Although not part of Evansville’s professional baseball history, a tragic event occurred on a city baseball field in 1895. The event, death by shooting, is documented in the Robert Gorman and David Weeks book, “Death at the Ballpark,” a journal of more than 2,000 deaths that have occurred on baseball diamonds in the United States. The death was also detailed in a series of Evansville Courier articles.

It happened on the baseball fields near Evansville’s Crown Pottery Company on the Fourth of July. Friends were engaged in a friendly game of baseball on what were commonly referred to as the Pottery Fields. Joseph Kirkendall, 26, was seated and waiting for his turn at bat when he shouted, “Boys, I’m shot!”

Kirkendall slumped over, bleeding from the nose and mouth while bystanders rushed to his side. They found a bullet hole just under his collarbone. Physician Dr. Tony Bryan was summoned to the scene, but Kirkendall died within 15 minutes of the incident. A carpenter by trade, Kirkendall lived with his mother on outer Walnut Street and had recently recovered from a serious case of typhoid fever.

Friends searched nearby for the gunman and found 18-year-old Bennett Sandefur, who was out shooting at sparrows with his .22 several hundred yards away from the field. Sandefur was a one-time employee of the Pottery factory. He said he was shooting at a bird on a nearby telegraph wire and further claimed that he never fired in the direction of the ball field. A police investigation confirmed the bullet came from his gun. Sandefur was taken into custody but was later freed by Judge Butterfield. Butterfield was also well known for quashing an attempt by the local Good Citizens League to outlaw Sunday baseball in Evansville. Butterfield ruled that Sandefur’s act was unintentional and, thus, not a crime.

The death marked the first, but not the last, on the baseball fields of Evansville. Two deaths during Bosse Field games are detailed in my first book.