Jay Justin Clarke

Even people who were there disagreed about the game. Wikipedia's biography says the official scorer later swore to Clarke's eight home runs in ten at bats, but a Corsicana teammate told The Sporting News in 1940 that the Ennis right-field fence stood only about forty feet behind first base, so the flies needed to carry perhaps 140 feet. Clarke, born in 1882 in Anderdon Township, Ontario, and a member of the Wyandot of Anderdon First Nation, was given a nickname by newspapers over his complexion; his wife wanted reporters to call him Jay.

What the plaque says

Jay Justin Clarke On June 15, 1902, at a baseball field in Ennis, Texas, Jay Justin Clarke set two single game professional Minor League Baseball records. The game was unusual because it was scheduled to be played in Corsicana, but was relocated to Ennis due to Corsicana's "Blue Laws" which prohibited the playing of the game on a Sunday. The Corsicana Oil Citys beat the Texarkana Casketmakers 51-3 that day. Clarke, who played for the Oil Citys, hit eight home runs and tallied sixteen runs batted in, records that still stand as all-time Minor League records. The actual field has been lost to history, but played a major role in Clarke's records as the fence was estimated to be less than 210 feet from home plate. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 13 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 19 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 29 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.

More markers nearby

• Railroads in Ennis — steps away
• Town of Ennis — steps away
• Katie Daffan — steps away
• The Southern Pacific Railroad in Ennis — steps away