“Dixie Walker calls a blooper, or Texas League single, a ‘dying quail hit.’” Jimmy Powers, New York Daily News, August 13, 1947, p66
Previous earliest use (Dickson Baseball Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2009):
1ST USE. 1954. “[Mickey Mantle] dropped [Roy] Campanella’s ‘dying quail’ looper in the first” (Joseph M. Sheehan, The New York Times, Apr. 11).