Why An Organist For A Baseball Team Was Ejected By The Umpire

May 2024 · 2 minute read

The Clearwater Phillies — now known as the Clearwater Threshers — are a minor league that plays in Clearwater, Florida. In 1985, the Clearwater Phillies played their inaugural season at Jack Russell Memorial Stadium (via Minor League Baseball). Clearwater is the spring training home of the Philadelphia Phillies, and the big league spends the spring playing in the same stadium that the Single-A club plays in for the rest of the year.

That season Wilbur Snapp was manning the organ, something he continued to do until the stadium switched to prerecorded music in 1997, per The New York Times. Snapp was an Air Force veteran who taught himself to play organ at 35 years old, despite not being able to read music.

One night that season, Snapp saw what he perceived to be a bad call, so he did what any disgruntled fan wishes they could do to show their displeasure toward the umpire: He blasted "Three Blind Mice" through the stadium's PA system. Unfortunately, the umpire didn't find this as funny as everyone else in attendance that night probably did, and he pointed up at Snapp and tossed him from the game. In the years that followed, fans would ask him for autographs and he always signed, "Wilbur Snapp, Three Blind Mice organist."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCFkHFscWlfrLW6ecCnZKiql5a7qr%2FTZp2oql2WeqOt0p6ZmqScYsGmrcxmrpqrXZq3pq%2FTnptmmqliwamxjK6kqaGimnw%3D