The Topeka State Journal

JIMMY RYAN, FAMOUS BALL PLAYER, WHO MAY AGAIN ENTER THE GAME.

Ryan was at one time one of the leading outfielders. He is reported to be considering an offer from an American league club to play first base. Ryan is now in Chicago, where his friends are legion. If he does not don a uniform once more he will be made manager of one of the teams under control of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, of which Pat Powers is president.

Jimmy Ryan began playing with the Chicago Nationals in 1886, when Anson bought his release in the east and put him into direct competition with such men as Dalrymple, Gore, Mike Kelly and Billy Sunday, Anson's brother-in-law.

That year Ryan played 84 games and was at bat 327 times, securing 58 runs and 100 hits and stealing 10 bases. Regarded later as one of the surest judges of a fly ball and with a splendid throwing arm, he clinched his position and the next year, in 126 games, ranked eighteenth in batting, with such names ahead of his as Anson, Brouthers, Ferguson, Darling, Thompson, Kelly, Ward, Williamson, Fogarty, Richardson, Bennett, Rowe and Sunday, the speed of the last named bringing him many a hit. In 1887 Ryan was at bat 566 times, scoring 117 runs and making 198 hits and stealing 50 bases. From then on to the time Jim Hart let him go to St. Paul in a minor league Ryan was a fixture in the old White Stocking outfield.