The story deals with a certain type of people, not defined by occupation but by an added burden they carry: All Western Union boys do not deliver messages.
The specific baseball game described in the story is fictional, but later in life West would frequently recall a similar incident from his time at Brown University, where the bat-yielding relative is replaced by a throng of angry spectators.
Wells Root, a close friend of West, remembers hearing this tale half a dozen times, recalling that everyone had placed bets on the game, which had come down to the final inning with the score tied and the enemy at bat with two outs.
At that point the batter hit a long fly towards West: He put his hands up to catch it and for some inexplicable reason didn't hold them close together.
Unlike the anecdote where West is the one being chased, in the transition into fiction he thrusts the event upon a pathetic character and joins his American audience in mockery.
Within the framework of this story the mockery seems to be based on the comic events that transpired, rather than strictly at the expanse of the protagonist, who receives the narrator's full sympathy.