Two images accompanying this article neatly frame Tim Murnane's story, even though they were photographed only nine years apart in his six-decade life in baseball. In the first photograph-a rollicking Old Timers' Day at Peddock's Island in Boston Harbor on August 12, 1908-Murnane was at the pinnacle of his career. Striking a dapper pose in waistcoat, cravat, and boutonniere, the longtime baseball columnist of the Boston Globe reunited with some of the men with whom he had played ball in the 1870s. In the other photograph, taken on September 27, 1917, he is present in name only at the Benefit Game, with the proceeds designated for his widow; the defending champion Boston Red Sox, behind star left-hander Babe Ruth, shut out an all-star team led by Connie Mack.But chronology is God's way of telling a story, so why don't we begin this portrait at the beginning, on June 4, 1851, when Timothy Hayes Murnan was born in Naugatuck, New Haven County, Connecticut. An obituary notice in the Naugatuck Daily News placed his birth in Tipperary County, Ireland, but when Murnan applied for a passport in 1874, he had sworn that he was born in Naugatuck. At some point after that he commenced to spell his name as Murnane, and he will be thus referenced below.He began his baseball career as catcher for the Stratford Club, in 1869, a formidable nine that two years later would feature Jim O'Rourke, future Hall of Famer, on its state champion squad. By that time, however, Murnane was off in Georgia, having been recruited by the Savannahs, a barnstorming professional team. When he returned to the state of his birth with his Southern teammates in the summer of 1871, he played so well that he was engaged by the Mansfield Club of Middletown, which would play the following season in what was then the big league, the National Association (NA). The club's backers also signed Orator Jim, almost a year older than Handsome Tim.The major-league Mansfields enjoyed only a brief run of 23 games before disbanding, but both Stratford alumni landed on their feet. O'Rourke, who had batted .307, was signed by the Red Stockings, who would top the NA for the three remaining years of its existence. Murnane, who had played first base for Middletown and batted .359, was snapped up by the Athletics. The two Nutmeggers reunited not only when Boston played Philadelphia but also in England, when in 1874 the two clubs conducted baseball's first overseas tour. A speedy and nimble baserunner, Murnane perpetrated a legendary stunt in a game at Boston on June 14, 1873, when he escaped an otherwise unavoidable out by jumping clean over second baseman Andy Leonard, who was stooping to tag him.In 1875 Murnane transferred his allegiance to the Philadelphia White Stockings, also known as the Pearls, and when that team vanished along with the entire NA structure, he joined O'Rourke on Harry Wright's Boston club in the new National League (NL) for the centennial year of 1876. There he remained for two seasons before seeing an opportunity in Providence, where a new NL franchise was launched for the 1878 campaign. But Murnane's hitting dropped off badly; while O'Rourke was to remain a bigleague star for another dozen years, for Murnane the end was suddenly in sight. In 1879 he began the season with the Capital City Club, of Albany, New York, which was thereafter transferred to Rochester, in a crumbling league.In 1880 Murnane called it quits and went into business, including, over the ensuing years, opening a saloon and billiard hall in Boston and serving a stint as publisher of The Boston Referee, a sporting paper devoted to baseball, polo and other sports. It was short lived, but it testified to the printer's ink in Murnane's blood. He contributed baseball items to the New York Clipper and other papers and began to develop a following, for he wrote the way he spoke-like a ballplayer. In an age of Victorian reserve, restraint, and moralizing (exemplified in the writing of Henry Chadwick), this was an innovation. …