in June 1906 against the Washington Senators. Coughlin was a light-hitting defensive player, which was common for third basemen of that era. In four years as the Tigers regular third baseman, Scranton Bill never hit higher than .252, and he slugged over .300 just once. Maestro of the hidden ball trick The Detroit Tigers teams of 1906–1908, on which Coughlin played, were among the most colorful groups in baseball history, with the flying spikes of Ty Cobb, on-field antics from Germany Schaefer and Charley O'Leary (who toured as a vaudeville act in the off-season), fisticuffs from catcher Boss Schmidt, and the shouts, gyrations, and jigs of Hughie "Ee-Yah" Jennings from the third base coaching box. Coughlin's role in this colorful bunch was as the maestro of the hidden ball trick. The hidden ball trick is a play in which the runner is deceived about the location of the ball, in an effort to tag him out. Although no known comprehensive list is known to exist of all times when the hidden ball trick has worked, Coughlin reportedly pulled it off seven times (and at three different positions) -- more than any other player in MLB history. He pulled it off on May 12, 1905, against Hobe Ferris of the Boston Red Sox. He did it again on September 3, 1906, catching George Stone in the first inning. In Game 2 of the 1907 World Series, Coughlin caught Jimmy Slagle with a hidden ball trick, the only one in World Series history. Later years After leaving Major League Baseball, Coughlin became a baseball coach in the minor leagues and then at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. From 1909 to 1917, he was a minor league manager for the Williamsport Millionaires (1909–1910), Allentown (1912–1913), and Scranton Miners (1914–1917). He was a player-manager until 1914. In 1919, Coughlin was involved in the occupation of Germany after World War I. Coughlin conceived and operated a school for umpires run by the Knights of Columbus in occupied Coblenz, Germany. Coughlin taught the umpire candidates to officiate baseball games for the occupying servicemen. Coughlin taught his umpires to play "The Star Spangled Banner" if fights erupted among the players, causing "rocks held ready to avenge an unpopular decision" to fall from "reverent hands." (Harold Seymour, Baseball: The People's Game (Oxford Univ. Press 1990), p. 347) After the war, Coughlin became the head baseball coach at Lafayette