In 1914 the Federal League was formed in competition with baseball’s American and National leagues. Although the Federal League was considered an outlaw group, it was composed of many major leaguers who had jumped their teams for the bigger salaries offered by the new circuit.
All the rules of baseball were kept by the Federal League, except that they used only two umpires in a game–one behind the plate, the other stationed in the infield.
On a very hot summer day one of the umpires failed to show up for a game between Brooklyn and Chicago. Umpire Bill Brennan decided he might as well work the game by himself. He took up a position behind the pitcher’s mound so that he could call balls and strikes as well as plays in the infield.
Brennan did fairly well for a few innings. However, every time he ran out of baseballs he had to trot into the home team’s dugout for a new supply, and it was much too hot to move around so much. Before the fifth inning began, Brennan got an armload of baseballs and made a nice pile of them behind the pitcher’s box.
Then up stepped Brooklyn catcher Grover Land, who was not famous as a home-run hitter. Land got a pitch to his liking a drove a hard line drive that crashed into the pile of baseballs, sending them flying in all directions.
The Chicago infielders didn’t know which ball Land had hit, so each picked up the first one that came rolling over. As Land ran around the bases he was tagged by the first baseman, the second basemen, and the third baseman, but he ignored them all. When he reached home plate, the Chicago catcher also had a baseball and he tagged Land too.
Umpire Brennan didn’t know which was the right baseball either. The only thing he could do was credit Land with an inside-the-park home run. Land’s “homer” didn’t travel more than 70 feet from the plate.
From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_League
Turns out the reason why they were considered an outlaw league is specifically because they paid the players more than the American and National leagues.
Fun Fact: Wrigley Field was initially built for a Federal League team.
Corruption Alert: The federal judge who presided over the antitrust case which the Federal League lost became the Commissioner of Baseball.