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$Title{Tragedies and Shortened Careers}
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Overfield, Joseph M.}
$Subject{Tragedy Tragedies death violent deaths illness illnesses injury
injuries accident accidents suicide murder murders Suicides Planes Cars Trucks
Dune Buggy Bean Balls Alcohol Drugs Blacklisting Blacklists Expulsion
Shortened Careers short career Creighton Ferguson Clemente}
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Creighton, James*0015501.scf
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Clemente, Roberto*0013801.scf}

Total Baseball:  The Players


Tragedies and Shortened Careers

Joseph M. Overfield


         If, of all words of tongue and pen,
         The saddest are, "It might have been,"
         More sad are these we daily see:
         "It is, but hadn't ought to be."

                             --Bret Harte

     In the eleventh century in the reign of William the Conqueror, detailed
information about the landowners of England and their assets was gathered and
then recorded in what were called Domesday Books. Much of what is known of
the demographics of early England is derived from these books.
     Baseball also has its Domesday Books, but they are called Encyclopedias.
They list the name, vital statistics, and records of every player who ever
appeared in a major league game, beginning with the formation of the National
Association in 1871. So assiduously have baseball's Domesday Books been
corrected, refined, and updated, it is safe to say that detailed information
is more readily available about ballplayers, even the most obscure, than it is
for statesmen, authors, artists, poets, or captains of industry.
     Informative as they are, the Encyclopedias still leave much unsaid. For
example, why did Bert Shepard play but a single game, while Jim McGuire played
for twenty-six seasons?  Short careers, like Shepard's, usually mean a lack of
ability or, perhaps, the failure to receive a fair opportunity; but often they
are short for other reasons--death, illness, injury, accident, suicide, or
even murder. It is with such tragically shortened careers that this chapter
will deal. Although the subject was carefully researched, no assertion of 100
percent completeness is proffered.
     Since baseball's Domesday Books are limited to major league players and
managers, no listing will be found there for minor leaguers like Bill Thomas
of the 1906 Buffalo Bisons, Ralph Worrell of the 1918 Baltimore Orioles, or
Jeff Hoffmann of the 1992 Albany-Colonie Yankees.
     James Creighton was the star pitcher of the Excelsior Club, a famous
Brooklyn amateur nine of the 1850s and 1860s. Before Creighton's day, it was
customary for pitchers to toss the ball gently to the plate. Creighton
changed all this by developing a snap throw that gave speed and spin to the
ball. In addition, he was one of the most powerful hitters of his day. It is
said that he completed one entire season without being put out. On October
14, 1862, the Excelsiors were playing the Union Club of Morrisania in their
final match of the season. Creighton, at bat for the Excelsiors, swung
mightily and sent the ball beyond the reach of the outfielders. As he crossed
first base, he collapsed, obviously in great pain. Legend has it that he
staggered around the bases for a home run. He was immediately taken home by
his teammates. Four days later, the twenty-one-year-old pitcher was dead.
According to an account in the Brooklyn Eagle, headlined "Obsequies of a
Celebrated Ballplayer," Creighton had ruptured his bladder with the force of
his final swing and died from internal bleeding.
     A.G. Spalding, in his book Baseball, America's National Game, devoted two
pages to Creighton, with his picture and a view of the towering granite
monument his teammates erected in his memory on Tulip Hill in Brooklyn's
Greenwood Cemetery. The monument is embossed with crossed bats, a cap, a
base, and a scorebook.
     The circumstances of the death of Bill Thomas, a twenty-five-year-old
Buffalo pitcher, in April 1906, are still a mystery. Thomas had been a big
winner in the Pacific Coast League, and manager George Stallings of Buffalo
had brought him east to test his mettle in the stronger Eastern League. He
was successful in his first start at Baltimore. The Bisons then finished a
series at Providence and took a train to New Bedford, Massachusetts, from
which point they boarded the night boat Richard Peck, en route to New York
City. Thomas had left word with the porter and with his roommate, pitcher Joe
Galaski, that he wanted an early call so he could see the New York skyline at
sunrise. In the morning, when the porter came into the stateroom, the Thomas
bunk, which had been slept in, was empty. Thomas was never seen again.
     In 1918 Ralph Worrell, only nineteen, won 25 games for Jack Dunn's
Baltimore Orioles, but he never pitched again. Instead of becoming another
Lefty Grove (also a Jack Dunn discovery), Worrell failed to survive the
winter, dying in the terrible World War One flu epidemic.
     Just as tragic was the death of twenty-four-year-old Yankee farmhand
Jeff Hoffmann of the Albany-Colonie Yankees, August 29, 1992. The young
righthanded pitcher collapsed in his Binghamton (N.Y.) hotel room and died
later that day in a local hospital. There was no evidence of foul play or drug
or alcohol use. After several days it was determined that he had died from
a heart deficiency, previously undetected. He left his wife, Teresa, who
was expecting their first child.
     The deaths of young, vigorous, and supposedly healthy athletes like
Creighton, Thomas, Worrell, and Hoffmann are sad and decidedly
against the odds, but in the muster rolls of
major league players in baseball's Domesday Books, such cases are far from
rare.


