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National Baseball Debate -- When Fate Met Ed Delahanty
This is a look back at one of my favorite baseball players, Ed Delahanty. He was, perhaps, the greatest hitting left fielder in Major League history. What drew me to his story, on top of how well he managed to hit the ball, was the circumstances surrounding his death.
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Ed Delahanty was by no means the only baseball player to die violently and strangely.
There was Lynman Bostock, the Angels outfielder who was shot in 1978 by an insanely (and mistakenly) jealous husband. There was Len Koenecke, the Dodger outfielder who dies in 1935 in a plane -- not in a crash, but in a fight with the pilot. And, of course, there was Ray Chapman, the Indian shortstop who in 1920 was killed by a Carl Mays fastball. Mays never really shook off suspicions that he was aiming for Chapman's head.
In Delahanty's time especially, violence was very much a part of the game. Players fought with umpires, fans and each other. John McGraw, an Oriole shortstop and later Giant manager, routinely used spikes to stomp on umpire's feet.
Amid all of this, Delahanty's death stood out. For one thing, he was a future Hall of Famer, a slugger who rarely struck out, who won a batting title in each league and had a lifetime average of .346. In a deadball era, he hit 101 home runs. So far did his balls travel that others' home runs were known as "Delahantly bunts." Once, Cy Young tried to intentionally walk him, Delahanty reached across the plate and hit a home run. Another time, he broke a third baseman's ankle with a low line drive. When Babe Ruth came onto the scene, the player he was most often compared to was Ed Delahanty.
So, on July 9, 1903, when Delahanty was found floating below the Niagara Falls, it was understandably the source of great deal of excitement and speculation. More than a hundred years later, it still is.
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Once police identified the body under the falls, they retracted the steps that led him there. They found two key witnesses. One was John Cole, the conductor aboard a train en route from Detroit to New York, that Delahanty boarded the afternoon of July 2. (Cole didn't recognize him at the time; only after Delahanty's death did the conductor realize his passenger was the famous ball player.) The passenger quickly caused trouble. He refused to stop smoking, or to move to a smoking car. He tried to push down a wood partition. Later that night, for no apparent reason, he started grabbing sleeping passengers by the ankles and pulling them from their berths.
Finally, Cole had enough. The train stopped on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, and Delahanty was told to get off.
Delahanty apparently headed across the International Bridge, where he encountered Sam Kingston, a night guard. He told police that he saw a man, apparently drunk, on the bridge. Kingston ordered him off the bridge, there was a brief struggle, and the man fled. Then Kingston heard a splash in the water. Later, Kingston told a reporter that the man was "the worse of liquor."
Did all of that happen?
Possibly. Delahanty had been known to go on drinking binges. In fact, when he failed to show up for a game in Detroit a few days before his death, his Washington Senator teammates shrugged it off. Ed had disappeared before, usually to drink or gamble or both. Newspapers, in those days reluctant to taint the image of a superstar, reported that he was "under the weather."
There was also talk of suicide, especially from nervous railroad officials. Kingston pushed this version, telling reporters that "he must have climbed over the girders, then onto the pier and jumped off."
But many, especially Delahanty's family, suspected foul play. Frank Delahanty, then twenty years of age and an outfielder in the New York State League, examined his brother's body and wondered why a tie was still around Ed's neck, but the diamond pin that had held it in place was gone. Two rings Ed wore also were gone, along with other jewelry family members said the victim had with him. Frank suspected that Ed had been robbed, then pushed from the bridge. When Kingston later changed his story to emphasize Ed's drunkenness and deny any sort of physical confrontation with him, Frank became even more suspicious.
A Niagara Falls newspaper, The Cataract Journal, also was skeptical of the official story. "Railroad officials say that he jumped from the bridge but there is another surmise that he was held up by the bridge tender, then an altercation and struggle ensued between the two men and that Delahanty either fell off or was shoved off the bridge."
Ed's widow, Norine, sued the railroad for kicking her husband off the train, and was awarded $3,000. Still, no criminal charges were brought against Cole or Kingston or anyone else. Police concluded that whatever jewelry the victim might have had on him had been washed away by the Niagara River. Officially, the case was closed.
