Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history, and I love history,
and if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
On July 4th of 1950, a tragedy occurred during the warm-ups of a doubleheader
baseball game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is a heartbreaking story,
and one that is not as uncommon as you might think. It is a story that should be remembered.
Bernard Barney Doyle went to early Mass on Tuesday July 4th, 1950. The 54 year old
retiree had to get moving early that day, he had promised to take his 13 year old neighbor
Otto Flaig to a doubleheader baseball game, and they wanted to get to the stadium in time to see
the warmups. Bernard Lawrence Doyle had been born in County Dublin Ireland. At one point in
his life he had managed prizefighters, and his biggest claim to fame was having been an early
manager of Jim Braddock, helping the eventual 1935 to 1937 world heavyweight champion,
start his career. Doyle had had a career in the freight industry, but had been forced to retire
due to ill health. The resident of Fairview New Jersey was a passionate fan of the New
York Giants baseball team. Originally he had promised to take his neighbor's son Otto to a
game the Friday before, but he had decided to wait until this game, because he found
out that that Friday game was a night game, and he didn't want to keep the boy out late.
The pair had gotten tickets to a sold-out doubleheader between Doyle's beloved Giants,
and crosstown rival, Brooklyn Dodgers. In the first game left-hander Monty Kennedy
was pitching for the Giants, against Don Newcombe for the Dodgers. At home,
the rest of Doyle's family was watching the game on television.
The game was being played on the famed Polo Grounds. The stadium for the New
York Giants had been built in 1890, and it was well known for its unique bathtub shape,
which gave relatively little room to the walls on left and right field, but an abnormally large
center field. Their tickets were in row C of section 42, which was on the upper deck facing
home plate. At 20 minutes afternoon the Dodgers took the field for batting practice, Doyle leaned
over to Otto to say something. Fans in the section said they heard a noise, like a paper bag popping,
and Doyle slumped in his seat. Otto Flaig turned to his friend and asked if he was okay,
and got no answer, and he was afraid that maybe his friend had a heart attack. A fan came forward
claiming to be a doctor and said, that man's dead. When attendents got to him they found out that he
had a head wound, in fact he had been struck just above the left temple with a 45 caliber
bullet which had lodged in his brain, killing him instantly. Most of the 49,000 fans in the stadium
had no idea what had happened, even when he was carried away they didn't know the circumstances,
or even that he was dead. Even the fans in his section merely assumed that he had fallen ill,
the fans in the section were said to have fought over the two new empty seats.
Noting that there were no powder burns, or cuts on the wound, police quickly determined
that the shot had to have come from outside the stadium. They interviewed ten boys who had been
seen playing in the bushes on Coogan's Bluff above the stadium, but they got no leads. No
one it seems had witnessed the shooting. But in ensuing searches they found a 22 caliber rifle,
and 22 caliber handgun in an apartment belonging to 14 year old Robert M Peebles. At first Peebles
denied knowing anything about the shooting but on July 8th, he confessed to detectives. According
to Peebles he had found a handgun, with just one bullet in it in New York's Central Park,
six months before. He had hidden the handgun away, planning to fire it off
on July 4th as a celebration. He denied any intent to shoot anybody on the Polo Grounds,
and in fact the roof from which he had fired the gun had a wall taller than him, so he could not
even see the stadium. The bullet flew more than 1,100 feet before it killed Barney Doyle. When he
heard that someone had been killed in the stadium Peebles had ditched the gun in a field. At the age
of 14 he was too young to be charged with murder, so he was charged with juvenile delinquency. Even
police agreed that the killing did not appear to be deliberate. He was sent to juvenile hall,
the New York State training school for boys in Warwick, New York for two years.
Now you'd like to think that this instance was unique, that it couldn't happen again,
but it wasn't. At least three other fans of Major League Baseball had been struck in stadiums,
by bullets fired from outside the stadium. On June 9th of 2000, a 64 year old woman
was struck in Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium, during a game between the Kansas City Royals,
and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Another bullet struck an empty seat, but didn't injure anyone. The
fan was injured in the abdomen, and the arm, and spent the night in the hospital. No suspect in the
shooting was ever identified. On June 16, 2012, a 55 year old visiting Tampa Bay fan was struck in
the leg by a bullet during a game between the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Florida Marlins.
The bullet had so little velocity that it merely bruised his leg. He thought he had been struck
by a foul ball until someone fished under his seat and came up with a bullet. What is most surprising
about this is that St. Petersburg's Tropicana Stadium is roofed; the bullet had apparently
been fired miles away, and had come all the way through the roof of the stadium before striking
the fan. St. Petersburg's police assume that the bullet must have been fired in celebration,
which is a common practice in the American South, and very similar to the bullet that had,
of course killed, Barney Doyle. And most recently on May 2nd of 2017, a woman who was seated
near the dugout in St. Louis's Busch Stadium watching a game between the St. Louis Cardinals,
and the Milwaukee Brewers, was struck in the arm by a bullet that seems to have come from
outside the stadium. The bullet had so little velocity, that while it pierced her jacket,
it caused an abrasion so light that it could be treated at the stadium's first aid station.
A falling bullet usually tumbles back to earth with much less velocity that it had
when it left the chamber, but it can still be deadly, as the story of Barney Doyle proves.
A study of just one Los Angeles hospital, covering the period between 1985 and 1992,
found that the hospital had treated 118 people for random falling bullet injuries, and 38 of those
had died. The death of 14 year old Shannon Smith to a falling bullet in Phoenix Arizona in 1999,
led to the passage of something called Shannon's law, making it a felony to discharge a firearm
into the air. But the practice goes well beyond the United States. Celebratory firing is a
common practice throughout the world. In fact, one common practice is to celebrate weddings by firing
bullets in the air, and there are several examples where that practice has had deadly results for
members of the wedding party. In 2003, when it was reported that dictator Saddam Hussein's sons
Uday and Qusay had been killed in Iraq, there was so much celebratory firing...that 20 people died.
There have been educational programs throughout the world trying to address the problem,
and some statistics show that it has become less common recently, and the incidents still
occur. The sad story of Barney Doyle is largely forgotten, but it should not be. Because it serves
as a stark reminder to everyone who owns a firearm of a simple rule. What goes up, must come down.
I'm the History guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, 5 minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long. And if you did enjoy it,
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