Fatal Illnesses of Players and Managers

     Elmer White was long thought to be a brother of James "Deacon" White and
Will White. The early encyclopedias listed him as playing 15 games for the
Forest Cities of Cleveland in 1872, but nothing more. A trip by the writer to
the village of Caton in New York's southern tier and to the cemetery behind
the Methodist Church there resulted in the finding of Elmer White's grave.
The inscription on the tombstone, which showed he was Jim's and Will's cousin,
not a brother, told with great economy of words the story of a short life and
a short baseball career:  "Born December 7, 1850. Died March 17, 1873."
     Of all the deaths of active major leaguers to be recounted here,
significantly, only one--that of Ray Chapman, who was killed by a Carl Mays
pitch--resulted directly from activity on the diamond. Many of the deaths,
especially those in the first fifty years, were from illnesses routinely
controlled today. Typhoid fever, for example, killed first baseman Alex
McKinnon of Pittsburgh (NL) on July 24, 1887. He played in the July 4 game,
complained of not feeling well, and was taken home. He died twenty days later
at the age of thirty. Less than a year later, on April 29, 1888, Charlie
Ferguson, an outstanding young pitcher who had won 21, 26, 30, and 22 games
for Philadelphia (NL) from 1884 through 1887 and was a strong hitter as well
(.288 in four seasons), died from the same disease, twelve days after his
twenty-fifth birthday.
     On May 14, 1892 in a game at Boston, twenty-eight-old Brooklyn outfielder
Hub Collins, who had played in the major leagues since 1886 and had led the
American Association in doubles in 1888 and the National League in 1890, was
pinch hit for because he was not feeling well. Five days later he died in
Brooklyn, a victim of typhoid fever.
     Edward "Sy" Sutcliffe, a catcher for most of his career, had shifted to
first base for Baltimore (NL) in 1892 and had done quite well, batting .279 in
66 games. In the off-season, the twenty-nine-year-old native of Wheaton,
Illinois, developed Bright's disease. He died February 13, 1893.
     Joe Cassidy, an infielder for the Washington Senators in 1904 and 1905,
was a fourth victim of the deadly typhoid. He was only twenty-three when he
died at his home in Chester, Pennsylvania, March 25, 1906. Just a year and
four days later, March 29, 1907, Patrick Henry "Cozy" Dolan, a nine-year
outfielder in the majors, most recently with Boston (NL), also died of
typhoid. He took ill during Boston's spring training trip, and died in a
Louisville hospital, at age thirty-four. News of his death was overshadowed
in the Boston papers by the extensive coverage given to the sensational
suicide of manager Chick Stahl of the other Boston club, the day before in
West Baden, Indiana.
     Mike Powers, who caught in the majors from 1898 to 1909, mainly with the
Philadelphia Athletics, was an anomaly in those hard-bitten days of the game's
history, in that he held a degree from Holy Cross College and had also
attended Notre Dame Medical School. Powers, incidentally, recruited the
legendary Louis "Chief" Sockalexis for both of his alma maters, as shall be
seen later. Powers was not a strong hitter (.216 lifetime), but he was
considered a fine defensive catcher. He was behind the plate in an early
season game in 1909, when he complained of nausea and asked to be taken to a
hospital. He underwent three stomach operations, and then gangrene set in.
He died April 26, 1909, at the age of thirty-eight.
     Alan Storke was an infielder for Pittsburgh and St. Louis (NL) from 1906
through 1909. He never made it to spring training in 1910. He was a mere
twenty-five when he died in Newton, Massachusetts, March 18, 1910, following a
lung operation. Less than two years later, February 1, 1912, another National
League infielder, thirty-year-old Jimmy Doyle, who had batted .282 for the
Cubs in 1911, died in Syracuse, New York, after an appendicitis operation.
     Addie Joss pitched in the majors only eight seasons and part of a ninth,
but his record was so extraordinary that he was elected to the Hall of Fame
(in 1978), despite his short tenure. With Cleveland from 1902 to 1910, he won
160 games, lost 97, and compiled an ERA of 1.88 (second on the all-time list).
He pitched a perfect game on October 2, 1908, defeating Big Ed Walsh, 1-0,
with first place on the line. Joss had another no-hitter on April 20, 1910,
also against the White Sox, just before his health began to fail.
     Joss made only 13 appearances in 1910, and still felt weak when he went
south in 1911. He collapsed on the bench during an exhibition game at
Chattanooga, Tennessee, then became ill again when the team reached
Cincinnati. Doctors said it was pleurisy and sent him home to Toledo. On
April 14, 1911, two days after his team had opened the season in St. Louis,
he died at the age of thirty-one. The cause of his death was given as
tubercular meningitis. Famed ballplayer-preacher Billy Sunday presided at his
funeral, said to have been the biggest ever seen in Toledo.
     Leonard "King" Cole, a righthanded pitcher who had won 20 games for the
Cubs in 1910 and 18 the following season, was, like Charlie Ferguson, to have
a brilliant career nipped in the bud by a fatal illness. During the 1915
season, when Cole was with the Yankees, it was discovered that he had been
suffering from tuberculosis. He returned to his home in Bay City, Michigan,
where he died on January 6, 1916, at twenty-nine. He left a splendid 56-27
(.675) won-lost record.
     Joe Leonard, a twenty-five-year-old infielder who began with Pittsburgh
in 1914 and played for Washington in 1916, 1917, and 1919, appeared in only
one game for the Senators in 1920, became ill, and was taken to George
Washington Hospital. He died there on May 1, following an appendicitis
operation.
     In 1922, the St. Louis Cardinals lost two young ballplayers within nine
months. First to go was William "Pickles" Dillhoefer, who had caught in the
majors since 1917, usually in a backup role. He was twenty-seven when he died
in a St. Louis hospital, February 22, 1922, of that old bugaboo, typhoid
fever. Outfielder Austin McHenry had started with the Cardinals in 1918, but
had not really blossomed until 1921, when he batted .350 and hit 37 doubles, 8
triples, and 17 home runs. The following year he began to have difficulties
in judging fly balls. Manager Branch Rickey sent him to a doctor, who
diagnosed his problem as a brain tumor. An operation proved unsuccessful, and
he died at Jefferson Township, Ohio, November 27, 1922. He was twenty-seven,
the same age as Dillhoefer.
     The 1924 season saw the deaths of two veterans of the Cincinnati Reds
within eight months. Pat Moran was a catcher in the majors from 1901 to 1914
and then a highly successful manager, first with the Phillies and then with
the Reds. In nine managerial seasons, he compiled a record of 748-586 and won
a pennant with each team. His 1915 Phillies lost the World Series to Boston,
in five games, while his 1919 Reds won the tainted 1919 Series from the White
Sox, 5-3. Moran was forty-eight when he died of Bright's disease at Orlando,
Florida, March 7, 1924, while at spring training with the Reds. The second
Red to die that year was Jake Daubert, a fancy-fielding first baseman who
could hit (.303 in fifteen years with the Dodgers and the Reds). Although
forty years old, he played 102 games for the Reds in 1924, batted .281 and
fielded .990. He became ill in October and was taken to Good Samaritan
Hospital in Cincinnati, where he died on October 9 following an appendicitis
operation, just as Jimmy Doyle and Joe Leonard had before him.
     Legendary New York Giants outfielder and future Hall of Famer Ross Youngs
was at the height of his career when he was struck down by Bright's disease,
diagnosed during spring training in 1926. Despite his illness, he played 95
games and batted .306. All through the season, he was accompanied by a male
nurse hired by manager John McGraw. Youngs was bedridden for the entire 1927
season and died on October 22 at the age of thirty. Despite his relatively
short career, nine seasons and part of another, his record was impressive
enough to earn him election to the Hall of Fame in 1972. McGraw said he was
the greatest outfielder he had ever seen.
     Urban Shocker was an outstanding pitcher for the great Yankee teams of
the 1925-1927 period. His record was 18-6 for the 1927 Yankees, but illness
kept him out of the World Series. His thirteen-year record with the St.
Louis Browns and the Yankees is in Hall of Fame country--187-117 (.615)--and
he never had a losing season. His health continued to fail in 1928, and he
appeared in only one game before being released. On September 9, 1928, in
Denver, he died of heart disease and pneumonia. He was thirty-eight.
     Shocker's manager, Miller Huggins, was to survive him little more than a
year. On September 20, 1929, Huggins, who had managed the Yankees since 1918
and had won six pennants and three world's championships, asked coach Art
Fletcher to take over for him, so that he could check into a hospital. Five
days later, he was dead of erysipelas, a streptococcal skin infection.
Huggins, who was of Munchkin size at 5'6" and 140 pounds, had been in the
majors since 1904, batting a career .265, and winning 1,413 games and losing
1,134 as a manager. His showdowns with his rambunctious slugger, Babe Ruth,
are part of baseball lore. Huggins was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1964.
     On May 28, 1930, Hal Carlson, thirty-eight-year-old righthanded pitcher
of the Chicago Cubs, and a fourteen-year veteran of the National League,
called several of his teammates to his apartment in a Chicago hotel, saying
that he was in severe pain. Shortly after the team physician arrived, Carlson
was dead from what was described as "an internal hemorrhage."  He left a
three-year-old son and his wife, who was expecting another child.
     Twenty-nine-year-old infielder Mickey Finn, who had played for the
Dodgers from 1930 to 1932 and then for the Phillies, became ill midway through
the 1933 season. Owner Gerry Nugent of the Phillies summoned his brother-in-
law, Dr. H.P. Boyle, who diagnosed Finn's trouble as a duodenal ulcer.
Surgery was performed in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, hospital. He seemed on
the road to recovery, but unforeseen medical problems arose, leading to his
death on July 7, 1933.
     On August 28, 1949, Ernie Bonham, who had pitched seven seasons for the
Yankees and appeared in three World Series, but who was now with the Pirates,
pitched his team to an 8-2 win over the Phillies. He had complained of some
discomfort during the game, and as a precaution was taken to a Pittsburgh
hospital, where appendicitis was diagnosed. The normally routine operation
extended for three hours when complications developed. He was very weak when
manager Billy Meyer visited him a few days later. "Billy, they are hitting me
all over the field, and I can't get anybody out," he mumbled. On September
15, minutes before Meyer and coach Goldie Holt arrived for another visit, he
passed away. Bonham, who was thirty-six, left an impressive 103-72 record.
     Perhaps the closest parallel to the death of James Creighton in the
preprofessional era was the shocking and tragic passing of first baseman Harry
Agganis of the Boston Red Sox, on June 27, 1955 at the age of twenty-five.
Like Creighton, Agganis was young and talented, with a glorious career
seemingly assured.
     At 6'2", 200 pounds, and lefthanded, Agganis was a drawing-board first
baseman. "The Golden Greek," as he was called, was the most publicized
athlete to come out of Boston University since Mickey Cochrane in 1923. Such
were Agganis' skills as a quarterback that he was a first-round draft pick of
the Cleveland Browns, who offered him $25,000 to sign. When the Boston Red
Sox upped this figure by $10,000, he chose baseball. After the 1953 season at
Louisville (American Association), where he batted .281, had 23 home runs, 108
RBIs, and played in 155 games, he took over at first base for the parent club
in 1954. He batted only .251 his first season. In the early going in 1955,
he was over .300 when he developed pneumonia and was hospitalized for ten
days. He returned to the lineup, but became ill again in Kansas City. He flew
back to Boston and checked into Santa Maria Hospital in nearby Cambridge. He
was thought to be recovering nicely, when suddenly on June 27, he died. The
cause of his death was given as a massive pulmonary embolism.
     Agganis' body lay in state at St. George's Greek Orthodox Church in his
home town of Lynn, Massachusetts. On the day before the funeral, ten thousand
mourners passed the bier.
     Righthanded pitcher Jim Umbricht of Houston underwent a cancer operation
on March 8, 1963. By May 9 he was back in uniform, and he finished the year
with a 4-3 record and an ERA of 2.61 in 35 appearances. He did not make it
into the next season. The malignancy spread, and he died on April 8, 1964, at
age thirty-three.
     According to present information, two active major leaguers succumbed to
leukemia. Both were twenty-nine when they died and both at one time played
with Minnesota. The first was giant 6'7" Walter Bond, who started with
Cleveland in 1960, moved to Houston in 1964 and then to Minnesota in 1967,
when illness forced him to quit. He died in Houston, September 14, 1967.
     The second, infielder Danny Thompson, who broke in with Minnesota in
1970, had played for three years in the majors when he learned he had
leukemia. He continued to play, however, and on June 1, 1976, he was involved
in one of the big trades of the year, when he was bundled with pitcher Bert
Blyleven and shipped to Texas for Roy Smalley, Bill Singer, Mike Cubbage, Jim
Gideon, and $250,000. Thompson finished the season with Texas, but it was to
be his last. Baseball's Most Courageous Performer (he was so voted in 1974)
was only twenty-nine when he died December 10, 1976, at Rochester, Minnesota.
     In a single year, 1966, the Detroit Tigers lost two managers to illness
and subsequent death, a tragic sequence not duplicated in major league
history. On May 16 Charley Dressen, who had managed in the majors for sixteen
seasons, suffered a heart attack and was succeeded by coach Bob Swift.
Dressen died three months later at the age of sixty-seven. Swift himself
became ill in July and was hospitalized, with another coach, Frank Skaff,
taking over. It was found that Swift had an advanced case of lung cancer. He
died October 16 at the age of fifty-one. Quiet, efficient, and soft-spoken
Dick Howser was an American League infielder from 1961 to 1968 with Kansas
City, Cleveland, and New York. He became manager of the Yankees in 1980 and
led them to 103 wins and a division title. After the Yankees lost the league
championship series to Kansas City, 0-3, owner George Steinbrenner made things
so uncomfortable for Howser that he resigned. He moved to Kansas City in
1981, winning a division title in 1984, then a pennant and a world's
championship in 1985.
     Early in the 1986 season, Howser began to suffer from headaches and to
experience visual and memory problems. On July 18, he learned he had a
malignant brain tumor. Operations followed, and he recovered sufficiently to
return to uniform in 1987. But his health continued to deteriorate and he was
forced to give up his managerial duties. He was fifty years old when he died,
June 17, 1987.


