Packey Dillon is the regular catcher (of the Reds), and there are very few better as long as he keeps his temper; the want of control in this respect is the only fault Pack's best friends find with him.-Chicago Tribune, April 18, 1875
I love stuff like this. It's one thing to read a player's stats at Baseball-Reference and another entirely to know what that player was like as a person. A great deal of information about Packy Dillon has come to light over the last year or so and we've finally been able to sort out his biography to a great extent. But it's little tidbits like this that help flesh out the information that we have and allow us to begin to understand Dillon as a person rather than just a stat line.
Having said that, to what extent is this reference to Dillon anything more than a stereotype? Dillon was an Irishman with a temper? I'm a bit surprised that they didn't say he liked to drink and get into fights as well. At least they didn't call him a potato-eating Papist.
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