replacement players for a 3:00 p.m. game. Batchelor covered the game and called the replacement players "the worst bunch of clowns ever to wear major league uniforms." He opined that the only reason the replacement Tigers scored in the 24-2 defeat was because "the Athletics were laughing so hard they couldn't field." Batchelor also befriended Babe Ruth. He covered Ruth when he was a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. Batchelor later recalled Ruth's generosity: "Whenever the Babe would come to Detroit, he'd say, 'A little short? How about a hundred bucks? How about fifty?' You'd say, 'No thanks, Babe, I'm okay.' And he'd say, 'Well, how about a box of cigars—here y'are take a cigar.'" Batchelor's baseball articles were also published during the 1910s in The Sporting News. Batchelor also covered the Michigan Wolverines football team for the Free Press. After a predominantly Irish Notre Dame football team defeated Michigan, 11–3, in November 1909, Batchelor opened his report on the game with a line that gave the Notre Dame their nickname. Batchelor wrote, "Eleven fighting Irishmen wrecked the Yost machine this afternoon. These sons of Erin, individually and collectively representing the University of Notre Dame, not only beat the Michigan team, but they dashed some of Michigan's fondest hopes ..." Notre Dame football historian, John Kryk, later wrote: "With that flowery lead, E.A. Batchelor of the Detroit Free Press popularized a moniker Notre Dame teams would later come to embrace - and aptly summed up the greatest athletic achievement to that point in Notre Dame history." Kryk noted that, according to Notre Dame folklore, Batchelor had overheard a Notre Dame player trying to motivate his teammates at halftime by pleading, "What's the matter with you guys? You're all Irish and you're not fighting worth a lick." War correspondent in Europe After the United States' entry into World War I, Batchelor was hired by The Detroit News and reported on the war from France. Batchelor later described the reason for his decision to take the job with the News: "Somehow, with a war going on, it didn't seem important if the Tigers were in first place or last." Two of Batchelor's articles from France, one reporting on soldiers' efforts to play baseball during lulls in the combat, and another about an Illinois school teacher who taught the French forces to play baseball, were published by The Sporting News. He returned