Suicides and Other Violent Deaths

     According to present information, five active major leaguers and one
league president ended their lives by their own hands. Four others killed
themselves in the year after they had been sent to the minors. Another,
Johnny Mostil, attempted suicide but recovered. There is also some intimation
that the violent deaths of Len Koenecke and Ed Delahanty might have been
"death wish" situations.
     On February 28, 1894, Edgar McNabb, a pitcher who had won eight games for
the Baltimore Orioles in 1893, checked in at the Eiffel Hotel on Smithfield
Street in Pittsburgh. He told the clerk that his wife had gone to Braddock to
visit her ailing parents and that he should give her the room key when she
returned. Earlier that day, the McNabbs had run into a friend, one Louis
Gillen, and the three had agreed to attend the theater that evening.
     When the agreed time for the meeting passed, Gillen became concerned and
went to the McNabbs' room. As he stood outside the door, he heard a woman's
screams. He called for help, and when the room clerk opened the door, the two
were shocked and sickened by the bloody and grisly scene before them. Mrs.
McNabb lay on the floor, bleeding horribly from bullet holes in her neck and
head, but still breathing. Lying beside her, dead, with bullet holes in the
head, was Edgar McNabb. A pistol was still in his hand.
     As the story unfolded, it became more than a tragic domestic
confrontation. The dying woman was not Mrs. McNabb at all. She was Mrs. E.E.
Rockwell, wife of a prominent Seattle businessman who had once been president
of the Pacific Northwest Baseball League. She was an actress by profession
and used the stage name of Louise Kellogg.
     It appeared that Miss Kellogg, who had just finished a theatrical
engagement in New York, had asked McNabb to meet her in Pittsburgh. According
to a newspaper account, she was planning to break off her relationship with
the ballplayer. Letters found in the room indicated that she had been sending
him money to tide him over the winter, and further that there had been recent
disagreements between them. In the judgment of the police who investigated,
an argument had developed, culminating in McNabb's shooting of Miss Kellogg
and then turning the gun on himself.
     Among McNabb's possessions on the scene was a copy of a message which
read:  IN GREAT TROUBLE, TELEGRAPH $100 IMMEDIATELY. SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS.
It was probably this message that led Edgar McNabb and Louise Kellogg to their
fateful rendezvous at the Eiffel Hotel. Miss Kellogg miraculously survived
her wounds but was paralyzed.
     Even more shocking than the McNabb affair was the sad denouement of Marty
Bergen, first-string catcher for Frank Selee's Boston (NL) club from 1896 to
1899.
     On the morning of January 19, 1900, Marty's father, Michael Bergen, who
was staying at the house of a neighbor, walked to his son's property, which
was called "Snowball Farm," to get some milk. Seeing no activity around the
house, he left. He returned at noon and still saw no signs of life. He
walked through the unlocked kitchen door, only to be confronted by a scene of
unspeakable horror. On the kitchen floor, lay the body of his six-year-old
granddaughter Florence. In the adjoining room, he found the body of his
daughter-in-law Harriet Bergen and next to her that of her three-year-old son
Joseph. Mrs. Bergen's hands were raised as though in supplication or as
though trying to ward off a blow. A bloody ax, the apparent murder weapon,
was found on the scene. Bergen himself had committed suicide with a straight
razor, almost severing his head from his body.
     Dr. W.E. Norwood, the medical examiner, made an almost on-the-spot
judgment, ruling that the crime had been committed "in a fit of insanity," and
that no autopsies would be necessary. According to the account in The
Sporting Life, the funeral service at St. Joseph's Church in North Brookfield
was somber and brief, and "only a few words suitable to the occasion were
spoken." The only prominent baseball people present were Connie Mack of the
Milwaukee club and Billy Hamilton, a Bergen teammate.
     What triggered the carnage at Snowball Farm will never be known.
Bergen's manager, Frank Selee, said that he seemed, at times, to act
irrationally and to be pursued by hallucinations. It was also revealed that
he had sought help from his pastor and his doctor, and that on one occasion he
had accused the latter of trying to kill him. Bergen was not a drinker and
apparently had no pressing money problems. He was buying the farm on the
installment plan and had $2,000 in cash.
     On January 12, 1903, not quite three years after the Bergen
murder-suicide, the baseball world was stunned by the self-inflicted death of
another prominent player. George Barclay "Win" Mercer was a versatile
performer who had played every position but catcher in nine years in the
majors, winning 131 games as a pitcher and batting .285. He was
manager-designate for Detroit, where he had played in 1902.
     Mercer was on the West Coast for a series of exhibition games between
teams from the American and National leagues. A small man with striking good
looks, he had a weakness for fast women and slow horses, a deadly combination
that apparently was to do him in. On the fatal day, he did not appear when
expected in the dining room of the San Francisco hotel where the players were
staying. When the door of his room was opened, Mercer's body was found. A
rubber hose was connected to a gas jet. He had died of self-inflicted
asphyxiation.
     Mercer left a suicide note in which he warned of the evils of women and
gambling. He also left a note for his mother and one for his fiancee in East
Liverpool, Ohio. Another letter was addressed to Tip O'Neill, manager of the
ballplayer troupe, for which Mercer was in charge of finances. Even though
Mercer had recently incurred heavy gambling losses, it was reported that his
baseball accounts were in order.
     Charles "Chick" Stahl had batted .307 in ten major league seasons and was
considered one of the game's premier defensive outfielders. Stahl, a Marty
Bergen teammate at Boston (NL) from 1897 to 1899, had been named manager of
the Boston Puritans (AL) late in the 1906 season, succeeding his friend and
roommate Jimmy Collins. Stahl was handsome, popular, well paid for his era,
and recently married. Despite his oft-expressed distaste for managing and a
recent attempt to resign, it seemed he had almost every reason to be on top of
the world; but on March 28, 1907, in his room at the West Baden Hotel in West
Baden, Indiana, he ingested a lethal dose of carbolic acid. As he staggered
toward his bed, roommate Collins went to his assistance, just in time to hear
him gasp:  "Boys, I couldn't help it; it drove me to it."
     For years, baseball historians pondered Stahl's cryptic words, then
usually concluded it was the pressure of managing that forced him to swallow
the poison. Dissenting was Harold Seymour, who, in his Baseball, The Early
Years, strongly hints at the real reason:  cherchez la femme. In the May 1986
issue of Boston Magazine, author Glenn Stout dug out the rest of the Stahl
story and wrote it.
     Stahl, according to Stout, although in love with a young lady named Julia
Harmon of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was also attracted to other young ladies,
the groupies of his day. Furthermore, according to Stout, one of his
admirers, a Lulu Ortman, demanded that Stahl marry her. When he spurned her,
she twice tried to shoot him but missed. Meanwhile, on November 14, 1906,
Stahl had married Miss Harmon at St. Francis de Sales Church in Roxbury. It
seems that he had also been involved, late in the 1906 season, with another
woman, who now claimed to be pregnant by him. She pressured Stahl to marry
her on pain of exposure. He told her that marriage was impossible, since he
was already married. She persisted that spring, and it was this pressure,
concludes Stout, not the pressure of managing, that led to his suicide.
     A sad postscript to the Stahl suicide was the fate of his wife, Julia.
Shortly after his death, she attempted suicide herself, but survived. On
November 15, 1908, she was found dead in the doorway of a house in South
Boston, after a night on the town. An autopsy showed that she had died of
edema of the brain.
     Little more than two years after the Stahl tragedy, another suicide
rocked the game, but it had none of the nasty characteristics of the McNabb,
Bergen, or Stahl cases.
     Richard Cory, in Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem of the same name, was
young, elegant, and well thought of, but one summer night he "went home and
put a bullet through his head."  Harry Clay Pulliam, president of the National
League, was baseball's Richard Cory. On June 28, 1909, Pulliam went to his
room in the New York Athletic Club and fired a shot through his head. He died
the next morning. The forty-year-old bachelor left no suicide note.
Presumably it was a combination of poor health (he had been on leave of
absence for health reasons) and the burdens of his job that caused him to do
it.
     On December 13, 1910, Dennis "Dan" McGann, former captain of the New York
Giants and a premier first baseman for thirteen seasons, but most recently a
member of the Milwaukee club of the American Association, was found dead in a
Louisville hotel room, a bullet hole in his heart and a revolver in his hand.
He had been seen around the hotel during the day and had appeared to be in
good spirits. One explanation was that he was depressed over the suicide of a
brother the past summer.
     On March 28, 1927, at the Youree Hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana, spring
training headquarters of the Chicago White Sox, Johnny Mostil, the team's star
center fielder, slashed both wrists and wounded himself in the chest, throat,
and legs with a razor blade and a knife. Early reports, giving him little
chance to survive, were wrong. He did recover, played later that same season,
and two more seasons thereafter, followed by a long career in the game as a
scout. The only explanation for his act seems to have been his
hypochondriacal nature. He constantly worried and brooded over his health,
although a physical examination that spring had revealed no serious problems.
     In eight major league seasons, Cincinnati righthander Benny Frey had
struggled to a 57-82 record. At the end of the 1936 season, the best of his
career (he was 10-8), he was sent to Nashville to work an ailing arm back into
shape. Apparently despondent over the failure of his arm to recover, Frey, on
November 1, 1937, at Jackson, Michigan, sat in his car with the motor running
and a rubber hose attached to the exhaust pipe. When police found the
thirty-one-year-old pitcher, he was dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.
     It was August 3, 1940, and the Cincinnati Reds were in Boston. Pleading
illness, catcher Willard Hershberger told his roommate, Bill Baker (some
accounts say it was Lew Riggs), that he would not be able to come to the
ballpark until later. When he did not appear and his telephone was not
answered, manager Bill McKechnie sent Dan Cohen, Hershberger's close friend,
to the hotel to get him. When the room was entered, Hershberger's body was
found in the bathroom, his jugular vein severed by a razor.
     Hershberger was young (just thirty), successful, and single, and there
seemed no apparent reason for his act. As in the McGann case, there had been
a previous suicide in the family. Hershberger's father had shot himself to
death in 1928. It has been theorized that the catcher was depressed over his
recent failures on the diamond. He had gone hitless in a crucial game, and on
another occasion had supposedly called a wrong pitch to Harry Danning of the
Giants, who then had hit a home run to beat the Reds in the ninth inning. On
the other hand, it was no secret that he had been contemplating suicide. He
had told manager McKechnie as much in recent weeks. Also, he had recently
purchased a $500 bond, placed it in the hotel safe, and asked that it be given
to his mother "if anything happens to me."
     With all the obvious planning, it is curious that no suicide note was
found. Suicidal tendencies notwithstanding, a hitless game and the call of a
wrong pitch hardly seem sufficient to have provoked the deed. It took almost
eighty years for the truth to be revealed about the Stahl suicide. Someday,
perhaps, more light will be shed on the Hershberger story.
     In seven seasons with the Chicago White Sox, Mexican-born righthander
Hector Barrios compiled a 38-38 record. After the 1981 season, during which
he had entered a Chicago hospital for drug and alcohol treatment, he was
released. On April 4, 1982, he died at his parents' home in Hermosillo,
Mexico, of heart failure brought on by an overdose of heroin.
     Donnie Ray Moore had a combined 52 saves in 1985 and 1986 for the
California Angels, only to become the goat of the 1986 championship series
loss to Boston. when he gave up a two-out, two-run home run to Dave Henderson
that cost the Angels the title. He spent most of the next season on the
disabled list, was released by the Angels in 1988 and then signed with Omaha
of the American Association. He was released by the Royals on June 12
after seven appearances and 1-2 record. On July 18 he shot his estranged
wife (she recovered) and then killed himself with a bullet to
the brain as his ten-year-old son watched in horror. Moore's agent
attributed all of Moore's troubles to his brooding over the
Henderson home run.
     Over the years, ballplayers have died violently, other than by suicide.
The bizarre death of Hall of Famer Ed Delahanty is a case in point. In 1903
he was with Washington of the American League, but wanted to be with the
Giants in New York, where he felt he could earn more money. He dealt with his
unhappiness by consuming generous doses of alcohol, starting with a drinking
spree in Cleveland. Later, in Detroit, where he took out an accident policy
in favor of his daughter, he was heard to threaten to take his own life.
     On July 2, 1903, Delahanty boarded a Michigan Central train at Detroit
with a ticket to Buffalo, from where, it is believed, he planned to catch
another train to Washington to meet his wife. The conductor said Delahanty
was "under the weather" when he got on at Detroit and that he had downed at
least five shots of whiskey along the way. Not only was he boisterous, but he
also threatened some passengers with a razor. At Bridgeburg, Ontario, just
across the Niagara River from Buffalo, the conductor ejected him from the
train. Delahanty, in the darkness, began to walk across the International
Bridge, a railroad bridge connecting Bridgeburg and Buffalo. Bridge watchman
Sam Kingston had just escorted a freight across the bridge and, lantern in
hand, was walking back to the Canadian side when he confronted Delahanty.
Words were exchanged and a scuffle ensued. It is not clear (Kingston told
conflicting stories) if Delahanty fell, jumped, or was pushed into the river.
Eight days later, his body was found at Niagara Falls, below the Horseshoe
Falls.
     Subsequently, Delahanty's widow filed suit in the Ontario courts against
the Michigan Central Railroad, seeking $20,000 damages for the wrongful death
of her husband. She was awarded $3,000, and her daughter received $2,000.
     When Walter "Big Ed" Morris won 19 games for the last-place Boston Red
Sox in 1928 and then came back with 14 wins for another cellar Boston club in
1929, he became one of the most sought-after pitchers in the league. One
story had the Red Sox turning down a $100,000 offer. A sore arm slowed Morris
in 1930 and 1931, and his record retrogressed to 4-9 and 5-7. Confident that
his arm had regained its strength, he prepared to go to spring training in
1932. As a going-away present, some of his buddies arranged a party for him
at a tavern in Century, Florida, just across the state line from Morris'
hometown of Flomaton, Alabama. Unfortunately, the party began to get out of
hand, and soon the guest of honor was involved in a fight with Joe White, a
gas station attendant from Brewton, Alabama. When Morris slipped to the
floor, White pulled a knife and stabbed him twice, fatally. Morris was
thirty-one and left a widow and two children.
     Len Koenecke was an impressive-looking athlete--broad of shoulder, slim
of waist, and ruggedly handsome. He was said to have been the last player
personally scouted by John McGraw, who arranged for his purchase from
Indianapolis (American Association) in 1931 for players valued at $75,000.
The young outfielder failed to live up to his minor league billings and was
farmed to Jersey City in 1932 and to Buffalo in 1933. An outstanding season
for the Bisons in 1933 led to his sale to Brooklyn, where in 1934 he batted
.320 and fielded a league-leading .994. But he slumped in 1935, and late that
year manager Casey Stengel sent Koenecke and two other players home from St.
Louis so that he could try out some young prospects.
     On the flight from St. Louis to Detroit, Koenecke, who had been
drinking, created a disturbance, and when the airport was reached he was
ordered off the plane. Although it was late in the evening, he decided to
charter a private plane and fly to Buffalo, where he had friends. The plane
he chartered had an interesting past. It had once been owned by Smith
Reynolds of the tobacco family and his wife, torch singer Libby Holman, who
were principals in one of the most sensational murder cases of the 1930s.
When Reynolds was shot to death at the family estate in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, his wife was charged with the crime but was later exonerated.
     While the plane was still over Canada, Koenecke tried to take over the
controls from pilot William Mulqueeny. Irwin Davis, the copilot, attempted to
restrain the husky ballplayer but was pushed to the floor. Mulqueeny, while
trying to guide the plane with one hand, picked up a fire extinguisher with
the other and bludgeoned Koenecke until he was dead. Mulqueeny had no idea
where he was until he spotted the lights of Toronto. Seeing a racetrack on
the outskirts of the city, he decided to use the backstretch as an airport and
brought the plane safely down. Then, to cap their night of terror, the two
men were attacked by watch dogs as they left the plane. The dogs eventually
backed off, and they were able to summon help.
     After two hearings in Canadian courts, Mulqueeny and Davis were absolved
of all blame in Koenecke's death. Blood tests had shown that the dead
ballplayer was drunk. At one of the hearings, Edward J. Murphy, attorney for
the pilots, alleged that Koenecke was trying to commit suicide and to do it
"in a grand and glorious manner."
     In the early hours of January 5, 1975, Don Wilson, star righthanded
pitcher of the Houston Astros, who had won 104 games in nine major league
seasons and pitched two no-hitters, drove his luxury car into the garage of
his suburban Houston home and left the motor running. At one P.M. his
lifeless body was found slumped in the passenger seat. The ignition was on,
the battery was dead, the gas tank was empty, and there were exhaust-fume
stains on the garage floor. In the room above the garage, his five-year-old
son Alexander was dead from the fumes. His wife, Bernice, and his daughter,
Denise, were taken to the hospital in serious condition. Bernice Wilson also
had a badly bruised jaw, which was never explained, but which could have been
caused by a fall.
     Mrs. Wilson and her daughter both recovered. Tests on the
twenty-nine-year-old Don Wilson revealed a blood-alcohol content of .167. On
February 5, 1975, the medical examiner ruled the deaths were accidental.
     Mickey Fuentes, a righthanded pitcher who was 1-3 for Seattle in 1969,
never made it to spring training in 1970. He was shot to death in a tavern
brawl in his native Loiza Aldea, Puerto Rico, January 29, 1970, He was only
twenty years old.
     With Lyman Bostock, who had starred for Minnesota (in 1975-1977) and then
had signed a lucrative free-agent contract with California, it was a case of
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On September 23, 1978, in Gary,
Indiana, he was in a car being driven by his uncle when he was shot by a man
named Leonard Smith, whose apparent target was Smith's estranged wife, seated
next to Bostock in the back seat. Three hours after the assault, the
twenty-seven-year-old Bostock was dead. There was whispering that something
was going on between Bostock and Mrs. Smith. Actually they had met only
twenty minutes before and were heading for different destinations.
     Leonard Smith was twice tried for murder. The first trial, in which
insanity was pleaded, ended in a hung jury. In the second trial, he was found
not guilty by reason of insanity, spent six months in a mental hospital, and
then was a free man. Outrage over the outcome of the two trials resulted in a
change in the Indiana law, whereby an accused can now be judged both insane
and guilty of a crime.


