In the language of the old song, I was, "Good for any game at night, my boys," or day, either, for that matter, and the pranks that I played and the scrapes that I got into were, some of them, not of a very creditable nature, though they were due more to exuberation than to any innate love of wrong-doing.
In any contest that required strength and skill I was always ready to take a hand, and in these contests I was able to hold my own as a rule, though now and then I got the worst of it, as was the case when I entered the throwing match at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn in October, 1872.

The entries were Hatfield and Boyd, of the Mutuals; George Wright and Leonard, of the Bostons, and Fisler and myself, representing the Athletics.

The ball was thrown from a rope stretched between two stakes driven into the ground one hundred and ten yards from the home-plate.
Each competitor was allowed three throws, and the rules governing the contest required that the ball be dropped within two large bags placed on a line with the home-plate and about sixty feet apart.

Hatfield led us all in each of his three trials, and on the last one he beat his own record of 132 yards made at Cincinnati in 1868 by clearing 133 yards 1 foot and 7 1/2 inches.

Leonard came next with 119 yards 1 foot 10 inches, Wright third with 117 yards 1 foot 1 inch, Boyd fourth with 115 yards 1 foot 7 inches, Fisler fifth with 112 yards 6 inches, while your humble servant brought up the tail end of the procession with a throw of 110 yards and 6 inches, not a bad performance in itself, but lacking a long ways of being good enough to get the money with.
Among the famous characters of which the Quaker City boasted in those days was Prof.William McLean, or "Billy" McLean, as he was generally called, an ex-prize fighter and a boxing teacher whose reputation for skill with the padded mitts was second to no man's in the country.