 19
to 21…
Far more than that have been done too soon.
Volume 7, #9, April 10, 2009
Done too Soon
It’s the type of story you never want to have to write. A
sudden death. A sudden death of a major league baseball player.
Or anyone else who was done too soon. Neil Diamond might have said
it best…
And each one there
Has one thing shared:
They have sweated beneath the same sun,
Looked up in wonder at the same moon,
And wept when it was all done
For being done too soon,
For being done too soon.
The current story is 22 year old Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart,
killed yesterday in an auto accident when a drunk driver ran a red
light. A tragedy, and not because he had made his 2009 major league
debut hours before, shutting out the Athletics for six innings.
A tragedy any way you look at it. For the driver who was so stupid
as to get behind the wheel drunk, and whose life may be ruined as
well. For the other two individuals killed in the accident. (As
Matt Coyne has pointed out, every headline said something like,
“Angels Pitcher, Two Others Killed.” Don’t the
other victims have names? Aren’t they also done too soon?)
For Adenhart’s family. For the Angels. For baseball fans.
Sadly, Adenhart is far from the first major league player to die
during the season. He’s also far from the first to die in
a traffic accident (Walter “Peck” Lerian and Bob Moose
are two cases where players died in traffic accidents right after
the close of the season.). Unless you have a very short memory,
you’ll recall that Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock died in
a traffic accident on April 29, 2007 in St. Louis. The cause? Hancock
was DUI, combined with using a cell phone while DUI. Why? It makes
you just want to shake the poor kid (he died two weeks after his
29th birthday) and cry, how could you be so dumb?
Deaths of major league players in-season, while not common, maybe
aren’t as rare as you might think. The first took place before
there were major leagues, or minor leagues, or any kind of leagues.
Imagine Babe Ruth dying in an auto accident during his first year
with the Yankees (which is exactly what almost happened when he
rolled his car on Dead Man’s Curve outside of Wawa, Pennsylvania
in 1920) and you’ll have some idea of the magnitude of the
death of Jim Creighton on October 18, 1862 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
At the age of 21 years and six months, Jim Creighton had established
himself not just as the finest baseball player of his time, but
a player who was in the process of defining the word great, in that
he was actually, on his own, bringing out a dramatic shift in the
way the game was played – sort of like Babe Ruth (who was
only 25 when he almost came to his end in Wawa) would do some 60
years later. Primarily a pitcher, Creighton was also such a good
hitter that, according to legend (and it is a legend) he once went
through an entire season without making an out. That’s a bit
much to swallow, but Creighton was a tremendous pitcher. In fact,
it can be said with accuracy that he was the first pitcher. Prior
to Creighton, whose services were in such demand that he pitched
for Brooklyn Niagara, Brooklyn Star and NABBP champion Brooklyn
Excelsior in the space of two seasons, the guy in the middle of
the diamond basically served the ball to the batter (or striker),
allowing said individual to put the ball into play so that the game’s
primary skill – fielding – could be displayed. Indeed,
pre-Creighton, the pitcher and the batter could be said to have
worked together to get the action going in the game of base ball.
Creighton changed all that, adding an illegal wrist snap to his
underhand delivery (the only kind allowed in that era – overhand
pitching as well as putting any kind a torque on the ball were against
the rules), which first of all made for a lot faster pitch, and
secondly, made the ball seem like it was coming up out of the ground.
A huge competitive advantage for whatever Brooklyn team for whom
he was pitching. So, not only did Creighton dazzle opposing batters,
he soon had every other player who stood in the middle of the diamond
copying his technique. Thus, was the art of pitching born. If that
isn’t causing a seminal change in the game…
Even though he died near the end of his third season with Excelsior,
Creighton had a huge influence on the game. His untimely end, though
still somewhat shrouded in time, has been best detailed in his bio
by John Thorn for SABR’s Baseball Biography Project. Although
there are conflicting reports as to what happened, the most likely
version is that Creighton suffered a severe internal injury while
hitting a home run in an October14, 1862 game against the Unions
of Morrisania. The batting style at that time didn’t allow
for much wrist action, thus a hitter would have to generate most
of his bat speed by torquing his body. At the time, the cause of
death was reported as being a ruptured bladder, although present
day speculation would seem to indicate that a ruptured inguinal
hernia or even a ruptured spleen might have been the cause. Whatever
the case, Creighton was already an historic figure in baseball,
and one who would eventually become mythic, at least among those
who know baseball history. For instance, in “If I Never Get
Back,” Darryl Brock has Creighton’s former teammate,
Asa Brainard (who was actually the pitcher the day Creighton was
fatally injured), still regretting Creighton’s loss, some
seven years after the fact. In “The Universal Baseball Association,
Inc.” novelist Robert Coover’s protagonist, J. Henry
Waugh, inserts a comment on Creighton’s demise and the elaborate
memorial his teammates erected for him. This scene in Coover’s
book comes during the wake held in memory of the death on the diamond
of the player who turns out to be the key figure in the entire book,
rookie pitcher Damon Rutherford, who was beaned by another rookie
pitcher, Jock Casey.