Planes, Cars, Trucks, Boats, and a Dune Buggy

     When superstars Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson lost their lives in
air crashes, it was front-page news all over the country. In Clemente's case,
the coverage was international in scope because of the mercy mission in which
he was involved.
     Clemente and Munson were not the first active major leaguers to perish in
airplane accidents. There were at least six prior air fatalities--seven if
Koenecke is included. Marvin Goodwin, a righthanded spitball pitcher who saw
action with the Senators, Cardinals, and Reds from 1916 through 1925, was the
first. In 1925, nearing the end of his career, he was pitcher-manager of
Houston of the Texas League, on assignment from the Cardinals. He did so well
at Houston (21-9) that Cincinnati purchased him conditionally late in the
season, with the understanding that final payment on the deal would be made
only if he lasted thirty days into the 1926 season. He made four September
appearances for the Reds with no wins and no losses.
     Goodwin had been a flying instructor in World War One and was still a
lieutenant in the reserve. On October 18, 1925, he took off on a practice
flight from Ellington Field, near Houston, with a mechanic on board. The
engine failed at 200 feet, and the plane crashed. The mechanic miraculously
survived, but Goodwin, who suffered two broken legs and internal injuries,
died four days later. The fatality had a ghoulish aftermath. The following
year, the Cardinals demanded full payment for Goodwin's contract. The Reds
refused on the grounds that he was not on their roster thirty days into the
1926 season. The case was referred to the commissioner's office. Judge
Landis, citing the terms of the contract, ruled in favor of the Reds.
     Elmer Joseph Gedeon played in the outfield for the Washington Senators in
1939. He had been a track star at the University of Michigan and had given up
a chance to run in the Olympic Games to go into baseball. But then World War
Two came along, and Gedeon gave up baseball to become an early volunteer in
the Air Corps. He died April 15, 1944, when his plane was shot down over
France. (Two others who played in the majors in 1939 also died in battle. Bob
Neighbors, a shortstop for seven games with the St. Louis Browns, died in
North Korea in 1952, and Harry O'Neill, who caught one game for the
Philadelphia Athletics, perished in the assault on Iwo Jima in 1945.)
     After his graduation from Boston University in 1955, catcher Tom Gastall
pocketed a $40,000 bonus from the Baltimore Orioles. He was used sparingly,
playing 20 games in 1955 and 32 in 1956. On September 20, 1956, he took off
in a light plane from Harbor Field, near Baltimore. He landed at Easton, from
where he later took off for the return flight over the Chesapeake Bay. Five
days later, his body and the wreckage of the plane were found in the water off
Riviera Beach. Gastall was just twenty-four.
     A little over two months later, on November 27, 1956, outfielder Charlie
Peete, who had played 23 games for the St. Louis Cardinals that summer, died
in a plane crash in the mountains of Venezuela, near Caracas, while en route
to play winter ball. His wife and three children also perished in the crash.
     Another victim of a Venezuelan air disaster was twenty-one-year-old
Nestor Chavez, a San Francisco Giant farmhand who played in two games for the
Giants in 1967. On March 16, 1969, the young pitcher was on his way to join
the Giants' Phoenix farm club when his plane crashed, killing 155 passengers.
It was one of the worst accidents in aviation history.
     Ken Hubbs, playing 160 games for the Chicago Cubs in 1962, handled 148
consecutive chances without an error and was Rookie of the Year. He tailed
off in 1963 but was still rated one of the game's rising young stars. At the
end of the 1963 season, he began to take flying lessons. In early February
1964, shortly after he had received his license, Hubbs, who lived in Colton,
California, flew to Provo, Utah, with a friend, Dennis Doyle, to visit Doyle's
in-laws. On February 15, Hubbs and Doyle took off in a snowstorm for their
return trip to California. Only five miles from Provo, the plane crashed into
Utah Lake, killing Hubbs and Doyle.
     After investigation, the Civil Aeronautics Board reported the probable
cause as "Hubbs' attempt to continue visual flight into an area of adverse
weather."  The twenty-two-year-old Hubbs, who was not licensed for instrument
flying, left a log book which showed he had flown just 71 hours, 16 minutes.
     On September 30, 1972, Roberto Clemente, who had batted .317 in eighteen
seasons with Pittsburgh, touched Jon Matlack of the Mets for a base hit. It
was Clemente's 3,000th and last hit. On December 31, 1972, Clemente and four
others were killed when a plane carrying food, clothing, and medical supplies
to earthquake-stricken Nicaragua crashed moments after takeoff from San Juan,
Puerto Rico.
     Clemente's career had all the elements of a Horatio Alger tale. Born
August 18, 1934, in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the son of a sugar plantation
foreman, he was signed by Al Campanis of the Dodgers as a teenager. The
Dodgers tried to cover him up on the Montreal (International League) roster,
but Pittsburgh general manager Branch Rickey, who knew all about him from his
days with the Dodgers, drafted him for a piddling $4,000. It was one of the
greatest bargains in baseball history. Clemente immediately became a regular
and won all manner of plaudits for his hitting, fielding, and magnificent
throwing arm. He was Most Valuable Player in 1966, batted .310 and .414 in
two World Series (1960, 1971), and was Sporting News' Gold Glove outfielder
twelve times. Twice he hit three home runs in one game, and five times he led
National League outfielders in assists.
     Clemente was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973 in a special
election, with the usual five-year waiting period waived by a change of the
voting rules.
     Thurman Munson was the only New York Yankee to win both Rookie of the
Year (1970) and Most Valuable Player (1976) awards. He was the regular Yankee
catcher from 1970, averaging more than 140 games a year, despite aching knees,
a beaning, and a foul ball in the throat. He was one of the league's top
clutch hitters, with 701 RBIs and a .292 average over eleven seasons. His
clashes with Reggie Jackson over which of them was the straw that stirred the
Yankee drink drew national attention.
     On August 2, 1979, an off-day, Munson flew his new Cessna Citation jet
from New York to Canton, Ohio, to visit his family. Late in the afternoon, he
was practicing takeoffs and landings at the Akron-Canton Airport when the
plane crashed a thousand feet short of the runway. Munson's flying
companions, David Hall and Jerry Anderson, survived and at great danger to
themselves, attempted to pull Munson from the flaming wreckage. But there was
no chance. Munson, who was thirty-two, left his wife, Diane, and three
children, not to mention millions of mourning baseball fans. On August 6 of
that year, 51,000 fans at Yankee Stadium participated in an impressive
nine-minute salute to the Yankee captain, who, with a few more years under his
belt, could well have been a good bet for the Hall of Fame.
     As far as is known, the first active major leaguer to die in a vehicular
accident was Norman Boeckel, a .298 hitter for the 1923 Boston Braves. The
thirty-one-year-old third baseman died February 16, 1924, in a San Diego
hospital, from pelvic injuries sustained the day before in a collision between
his car and a truck. Earlier, Boeckel had played a fringe role in another
piece of baseball history. He had submitted an affidavit to National League
President John Heydler, attesting that he had heard pitcher Rube Benton boast
of winning $3,200 on the 1919 World Series on a tip from Hal Chase. Benton
was thrown out of baseball, but was later reinstated by Judge Landis.
     The year 1929 saw the deaths of two major leaguers in vehicular
accidents. Denny Williams, a twenty-nine-year-old outfielder, who had played
with the Reds in 1921 and the Red Sox in 1924, 1925 and 1928, was killed in
Los Angeles, March 21. Seven months later, on October 22, Walter "Peck"
Lerian, regular catcher for the Phillies in 1928 and 1929, died in a Baltimore
hospital, after being hit by a truck that vaulted over a curb and pinned him
against the wall of a building.
     Catcher Al Montgomery was only twenty years old when he appeared in 42
games for the Boston Braves in 1941. While returning from spring training on
April 26, 1942, having been assigned to Hartford of the Eastern League, he was
involved in a car accident near Waverly, Virginia, and killed.
     While Paul Edmondson, a twenty-seven-year-old pitcher who had been 1-6
with the 1969 White Sox, was en route to spring training, he was involved in a
fatal auto accident February 13, 1970, near Santa Barbara, California.
Another victim of a California crash was Chico Ruiz, who had been in the
majors for eight years, first with Cincinnati and most recently with
California. He was killed in San Diego February 9, 1972.
     The pitching career of Bob Moose was a series of highs and lows. In ten
years with the Pirates, he won 76 games and lost 71. One of his wins was a
no-hitter against the New York Mets on September 20, 1969. On the other side
of the coin is the wild pitch he uncorked in the final game of the 1972 league
championship series that permitted Cincinnati to defeat Pittsburgh. He also
made three appearances in the 1971 World Series, but had no decisions. On
October 9, 1976, at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, he suffered fatal injuries in an
automobile accident. It was his twenty-ninth birthday.
     Righthanded pitcher Danny Frisella, who in ten years in the majors saw
action with the Mets, Braves, Padres, Cardinals, and Brewers (34-40), took a
dune buggy out in the desert near Phoenix on New Year's Day, 1977. When the
buggy overturned, he was killed instantly.
     Just six days later, on January 6, Mike Miley, a twenty-three-year-old
shortstop with California in 1975 and 1976, was killed in a car crash at Baton
Rouge.
     On Friday night, December 19, 1986, Honolulu native Joe DeSa hit four
doubles to help his Ponce Lions defeat the Mayaguez Indians, 11-8, in a Puerto
Rico winter league game. At four A.M. on December 20, DeSa was killed in a
head-on crash on the Las Americas Expressway. DeSa, who had played for
Buffalo (American Association) in 1985 and 1986 and was the team's most
valuable player in the latter year, had signed with Kansas City and was due to
report in the spring for his third hitch in the majors.
