There are a couple of historic firsts in sports that occurred on this date.
April 12, 1858 – Was the day that the very first billiards champion in the United States was crowned. Michael J. Phelan won the pool title on the felt top tables of Detroit, Michigan. Phelan was an Irish-born American billiards player, manufacturer, and owner of many billiard parlors.
In 1850, he published Billiards Without A Master, the first book published in the US on the science, etiquette, and game rules of billiards. His first American-produced pool table ended up becoming the standard billiards design that the world would use going forward. All in all, it is pretty fitting that he won the first US title.
April 12, 1877 – The first time that a mask was used to cover the face of a professional baseball catcher. The credit goes to James Tyng, who was the first man to wear a catcher’s mask in a professional game. Reports on the event were frequent and positive.
The man that deserves the credit for inventing the device that has saved countless facial trauma for the men behind the plate is Fred Thayer, a player/manager of the game at Harvard where Tyng played for him. The curveball was becoming more prevalent at the time and Thayer sensing the issues his young catcher was having with the moving pitch adapted an old fencing face shield into an apparatus that would protect the catcher’s face.
Thayer would apply for and receive a patent for the mask in 1878. Later that year, A.G Spalding and Brothers Company, the leading sporting goods dealer in the country, began selling the Thayer Catcher’s Mask for $3.00 in their catalog and the rest is history.
To find more great daily sports history make sure to check out the Sports Jersey Dispatch and Pigskin Dispatch.
