between 1899 and 1918 is in this record; the list the site holds begins at 1919, so the third consecutive title the News gave Egan cannot be checked. The code the amateurs played under is as blank: no A.A.U. handball rules have been found between 1897 and 1903, and between 1903 and 1920 none but a reprint of the 1903 text, although a Spalding guide of 1923 says the Union "especially drafted" rules for the first tournament. Whether the foot ban and the referee and scorer clauses of 1903 already stood in them is open; the 1923 text descends from the rules of 1920, a fresh draft, not from the wording of 1903. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has not been read for any year of this chapter, and the newspapers of 1910 to 1912 and 1917 to 1918 were searched thinly.

On 18 November 1918, by the Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, the Union's annual meeting awarded the 1919 national handball championship to the Los Angeles Athletic Club. It was scheduled for the week of 21 to 27 April, and on Sunday the 27th William Ranft beat Joe Lacey, both of Los Angeles, 21-13 and 21-11, for the singles title, by the Evening Star's wire of the 28th. On 30 October 1919 the report of the Union's national legislation committee was mailed to delegates for the convention at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston on 16 and 17 November. The Sun of the 31st said it put an entirely new set of handball rules, prepared and approved by many of the handball experts, to the delegates, with final action to come at Boston on 17 November. The next A.A.U. handball code found took effect on 1 January 1920.