     The two known deaths of active players by drowning are separated by
almost one hundred years. The first was England-born Al Thake, second baseman
for the Brooklyn Atlantics. He drowned off Fort Hamilton, New York, while
fishing, September 1, 1872. Almost a century later, on December 14, 1970,
Herman Hill, twenty-five-year-old outfielder with Minnesota in 1969 and 1970,
was in Venezuela for winter ball when he drowned off Valencia.
     On March 22, 1993, after a day of fishing on Little Lake Nellie, 27 miles
north of Winter Haven, Florida, Cleveland Indians pitchers Tim Crews, Steve
Olin, and Bob Ojeda were returning to shore in an open, eighteen-foot-base
boat. In the darkness, Crews, who was returning the boat, did not see a dock
that extended some 250 feet into the lake. He rammed it while traveling at an
estimated 39 miles per hour. Olin was killed instantly and Crews died a few
hours later. Ojeda came within an inch of having the top of his head sheared
off, but though grievously injured did recover and returned to the mound late
in the 1993 season. Evidence in the boat and through blood tests indicated
that alcohol was involved. Crews and Olin each left a wife and three small
children. It was the only instance in major league history in which two
players were killed in one accident.
     Cleveland's cup of sorrow overflowed in the 1993 offseason as another
member of its pitching staff lost his life in an accident. Reliever Cliff
Young, a twenty-nine year-old veteran of three major league campaigns, was
fatally injured in a November car crash.

Bean Balls

     Every time a batter steps to the plate, it is an act of courage. With
pitches hurtling toward him at 90 miles per hour, he has but a fraction of a
second to decide if he should swing, take, or bail out. Modern helmets with
ear flaps have removed much of the peril, but not all. Prior to the 1950s,
batters had no head protection at all; and before 1893 the risk was even
greater, since the pitching distance was only 50 feet.
     Considering the danger involved, it is somewhat of a miracle that only
one batter has been killed by a pitched ball in the long history of major
league baseball. No definitive statistics are available, but it is known that
many have been killed at the amateur level and at least six in minor league
play.
     Major league baseball's only bean ball fatality, and its only diamond
fatality for any reason, occurred on August 16, 1920, at the Polo Grounds, New
York, in a game between the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians. It
was the first half of the fifth inning, and shortstop Ray Chapman of the
Indians was at bat, faced by Yankee submarine-baller Carl Mays. Chapman liked
to crowd the plate and crouch over it. Mays, who had a mean streak, was not
averse to throwing at any batter who encroached on his territory. Mays'
first pitch was a strike, his second a ball, as Chapman seemed to edge even
closer to the plate. Predictably the third pitch was high and inside. There
was an ominous crack that was heard all over the Polo Grounds. Mays, thinking
his pitch had hit Chapman's bat, fielded the ball and started to throw to
Wally Pipp at first base, but then he saw Chapman slumped in the arms of
catcher Muddy Ruel and he knew the batter had been hit. A doctor was summoned
from the stands and Chapman was temporarily revived. Assisted by two of his
teammates, he began the long walk to the clubhouse in center field, but he
soon collapsed and was carried the rest of the way.
     When a preliminary examination in the clubhouse showed the injury was
extremely serious, he was taken to nearby St. Lawrence Hospital, where an
operation was performed. He was still under ether when he died at five A.M.
the following day, August 17.
     The repercussions were immediate and furious. Mays, a surly sort and
never popular among his peers, was strongly criticized. Detroit and Boston
players demanded that he be barred for life, while those on the Washington and
St. Louis clubs threatened to strike if Mays was allowed to pitch again. But
Mays did have his defenders. Cleveland pitcher Ray Caldwell, a former Yankee,
said it seemed to him that Chapman had turned his head right into the ball.
Connie Mack, venerable skipper of the Philadelphia Athletics, while deploring
the fatal accident, pleaded for sympathy for Mays. Catcher Muddy Ruel, who
caught Chapman when he fell, said in later years that the pitch could have
been a strike.
     Mays appeared before the district attorney and, after a deposition, was
cleared of any criminal charges. He said he was not trying to hit Chapman,
only to pitch him tight. That spring, Mays pointed out, he had seen Yankee
infielder Chick Fewster nearly killed by a pitch delivered by Jeff Pfeffer of
the Dodgers, and from that time on he had been reluctant even to throw inside
pitches, let alone throw at batters. He then suggested the fatality might
have been averted had plate umpire Tom Connolly not refused to remove from
play the scuffed ball that hit Chapman. This drew a sharp rejoinder from
American League umpires Billy Evans and Bill Dinneen, who charged that Mays
was one of the league's most notorious scuffers. They said further that club
owners had complained to Ban Johnson, league president, that too many balls
were being thrown out, and that Johnson had responded by sending out a
directive, instructing umpires to keep balls in play, "except those which are
dangerous."
     In the New York Times of August 19, there was an impassioned plea for the
development and use of batting helmets, but it was to be more than thirty
years before this advice would be heeded.
     At least six minor leaguers have been killed by pitched balls. On
August 9, 1906, Joe Yaeger of Fall River of the New England League hit Tom
Burke of Lynn in the head with a pitch. Two days later, Burke was dead. Two
days after attending Burke's funeral, Yaeger took his turn on the mound, only
to be arrested by Lynn police on a manslaughter charge. Shortly thereafter,
the charges were dropped. Jaeger, who had pitched for six years in the majors
with Brooklyn and Detroit, completed the season with a 15-19 record.
     In the second game of a Central League doubleheader, played in gathering
darkness at Dayton, September 14, 1909, Charles "Cupid" Pinkney,
twenty-year-old Dayton second baseman, was beaned by Casey Hageman of Grand
Rapids. At first, it was thought he would recover, but his condition
deteriorated, and he died following an operation. Pinkney's father, who had
traveled from Cleveland to watch his son play, was at his side when he died.
     On June 18, 1916, Johnny Dodge, infielder for Mobile of the Southern
Association, was hit on the head by Tom "Shotgun" Rogers of Nashville and died
the next day of a fractured skull. It is believed that Dodge was thrown at in
retaliation for the beaning of a Nashville player the previous day. By the
strangest of coincidences, Rogers and Carl Mays were to be teammates briefly
on the 1921 Yankees.
     On July 4, 1933, at Omaha, Jesse Batterson, nineteen-year-old third
baseman for Springfield of the Western League, suffered a fractured skull when
hit by a pitch thrown by Omaha's Floyd "Swede" Carlson. He was able to get to
his feet and walk to the clubhouse, but then collapsed and was taken to a
hospital. He died there following an operation, with pitcher Carlson at his
bedside.
     Twenty-year-old James (Stormy) Davis was off to a great start for
Ballinger (Texas) of the Longhorn League. In 48 games he had hit 19
home runs and had 59 RBIs. On July 3, 1947, he was beaned by Stan (Midnight)
Wilson of Sweetwater. The young outfielder died a week later.
     A sixth fatality occurred in the Alabama-Florida League on June 2, 1951.
Lefty Jack Clifton of Headland hit Otis Johnson of the Dothan Browns on the
head and killed him. In his next start, Clifton, who had already hit twelve
batters that season, pitched a no-hit, no-run game against Panama City.
According to Ken Brooks in his book The Last Rebel Yell, every Panama City
batter had one foot in the dugout.
     In major league history there have been countless beanings. In most
cases, the batters came back, but often were not the same hitters as before.
Lowell Reidenbaugh, in his Cooperstown, writes that Hughie Jennings survived
three skull fractures. His most serious injury was from a pitch delivered by
Amos Rusie of New York, said to have been the swiftest pitcher of his day.
The blow left Jennings near death and unconscious for four days. Some
historians say it was Rusie's speed and the fear that he might kill someone
that brought about the lengthening of the pitching distance in 1893 to the
present 60 feet, 6 inches.
     At Ebbets Field on September 3, 1932, Giants shortstop Ed Marshall was
beaned by a Van Lingle Mungo fastball. He survived despite lapsing into
"unsafe condition."  The incident ended his major league career although
Marshall did play thereafter in the minors.
     On May 25, 1937, future Hall of Famer Mickey Cochrane, player-manager of
the Detroit Tigers, lost sight of a pitch by Bump Hadley of the Yankees. It
hit him in the right temple and fractured his skull. He lay unconscious for
ten days but eventually recovered, although he never played again. He did,
however, resume his managerial duties and also served with distinction in the
Navy in World War Two.
     Tony Conigliaro of the Boston Red Sox, who hit 166 home runs in six full
seasons and parts of two others (all with the Red Sox, except for 74 games and
4 home runs for California in 1971), surely would have racked up more
impressive numbers had he not been hit in the face and nearly killed by a Jack
Hamilton (of California) pitch on August 18, 1967. He was out of the game for
a year and a half, but then came back to hit 20 home runs in 1969 and 36 in
1970. On October 11, 1970, in a most controversial deal, he was traded to
California, where he was to see only limited duty. He returned to Boston for
21 games in 1975 and then was out of baseball. He died February 24, 1990.
     Dickie Thon was the All-Star National League shortstop for Houston in
1983 and also led the league in game-winning hits. In the fifth game of the
1984 season, he was hit in the eye by a Mike Torrez (Mets) fastball. Despite
permanent damage to his eye, he was able to return to action and through the
1992 season was playing more or less regularly for the Texas Rangers.
     Don Zimmer, 1988 manager of the Chicago Cubs, suffered two serious
beanings and still carries a metal plate in his head from the injuries. Paul
Blair, center field magician of the Baltimore Orioles, Minnie Minoso of the
White Sox, and Wayne Terwilliger, utility player for several clubs, were
others whose careers were interrupted or affected by bean balls.


