Bat Masterson was a fixture of my childhood imagination, first as portrayed by Mason Alan Dinehart as an associate of Hugh O’Brian’s Wyatt Earp television series, and then on his own, and a bit more vividly in my mind as portrayed by Gene Barry. Natty, with that derby and his walking cane, with which he took out the bad guys. I owned my own plastic derby and cane for a time…
The real life person turns out to be even more interesting.
William Barclay Masterson was born on this day in 1853.
His life would be divided roughly into two parts. First, those Wild West days where he indeed was a gambler, gunfighter, lawman, and general all around character. One of the more famous incidents of his younger days was, as it says in the Wikipedia article on him, as an “involuntary participant” in the famous five-day siege by the even more fascinating Quanah Parker and a band of Comanche warriors, successfully fighting off the attack – well, I guess, obviously, or the story would have ended there. 
His Dodge City days, sheriff of Ford County, Kansas, marshall of Trinidad, Colorado, and involvement in the Dodge City War created the myth that a would be immortalized for my childhood imagination.
But, in fact he had a second act. He would become a famous journalist, particularly as a sports writer, and maybe the most famous writer on boxing in his day. He would become a friend of Teddy Rosevelt who appointed him a marshal in New York, writing to him “You must be careful not to gamble or do anything while you are a public officer which might afford opportunity to your enemies and my critics to say that your appointment was improper.”
He died in bed. His epitaph read “loved by everyone.”
Who woulda thought?
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