Unfortunate umpires

Nobody wants to call the shots at this hilarious time-travelling baseball game

May 29, 2026

From Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)

The Story So Far…

The mechanic Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American, has somehow been transported to sixth-century England. Never seeing a problem that can’t be fixed with his own ingenuity, he repeatedly commits himself to improving his new location: in this passage, by starting a baseball league. But there are problems…

Now Read On…

I couldn’t get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn’t do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would do. So, one of the teams wore chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore plate-armor made of my new Bessemer steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards sometimes. And when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port. At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but I had to discontinue that. These people were no easier to please than other nines. The umpire’s first decision was usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him.

Here are the names of the nines:

BESSEMERS
KING ARTHUR
KING LOT OF LOTHIAN
KING OF NORTHGALIS
KING MARSIL
KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN
KING LABOR
KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE
KING BAGDEMAGUS
KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES

ULSTERS
EMPEROR LUCIUS
KING LOGRIS
KING MARHALT OF IRELAND
KING MORGANORE
KING MARK OF CORNWALL
KING NENTRES OF GARLOT
KING MELIODAS OF LIONES
KING OF THE LAKE
THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA

Umpire—CLARENCE.

The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people; and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see. Everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes.

Illustration from the original text by Dan Beard, the illustrator whom Twain said ‘not only illustrates the text but he illustrates my thoughts.’ (Gutenberg)

What we love about this passage...

Two very different worlds collide! The image of medieval knights trampling around a baseball pitch in heavy metal shows the absurdity of the novel as a whole. Twain repeatedly highlights his narrator’s common sense, general know-how, and modern scientific knowledge and contrasts it with a caricature of old-world English monarchy and traditionalism. Details such as knights bathing in their armor ridicule the stubborn theatricality of chivalric culture, while the murderous disputes over umpiring help to make nineteenth-century American habits look equally absurd.

About the author

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), known as Mark Twain, was born in Missouri. He drew on his early memories of the American South for two of his best-known novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). He was deeply interested in the scientific progress of his times and had a close friendship with Nikola Tesla, whose work helped shape the modern use of electricity.

To read alongside...

How about another nineteenth-century writer’s re-imagining of the Middle Ages? See our newsletter featuring one of Alfred Tennyson’s poetic takes on Arthurian romance

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