Sore Arms, Illnesses, Injuries, and Accidents

     Up to this point, the subject has been (with a few exceptions) deaths off
or on the diamond. But fatalities are only part of the story. Many a
baseball career has aborted for reasons not resulting in death, at least, not
at once.
     In the old days, sore arms were usually rested. If there was any
treatment at all, it was by the likes of John D. "Bonesetter" Reese, a
self-trained muscle manipulator of Youngstown, Ohio. Nobody ever heard of the
rotator cuff or even dreamed of such sophisticated operations as those which
prolonged the careers of Tommy John, Ken Dayley, and others.
     Charles "Lady" Baldwin was one old-timer who could have used a Tommy John
bionic arm. In 1886 he won 42 games for Detroit (NL) and pitched 487 innings.
He then developed arm trouble and dropped to 13 wins in 1887 and to 3 each in
1888 and 1890, after which he retired for good to his Michigan farm. Hall of
Famer Christy Mathewson's arm went dead in 1916, but by then he was
thirty-eight, had won 373 games, and had achieved immortality. Smoky Joe Wood
was another sore arm victim, but he did beat the rap in a way. After winning
23 games for the Red Sox in 1911 and then 34 in 1912, including 16 in a row,
he developed a sore arm the following spring. His days as an intimidating
fireballer were over, although he did win 35 games for the Sox over the next
three seasons. Realizing he could no longer pitch, he decided to become a
sore-armed outfielder, and played that position with fair success for
Cleveland through the 1922 season. Altogether he played in fourteen major
league seasons and left a 116-57 pitching record and a career batting mark of
.283.
     Undocumented are the names of countless other pitchers of the game's
early years who dropped out prematurely because of so-called dead arms. More
is known of modern pitchers, like Dave Ferris and Karl Spooner. Ferris joined
the Boston Red Sox in 1945, having been mustered out of the Army because of
asthma. He raised plenty of eyebrows with a 21-10 record in the last year of
wartime baseball, but then made believers out of everyone by winning 25 and
losing just 6 in 1946. But in a night game in Cleveland in June of 1947, he
suffered a shoulder injury, from which he never fully recovered although he
did hang on until 1950. His career log shows 65-30 for a phenomenal .684
percentage.
     No pitcher ever made a more dazzling entrance or faded as fast as Karl
Spooner. The twenty-three-year-old lefthander was called up by Brooklyn from
Fort Worth (Texas), late in the 1954 season. He pitched shutouts against New
York and Pittsburgh in his first two starts, allowing just 7 hits and striking
out 27. Hampered by a sore arm, he struggled to an 8-6 record in 1955, made
two appearances in the World Series (0-1), then never pitched again.
     In 1966 another Dodger lefthander, Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax was 27-9,
with 5 shutouts and an ERA of 1.73 in 323 innings of work. Talk about going
out on top!  No pitcher in major league history ever matched that in a final
season. He pitched against Baltimore in the 1966 World Series (0-1), but at
the age of thirty his career was over. Traumatic arthritis in the left elbow,
triggered by a fall on his left arm when attempting a pickoff during the 1964
season, made it impossible for him to continue. Had Koufax been able to pitch
as long as, say Warren Spahn, there is no telling what his record might have
been. As it was, he left an imposing mark of 165-87 (.655) and an ERA of
2.76.
     Mark Fidrych, the colorful Detroit pitcher known as "the Bird," was 19-9
in 1976 and was the starting pitcher in the All-Star game. But plagued by arm
trouble, he faded to a combined 10-11 record over the next four seasons. He
was only twenty-six when he pitched his final big league game in 1980. Twice
he tried comebacks in the minors, but failed.
     Lefty Don Gullett, the only man to pitch the opening game in successive
World Series for two different teams (Cincinnati Reds, 1976; and New York
Yankees, 1977), was just twenty-seven when his career ended with a bad arm
after the 1978 season. He had been one of the first free agents signed by the
Yankees, and was certainly one of their most expensive, costing them $2
million for his 18 wins in two seasons.
     Righthander Wayne Garland of the Indians was operated on for a rotator
cuff tear on May 5, 1978. He had won 33 games the two previous seasons.
After the operation, he came back, hanging on until 1981, but he was never the
same pitcher. And like Gullett, he was working on a lucrative long-term
contract.
     The previous pages have told of the surprising number of active major
leaguers who succumbed to illness. Many others became ill and were forced to
give up the game or see their baseball livelihoods interrupted. An early
example was Jimmy Wood, who played for Chicago, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia in
the National Association from 1871 to 1873. In 1873 he developed a leg
abscess which he attempted to lance with a penknife. A severe infection
developed, resulting in the loss of his leg. His playing days, of course,
were over, but he did return as a manager in 1874 and 1875.
     In 1890 first baseman Dave Orr of Brooklyn (in the Players' League)
batted .373, hit 32 doubles, 13 triples, and 6 home runs, while striking out
only 11 times. For a nonpitcher, this was the ultimate in final seasons. In
the off-season, the thirty-one-year-old Orr suffered a stroke and never played
again. He died in Brooklyn on June 3, 1915. He had been caretaker of Ebbets
Field for many years.
     Hall of Famer Amos Rusie won 243 games in nine seasons and part of a
tenth, but saw his career shrouded by misfortune, some of his own making. The
so-called "Hoosier Thunderbolt," who almost killed Hughie Jennings with a bean
ball, himself took a line drive to the head which permanently damaged his
hearing. He threw out his arm in 1898 and was out of the game for two years.
He compounded his other problems with heavy drinking. Although he tried to
come back in 1901, he failed. At the age of thirty he was through.
     The aforementioned Jennings, another Hall of Famer, had a baseball life
replete with illness and adversity. In addition to the almost fatal beaning
by Rusie, he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1925, after taking over as
manager of the New York Giants when John McGraw became ill. Jennings died of
spinal meningitis in 1928 at the age of fifty-eight.