Indeed, there was a strong case for suicide. It had not been a good year for Delahanty. True, he was hitting .333 when he disappeared. But his fielding was terrible, so much so that the Washington Post labeled it "suspicious." Washington manager Tom Loftus tried moving Delahanty from right to left field, but he was even less comfortable and competent there. Moreover, the Senators were slumping, so much so that when Loftus was suspended for a fight in St. Louis, reporters joked he was being rewarded with five days away from the team.
In Detroit, Ed wrote a letter to Norine and enclosed an accident insurance policy, made out to his daughter. If he was thinking suicide, his drinking must have made things worse.
He also must have been embarrassed by a July 1 headline in the Detroit Times, "Big Fellow Decides to Cut Out the Booze." It was bad enough to be depressed and drunk without the world reading about it.
Wrote a Buffalo Courier-Express port:
He had the blues, So he quaffed some booze And turned up dead In just necktie and shoes.
Blues and booze may have lead to his death, but there was more to Ed's depression. If a fielding slump and a losing record were enough to spark a suicide, the Senators would have been defunct long before club owners moved the original team to Minnesota in 1960 and a later version to Texas in 1971. Delahanty also had financial woes, many of which could be traced to the turn-of-the-century was between the National league and the upstart American League.
In 1899, Delahanty hit .410 for the Philadelphia Phillies, topping the National League. He made only $2,400. So it was not surprising that the Senators offered him $4,000 a year for 1902 and 1903, Delahanty jumped to the American. Alas, Delahanty liked to gamble as well as drink, and he lost much of his salary at the track.
Then his luck seemed to turn. The National League wanted him back, in the person of John McGraw, who was eager to have Ed in the outfield for the New York Giants. After the 1902 season, in which he lead the American League with a .376 average, McGraw offered him $6,000 a year for three years. Delahanty jumped again. He also accepted a $4,000 advance from the Giants.
At this point the owners had had enough of this interleague free agency. The two leagues agreed to stop raiding each other's players, and they ordered players back to the 1902 teams. They also ordered Delahanty to return the $4,000 advance to the Giants. Delahanty had already lost money at the track. That meant he owed the Giants most of what he stood to earn playing, again, for the Senators. This was certainly a depressing prospect.
The interleague war may have contributed even more directly to Delahanty's death. Near the end of June, while the Senators were playing in Cleveland, Delahanty may have picked up a copy of the Cleveland Press and seen the headline "Base Ball Was Is on Again." McGraw had ordered two of his preseason signees to leave their American League teams and come to New York. Delahanty might very have assumed he was next and may have decided to see McGraw. After all, as many of his teammates later pointed out, the train he boarded in Detroit was bound for New York. The chance to play for the Giants must have elated Delahanty, but -- coupled with his drinking -- it may have increased his agitation. Certainly that was made the state in which Cole and Kingston described him.
Frank Delahanty: "We couldn't prove anything, but I understand what started the whole thing was that he was going to leave the team and go for new York to play for the Giants. He was going to jump back to the National League. If he had made it, the baseball war between the two leagues would have started all over again."
Sporting Life: "The American League players as a mass sincerely mourn Delahanty's unfortunate death, and attribute it to the management of the New York National League Club."
Fred Postal, Senators owner: "John T. Bush, president of the New York National League baseball team, is responsible for the death of Edward Delahanty."
McGraw responded that the American League was to blame for invalidating Delahanty's deal with the Giants and sending him back to the Senators.
The American League got the last word that fall. In the first World Series between the leagues, the Boston Pilgrims defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5 games to 3.
--National
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To Investigate Further:
"John McGraw" by Charles Alexander. A scholarly study of baseball "rowdy" era, and one of its most rowdiest players and managers.
"A Baseball Mystery Is 85 Years Old" by Frank Fitzpatrick.
"His Ticket Said New York City, but Fate Said Niagara Falls" by Robert Summers.
[ July 25, 2009, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: National ]
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