Of course, “real” baseball has had one real death from
just such an event. On August 16, 1920 Chapman, playing for the
Cleveland Indians, was beaned at the Polo Grounds by Yankees submariner
Carl Mays, and died the next day of a double skull fracture. Less
known, and less dramatic, was the death of Philadelphia Athletics
catcher Doc Powers, who caught Eddie Plank on the opening day of
Shibe Park, April 12, 1909. Two weeks later, he was dead from some
form of intestinal trauma, either a blockage of the bowels or perhaps
from an injury suffered when he ran into the low concrete wall that
separated the Shibe Park playing field from the stands behind home
plate (opinions on this one vary, too.)
If Powers did die of medical causes, he is also not the only player
to suffer that fate during the season. Recall that it was just less
than seven years ago (June 22, 2002) that Cardinals pitcher Darryl
Kile died of a heart ailment just four days after pitching his last
game. What you might not recall is that Urban Shocker suffered the
same fate, just not quite as dramatically. Shocker died of heart
trouble on September 9, 1928, a little more than three months after
he last took the mound for the Yankees. Two other supremely talented
pitchers, Charlie Ferguson and Addie Joss, also died of illness.
Ferguson, who was another player in the Creighton/Ruth mold (he
could both pitch and hit), died of typhoid fever in teammate Arthur
Irwin’s home on North Broad Street in Philadelphia on April
29, 1888. He was 25 years old. Had he lived, the Phillies might
well have won a National League pennant long before 1915. Joss,
the ace of the Cleveland Indians, died of meningitis on April 14,
1911. He was so good, he was eventually elected to the Hall of Fame,
despite the fact he didn’t play in 10 major league seasons.
Two other players of potential also fit in here. Former Indian and
Colt 45 prospect Walt Bond died of leukemia on Sept. 14, 1967, just
over four months after his final game with the Minnesota Twins.
Harry Agganis, the Golden Greek, threw a blood clot on June 27,
1955 while he was in the hospital for another medical problem, and
died less than four weeks after his last game as a fabled prospect
for the Red Sox.
And then there was the special and troubling case of Willard Hershberger,
the Reds back-up catcher as they pursued the 1940 National League
pennant. Convinced he had cost the Reds the game of August 2, 1940
with his play (regular Ernie Lombardi was injured), Hershberger,
who was nonetheless hitting .309, but who also had a history of
mental trouble in his family, slit his throat the next day and died
in his Boston hotel room. The Reds, to their credit, managed to
pull themselves together and still go on to take the World Series,
after which they voted Hershberger’s mother a full share of
the World Series money.
Automobile mishaps aren’t the only type of accident that
has interrupted the careers. Lyman Bostock died in a car, but not
as the result of a traffic accident. He was the innocent victim
of a shooting, taking a bullet meant for another occupant of the
same vehicle. Thurman Munson famously died in the crash of his private
jet while he was practicing touch and go landings on an off day
from his day job as the Yankee catcher (Roberto Clemente, Ken Hubbs
and Charlie Peete are among the players who have died in off-season
plane crashes). Len Koenecke also died in a plane, but not a crash.
His story is more in keeping with Hershberger’s. Sent to the
minors by the Brooklyn Dodgers on September 16, 1935, Koenecke charted
a small plane the next day to supposedly take him to his next team.
In reality, it appears that he wanted to commit suicide. During
the flight, he tried to crash the plane by grabbing the controls.
This caused a fight in the cockpit that ended with one of the pilots
braining Koenecke with a fire extinguisher. By the time the plane
made an emergency landing on a race track outside of Toronto, Koenecke
had indirectly gotten his wish.
Perhaps the only in-season death stranger than Koenecke’s
was that of Ed Delahanty. One of the supremely talented hitters
of his day, or any day, Big Ed met his death at Niagara Falls. Drunk
and disorderly, he was put off his train (the theory is he was traveling
alone to New York to try and jump the Senators and join up with
the Giants) in the middle of the night by the railroad bridge crossing
the Niagara River above the falls. He tried to follow the train
across the bridge, and fell in the river, being carried over the
falls to his death. It makes you just want to shake Delahanty (who
was also later voted into the Hall) and cry, how could you be so
dumb?
The death of Nick Adenhart may not have that exact aspect of pathos,
but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
-- John Shiffert
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