     Often documented is the tragic accident that terminated the career of
catcher Charley Bennett, who played in the majors from 1878 to 1893 (except
for 1879). In January of 1894, while on a hunting trip, he tried to catch and
board a moving train at Wellsville, Kansas, but lost his grip and fell under
the wheels, losing both legs. Shortstop Charlie Hollocher, who played for
the Cubs from 1918 to 1924, was constantly bedeviled by illness, real and
imaginary, blunting what some observers feel could have been a Hall of
Fame-level career. His tormented life came to an end on August 14, 1940, when
he parked his car on a quiet Clayton, Missouri, street, then tore his throat
apart with a blast from a sixteen-gauge shotgun.
     One of the strangest cases in which illness terminated a career involved
pitcher-turned-outfielder Erwin (Zeke) Harvey. After batting .333 for Chicago
and Cleveland of the new American League in 1901 and starting the 1902 season
at a .348 clip in 12 games, he quit baseball, claiming he had such serious
stomach pains that he could no longer play ball. He never returned to the
diamond. Instead he became an entomologist on the west coast. He died in Santa
Monica, in 1954 at the age of 1975.
     Jackie Hayes, outstanding second baseman and shortstop for the Senators
and the White Sox (1927-1940), was 3 for 3 in a 1940 Sox spring game; then in
the shower room he noticed a cloudiness in one eye. He played 18 games that
year, but by August he had lost his sight in the clouded eye. In a matter of
three years, he had lost his sight in the other. Similarly, George "Specs"
Toporcer, a former major league infielder, had lost his sight while managing
Buffalo (International League) in 1951. Both men learned to live with their
blindness and went on to lead productive lives, Hayes as the tax collector of
Chilton County, Alabama, and Toporcer as a writer and lecturer.
     Righthanded pitcher Monty Stratton (15-5 and 15-9 for the Chicago White
Sox in 1937 and 1938) was hunting rabbits near his mother's home in
Greenville, Texas, after the 1938 season, when he accidentally discharged a
.22-caliber pistol. The slug lodged in his right knee, severing the main
artery and necessitating amputation of the leg. Stratton did not pitch again
in the majors, but he was a White Sox coach for three seasons. In 1946 he
pitched for Sherman in the Class C East Texas League, where, remarkably, he
won 18 games. Hollywood thought it saw a story in the courageous way he had
faced his tragedy and made a much-acclaimed movie of his life, The Stratton
Story, starring Jimmy Stewart.
     A third victim of a leg injury was Joe Cronin, Hall of Fame shortstop who
played twenty years for Washington and Boston, and probably would have played
a few more had he not fractured his leg three games into the 1945 season. He
never played again, but continued in the game for many years as a manager,
front office executive, and as American League president.
     He looked so indestructible that they called him "The Iron Horse."  Henry
Louis Gehrig, in seventeen years at first base for the New York Yankees,
averaged .340, hit 535 doubles, 162 triples, and 493 home runs. He scored
1,888 runs, had 1,990 RBIs, and posted a slugging percentage of .632. His
incredible record of playing in 2,130 consecutive games at one time seemed
unassailable, but is now being challenged by Cal Ripken of the Baltimore
Orioles, who played in 1,897 consecutive games through the end of the 1993
season. On May 2, 1939, Gehrig approached manager Joe McCarthy, told him he
was not feeling well. Gehrig thought he was hurting the team, and he asked to
be taken from the lineup. McCarthy, of course, complied, and so for the first
time since pinch hitting for Pee-Wee Wanninger on May 31, 1925, Gehrig missed
a Yankee game.
     A few months later the bad news came from the Mayo Clinic. The
indestructible one, "The Iron Horse," had been stricken with amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system for which no cure
was known. On July 4, 1939, 61,000 gathered at Yankee Stadium for a gigantic
Gehrig tribute. There he spoke his memorable words:  "I consider myself the
luckiest man on the face of the earth."
     In the short time left to him, Gehrig devoted himself to public service.
On June 2, 1941, exactly sixteen years from the day he replaced Pipp at first
base, he died. He was thirty-seven years old. The malady that killed him is
now generally referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease. Unfortunately it is almost
as much a medical mystery today as it was fifty years ago when it struck him.
     Catcher Bill DeLancey was a product of the St. Louis Cardinal farm
system. After playing eight games for the parent club in 1932 and then
spending a year at Columbus (American Association), he became a regular member
of the "Gas House Gang" in 1934. In 1935 he found that he had tuberculosis
and faced a long recovery period. It was not until 1940 that he made it back,
and then it was just for 15 games. By then, he knew it was no use. His
career was over. He died November 28, 1946, on his forty-fifth birthday.
     When Don Black went to the mound for the Cleveland Indians against the
St. Louis Browns on September 13, 1948, he could have looked back on an
undistinguished six-year record with the Athletics and Indians (34-55). But
there were two victories--one off the diamond--that he could recall with
pride. The first was against the bottle; the second was a no-hit, no-run game
against the Philadelphia Athletics on July 10, 1947.
     In the late-season game against the Browns, upon retiring the Browns in
the first two innings, Black came to bat against Bill Kennedy. After swinging
mightily at the first pitch and fouling it back, he began to stagger and
finally sank to his knees. Umpire Bill Summers bent over to assist Black and
heard him whisper, "That last pitch to [Ed] Pellagrini did it." (He had struck
out the Browns' shortstop with a curve ball to end the top of the second.)
Apparently, that pitch plus the force of his swing had caused an aneurism to
rupture, sending blood to his brain and spinal cord. (Shades of James
Creighton, who had injured himself fatally while batting on August 14, 1862.)
An eminent neurosurgeon was summoned. He ruled out surgery as too risky, but
said Black had just a 50-50 chance of surviving. But Black did survive and on
September 22 he was recipient of a large purse from a benefit game against the
Red Sox that attracted a crowd of 76,772.
     The Indians went on to win the pennant and then defeated the Boston
Braves in the World Series, but without Black, who never pitched again. He
died April 21, 1959 at the age of 42.
     Baseball's Domesday Books credit lefthanded pitcher Bert Shepard with one
major league appearance. What the books do not say is that this game was
pitched by a one-legged man. When Shepard's call to World War Two service
came, he was a promising young pitcher. The fortunes of war took him to the
European front, where he was downed over Germany on his thirty-fifth mission
and taken prisoner. Doctors removed his shattered right leg, after which a
fellow prisoner of war fashioned him a wooden leg. After his recapture and
return to the States, he was signed by the Washington Senators as a batting
practice pitcher. In his one appearance in a regular game, he allowed one run
in 5 1/3 innings for an ERA of 1.69.
     Lou Brissie, like Bert Shepard, was a victim of World War Two combat.
Brissie, who joined the Army in 1942 as a teenager, was badly wounded on the
Italian front and forced to undergo twenty-three operations. Despite the
handicap of a steel leg brace and a leather guard, he never gave up his dream
of becoming a major league pitcher. In 1947, for Savannah of the Sally
League, he won 23 games and earned a late-season call-up from the Philadelphia
Athletics. From 1947 to 1953, he won 44 games for the A's and the Indians, to
whom he was traded in 1951. His best year was 1949, when he won 16 games and
pitched in the All-Star Game. He was only twenty-nine when his career came to
a close. He then became national director of the American Legion baseball
program.
     Herb Score was a third American League lefty to see his career
abbreviated by injury. In 1955, Score won 16 games for Cleveland and struck
out 245; then in 1956 he improved to 20 wins and 263 strikeouts. Along the
banks of Lake Erie, he was hailed as a lefthanded Bob Feller. But it was not
to be. On May 7, 1957, at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, he was hit in the
eye by a torrid line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald of the New York
Yankees and seriously injured.
     His recovery was slow, and he did not return to the Indians until 1958
and then only for 12 games. On April 18, 1960, he was traded to the White Sox
for Barry Latman. After three seasons of limited duty for the Sox, he called
it a day. He remains in baseball as the play-by-play announcer for the
Indians.
     Brooklyn catcher Roy Campanella was thirty-six and in the twilight of a
remarkable career that had seen him win three Most Valuable Player awards,
when disaster struck on a January night in 1958. He was driving to his Long
Island home in the early hours of the morning when his borrowed car skidded on
a slippery spot in the road and slammed into a utility pole. The two broken
vertebrae he suffered doomed him to a long and excruciatingly painful period
of recovery and rehabilitation, not to mention lifelong confinement to a
wheelchair.
     On May 7, 1959, before a crowd of 93,103 fans at the Los Angeles
Coliseum, the Dodgers and the Yankees met in a mammoth benefit for the
paralyzed Campanella. It was an emotional affair, rivaling similar tributes
to Yankee greats Gehrig and Ruth at Yankee Stadium.
     The courage Campanella displayed in his rehabilitation was an inspiration
to many others who suffered severe spinal injuries. He received baseball's
highest honor in 1969--election to the Hall of Fame.
     Mike Pazik, a lefthander from Lynn, Mass., who appeared briefly for
Minnesota in 1975, 1976, and 1977, saw his pitching career terminated when he
suffered multiple fractures of both legs in a 1977 automobile accident. He
returned to the game in 1980 as a coach for the White Sox. Later, he served
four years as a roving pitching instructor for the Milwaukee Brewers, and then
in late 1987 he was named pitching coach for Charlotte of the Double-A
Southern League.
     Houston righthander J.R. Richard, at 6'8" and 222 pounds, was an
intimidating figure on the mound. From 1976 through 1979, his strikeout log
showed 214, 214, 303, and 313, respectively, while his victories totaled 74.
In 1980, even though slowed by arm and shoulder injuries, he was chosen to
start for the National League in the All-Star Game at Los Angeles. But, as
fate would have it, he was to pitch just two more innings for the Astros
before being laid low by a stroke. The rehabilitation was painfully slow, but
there always seemed to be hope that his career could be salvaged, but such
hopes proved to be futile. Twice (in 1982 and 1983) he tried to pitch in the
lower minors, but the illness had taken too great a toll.
     In 1988, while with the San Francisco Giants, lefty Dave Dravecky
developed a cancerous growth on his pitching arm. An operation and a long
recuperation followed. He tried to come back in 1989, but in a late-season
game against Montreal his pitching arm broke as he was delivering a pitch.
Subsequently his arm was amputated, bringing to an end a once promising
career. His major league record was 64-57 with an ERA of 3.13.
     First baseman Nick Esasky enjoyed a career year with the Boston
Red Sox in 1989, with 38 home runs and 108 RBIs. He then signed a lucrative
free agent contract with the Atlanta Braves. During spring training he began
to suffer from vertigo. He played only nine regular season games in 1990
before being disabled. His failure to recover baffled a horde of medical
experts. He did not play at all in 1991, tried to come back in '92, but was
eventually released by the Braves.
     Bo Jackson of the Kansas City Royals was one of the most exciting
players to hit the majors in years. He could run, throw, field, and hit with
power. He was also a superstar in football and that proved to be his
downfall. An innocent-looking sideline tackle while he was playing for the
Los Angeles Raiders in 1990 resulted a serious hip injury. Released by the
Royals, he was given another chance by the White Sox in 1991. He played in
only 23 late-season games, batting .225 with three home runs. His hip
continued to deteriorate and eventually had to be surgically replaced. He did
not play at all in 1992, but, miraculously, returned to action in 1993,
playing the entire season for the White Sox, mainly as a designated hitter.
     Careers cut short for psychological reasons are not common, but there
have been a few. Steve Blass, hero of the 1971 Pittsburgh World Series
victory over Baltimore and winner of 19 games in 1972, suddenly could not
throw strikes. So severe was the mental block that his baseball life ended in
1974 when he was only thirty-two. Kevin Saucier, a lefthanded relief pitcher
for Detroit, had 13 saves and 4 wins in 1981; then, inexplicably, he developed
the Steve Blass syndrome and could not throw strikes. In his case it was a
fear of hitting and injuring a batter. He could not overcome the problem, and
at twenty-six he was out of baseball. Joe Cowley, who pitched for the Braves,
Yankees, White Sox, and Phillies, and who has a no-hit game to his credit,
simply could not throw strikes and was sent to the minors by the Phillies in
1987. He could not throw strikes there either and finally was sent home.
     At least one career came to a premature end because of a fear of flying.
Jackie Jensen, who hit 199 home runs in eleven seasons with the Yankees,
Senators, and Red Sox, retired first in 1959, tried again in 1961, but then
quit for good at the age of thirty-four.
     It was on July 30, 1991, eleven years to the day on which J. R. Richard
of the Houston Astros was hit by a massive stroke, that 28- year old Jeff
Gray, Boston Red Sox pitcher, met the same fate. Stricken while sitting in
front of his locker at Fenway Park, suddenly he was unable to walk, talk, or
grip a baseball. After two years of excruciating rehabilitation, in which he
had to relearn almost every normal activity, he has even reached the point of
being able to pitch with some authority. He hopes to be able to earn a spot on
the Red Sox pitching staff in 1994.


