Ernest Cosmos Quigley (March 22, 1880 – December 10, 1960) was a Canadian-American sports official who became notable both as a basketball referee and as an umpire in Major League Baseball. |
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Quigley was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, and was raised in Concordia, Kansas. A student of basketball inventor James Naismith at the University of Kansas, after graduating he served as a coach, teacher and athletic director at St. Mary's College, Kansas from 1903 until 1912, while also attending law school at the University of Kansas. Quigley officiated at more than 1,500 collegiate and Amateur Athletic Union games during his 40-year career, and supervised the NCAA tournament officials from 1940 to 1942.
He also refereed the basketball finals between the United States and Canada at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, played outdoors in the rain, in the first Games at which basketball was a medal sport. Rather than using his whistle, the small-statured Quigley often used his high-pitched voice to command attention in supervising play. In 1944 he became athletic director at Kansas, serving until 1950. He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1961.
Quigley was also a National League baseball umpire from 1913 to 1937, and oversaw six World Series, most notably the notorious 1919 Black Sox series, as well as those in 1916, 1921, 1924, 1927 and 1935; he was crew chief for the 1927 Series. On June 1, 1923, he was the home plate umpire for the game in which the New York Giants, visiting the Philadelphia Phillies, became the first 20th-century team to score in every inning of a 9-inning game, winning 22-8. He also participated in a 1928 baseball tour of Japan, and later became an NL supervisor of umpires. Quigley Field, the University of Kansas' first baseball stadium, was named after him.
He also served as an official in major college football contests including the Army-Navy Game, five Harvard-Yale games, the Michigan-Illinois game, three Rose Bowls (1920, 1925, 1927) and the Cotton Bowl, and was a member of the NCAA's Rules Committee from 1946 to 1954. He died at age 80 in Lawrence, Kansas, and was buried at that city's Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
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