Alcohol and Drugs

     It is impossible to put a number on the baseball careers shortened or
adversely affected by the excessive use of alcohol. In at least four cases
(Delahanty, Koenecke, Morris, and Wilson), dealt with elsewhere in this
chapter, fatalities resulted. Countless players of the game's early years
were lushes. Liquor was readily available to them, often on the house, and
there was plenty of time for carousing, especially when on the road. Some of
the worst offenders were quietly blacklisted and faded from the game. Others
who were heavy drinkers continued in uniform, because they were star players
and the owners winked at their alcoholic escapades. Future Hall of Famer
Michael "King" Kelly, for example, drank as hard as he played; yet in 1887
Boston paid an unheard of $10,000 to Chicago for his contract. Toward the end
of his career, he opened a saloon in New York, which was like putting the fox
in charge of the chicken coop. His performance level deteriorated rapidly,
and by 1894 he was in the minors. That fall he developed pneumonia, and on
November 8 he died at the age of thirty-six.
     Terry Larkin, who won 29 games for Hartford in 1877, and 29 and 31,
respectively, for Chicago in 1878 and 1879, was another ninteenth-century
player whose career self-destructed from the ravages of strong drink. In
1883, while drunk, he shot his wife (she recovered) and then tried to commit
suicide in jail. In 1886, while employed as a bartender in Brooklyn, he
showed up for work with two pistols and challenged his employer to a duel.
Police ware called and he was thrown into jail until he sobered up. He died
in Brooklyn in 1894.
     Equally melancholy is the story of James (The Troy Terrier) Egan, who
pitched, caught and played the outfield for Troy (NL) in 1882 and then was
blacklisted for drunkenness. Supposedly rehabilitated, he was given a chance
with Brooklyn (AA) in 1884, but before he played a game he was arrested for
theft and jailed. He died of what was described as "brain fever" in a New
Haven, Connecticut, jail, September 26, 1884.
     Few players have come to the majors with more raw talent than Louis
Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Old Towne, Maine. He played college
baseball at both Holy Cross and Notre Dame. While at the latter school in
1897, he and a companion broke up an establishment run by a certain "Popcorn
Jennie" and threw the furniture out the windows. When the good fathers who
ran Notre Dame read about this caper in the South Bend Tribune, they promptly
threw him out. Future major league catcher Mike Powers, who had been
instrumental in getting Sockalexis into both Holy Cross and Notre Dame, wired
the Cleveland Club, with whom the Indian had signed a contract to take effect
at the end of the school year, and suggested it send someone to South Bend to
bail him out. Manager Patsy Tebeau caught the next train west, and in a few
days Sockalexis was in a Cleveland uniform. He impressed with his strength,
speed, and magnificent arm. In later years, both John McGraw and Hughie
Jennings said he was the greatest natural talent they had ever seen. Even
allowing for the hyperbole that often accompanies such reminiscence, it is
apparent that he was a player of exceptional ability. But just as exceptional
was his appetite for strong drink. Frequently interrupted by binges and
injuries (once he jumped from a second-floor window and severely injured an
ankle), his major league career was limited to 94 games in three seasons.
     Sockalexis died in Burlington, Maine, on December 24, 1913, at the age of
forty-two. His baseball monument is not his .313 batting average but the
Cleveland Indians baseball club, which was nicknamed after him.
     Hall of Famer Rube Waddell gained almost as much notoriety for his
drinking as he did recognition for his pitching. Lowell Reidenbaugh, in his
Cooperstown, tells how Waddell would come into a bar, penniless, and whisper
to the bartender, "Give me a drink, and I will give you the ball I used to
defeat Cy Young in twenty innings."  According to Reidenbaugh, hundreds of
bartenders "displayed what they considered to be the historic souvenir."
     Despite the abuse he gave his body, the Rube lasted for thirteen major
league seasons and won 191 games. But his indiscretions led to tuberculosis
and he died in San Antonio, Texas, on April 1, 1914, at the age of
thirty-seven.
     Waddell contemporary Arthur (Bugs) Raymond was not the pitcher the
Rube was, but he was his equal in the drinking department. The efforts of
Giants manager John McGraw to rein him in are a part of the lore and
legend of baseball. Raymond finally became so uncontrollable that the
Giants let him go in the spring of 1912. Later that year Raymond, while
drunk, was watching a sandlot game in Chicago when a spectator picked up
a broken piece of pottery and threw it, hitting Raymond in the face. A fight
ensued in which Raymond was badly beaten up. He went back to his hotel
room, where six days later he died of a cerebral hemhorrage, caused by a
skull fracture. He was only thirty years old. One former teammate said
of him, "Bugs paid too much too soon for too many drinks."
     The problem of alcoholism continues in the modern game, but added to it
is an affliction even more virulent--the use of illegal drugs. Careers are
being shortened or interrupted by excessive drinking or the ingestion of
drugs, or by a combination of both. In the old days, when a player drank too
much, he was either shunted aside or his problem was swept under the rug.
Now, the usual pattern is a confession of the problem, or exposure, followed
by treatment, rehabilitation, sometimes suspension, but then a return to the
game.
     In 1983 the baseball world was rocked by the news that four players on
the Kansas City Royals--Willie Wilson, Willie Aikens, Jerry Martin, and Vida
Blue (no longer with the team)--had been involved with illegal drugs. All
were suspended for one year by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, although later an
arbitrator reduced the suspensions, except for Blue's. Meanwhile, indictments
were handed down and all were convicted and sentenced to one year in jail,
with the last nine months suspended. Eventually Wilson returned to the
Royals. Aikens was traded to Toronto but then went to the minors. Martin and
Blue are out of baseball.
     Pitcher Steve Howe of the Los Angeles Dodgers was suspended for the 1984
season for alleged drug use and did not challenge it. After at least two
relapses, he was signed by the Texas Rangers and appeared for them late in the
1987 season. He was out of baseball in '88 and '89, but made a comeback in
1991 and eventually worked himself up to a prominent place in the New
York Yankee bullpen. After his conviction in 1992 in Kalispell, Montana,
for drug possession, he was barred from baseball "for life" by Commissioner
Fay Vincent, but was given yet another chance to play in 1993, by virtue
of a ruling by an arbitrator. He pitched the entire season for
the Yankees, with spotty results, and presumably passed all his
required blood tests.
     Atlanta pitcher Pascual Perez spent three months in a Dominican
Republic jail on drug charges during the 1983-1984 off-season and was also
suspended by Commissioner Kuhn. Arbitrator Richard I. Bloch, who had also
ruled in the Willie Wilson et al. cases, subsequently threw out the Perez
suspension because of lack of evidence.
     Also in 1983, pitcher Dickie Noles of the Cubs spent time in jail after a
drunken brawl in Cincinnati. Outfielder Ron LeFlore was arrested on drug and
weapons charges in 1982 while with the White Sox. Although found not guilty,
he was released by the Sox in April 1983.
     Bob Welch, talented righthanded pitcher of the Dodgers, best remembered
for his classic confrontation with Reggie Jackson of the Yankees in the 1978
World Series, revealed that he had been an alcoholic for many years. After
rehabilitation and relegation to the minors, he returned to the Dodgers in
1986 and Oakland two years later. He has written a book about his
experiences, Five O'Clock Comes Early.
     A much-publicized drug trial that began in Pittsburgh on September 5,
1985, exposed the drug involvement of numerous players, including Keith
Hernandez of the Mets (formerly with the Cardinals) and Dave Parker of the
Reds (formerly with the Pirates). After the trial, Commissioner Peter
Ueberroth meted out penalties to twenty-one players, ranging from heavy fines
to be paid to drug prevention programs, orders to participate in random drug
testing, and the performance of drug-related community service.
     The shocking disclosures of widespread drug use that came out of the 1985
trial and the severe penalties that followed seemed to have a favorable impact
on the drug problem, but did not eliminate it entirely. In 1986 San Diego
pitcher LaMarr Hoyt, a Cy Young Award winner in 1983 when he was with the
White Sox, was arrested three times on drug-related charges, and after the
third was sentenced to forty-five days in federal prison. Hoyt's suspension
from baseball was later overturned, and he was ordered reinstated with back
pay, much to the dismay of the baseball hierarchy.
     Hoyt then signed with his old club, the Chicago White Sox, but his
troubles were far from over. He tested positive for cocaine three times in
October 1987, and then on December 4 he was arrested in his Columbia, S.C.,
apartment and charged with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana. He was
convicted the following year and sentenced to one year in prison. How
widespread has been the use of illegal drugs by major league players?  In a
recent book, Baseball Babylon, author Dan Gutman lists 83 players who have
been so involved.

     The list of tragedies and shortened careers has been a long one and sad.
It has included paragons and playboys, teetotalers and tosspots, the great,
the near-great, and the never-were; some who self-destructed and many more who
were simply the victims of the cruelest of bad luck. However classified, for
each player the hypothetical question remains:  Had his tragedy not occurred,
what might have been?


Careers Shortened by Blacklisting or Expulsion

Listed below, but not discussed in this chapter, are players blacklisted or
expelled from baseball for gambling, dishonest play (or knowledge of same),
criminal activity, or, in one case--that of Ray Fisher--violation of a
contract. The players involved in the 1877 Louisville and 1919 Chicago White
Sox scandals, all of whom were barred for life, are grouped; the others are
listed alphabetically:


1877 Louisville players

Bill Craver
Jim Devlin
George Hall
Al Nichols


1919 Chicago White Sox players

Eddie Cicotte
Oscar Felsch
Chick Gandil
Joe Jackson
Fred McMullin
Swede Risberg
Buck Weaver
Claude Williams.


Others

George Bechtel
Rube Benton (who was later reinstated and returned to the majors)
Hal Chase
Cozy Dolan
Phil Douglas
Jean Dubuc (who returned as a coach with Detroit in 1931)
Ray Fisher
Joe Gedeon
Claude Hendrix
Richard Higham (umpire)
Benny Kauff
Hubert Leonard
Lee Magee
Jimmy O'Connell
Eugene Paulette
Pete Rose
Heinie Zimmerman

[Former major leaguers banned from baseball for their activities in the minor
leagues include Babe Borton, Gene Dale, Jess Levan, Harl Maggert, Tom Seaton,
and Joe Tipton.]