The Mysterious Death Of Baseball's Ed Delahanty

[Old Sweater]

http://boxscorenews.com/the-mysterio...ty-p475-83.htm


July 9, 1903 a horribly mangled corpse was dragged from the Niagara River’s Canadian side. Authorities later confirmed the gruesome find was Baseball’s “King of Swat”. Seven days prior, Ed Delahanty simply and inexplicably left his Washington team during a series in Detroit. He boarded a train destined for New York City. To date, his vanishing and cause of death remain a mystery.

[BobH]

Considering that he was drunk enough to get himself thrown off the train I would say he was probably fully capable of falling off a bridge. I believe it was a simple accident without the intrigue.-BH

[soberdennis]

We'll really never know exactly what happened, especially since it has been 107 years. But I tend to agree with Bob that the death may very well have been purely accidental.

[soberdennis]

I don't completely agree with the article, though. League jumping was already occurring. Nap Lajoie was of course the most notable and famous case. Later that year, peace was made between the leagues. I can't see where Delahanty's jump would have changed that. If anything, it may have hastened it, if necessary.

[Old Sweater]

Then there is mention of the mysterious watchman who may have tossed him? We'll never know.

[RickD]

Mystery solved. This is the official obit as it appeared in the NY Times:

DELEHANTY'S BODY FOUND.
_______________
Baseball Player Swept over Niagara
Falls—Woman's Body Also Recovered.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y., July 9.—The body of Edward Delehanty, the right fielder of the Washington baseball team of the American League, who fell from the International Bridge last Thursday night, was taken from the river at the lower Niagara gorge to-day. Relatives of Delehanty arrived here this afternoon and positively identified the body as that of the missing baseball player.

The body of a woman thirty-five years old was also recovered at Lewiston to-day. It has not been identified.

Delehanty's body was mangled. One leg was torn off, presumably by the propeller of the Maid of the Mist, near whose landing the body was found. The body will be shipped to Washington to-night.

Delehanty's effects have been sent to his wife by the Pullman people.

Frank Delehanty of the Syracuse team and E.J. McGuire, a brother-in-law, from Cleveland, are here investigating the death of the player. They do not believe that Delehanty committed suicide or that he had been on a spree in Detroit. In the sleeper on the Michigan Central train on the way down from Detroit, Delehanty had five drinks of whiskey says Conductor Cole, and became so obstreperous that he had to put him off the train at Bridgeburg at the Canadian end of the bridge. Cole says Delehanty had an open razor and was terrifying others in the sleeper.

When the train stopped at Bridgeburg Cole did not deliver Delehanty up to a constable, as the Canadian police say he should have done. He simply put him off the train.

After the train had disappeared across the bridge, Delehanty started to walk across, which is against the rules. The night watchman attempted to stop him, but Delehanty pushed the man to one side. The draw of the bridge had been opened for a boat, and the player plunged into the dark waters of the Niagara.

Delehanty's relatives hint at foul play, but there is nothing in the case, apparently, to bear out such a theory

[soberdennis]

Mystery solved. This is the official obit as it appeared in the NY Times:

Thanks Rick. I had never heard that part of the story.

The draw of the bridge had been opened for a boat, and the player plunged into the dark waters of the Niagara.

[RickD]

Yeah I had never heard that before but found the actual obit on baseball-almanac....

[Old Sweater]

Yeah^ but then you have this account of the watchman to reckon with.

http://www.thebaseballpage.com/players/delahed01.php

While conducting his rounds, Sam Kingston, the night watchman on the International Bridge, came across Delahanty leaning against one of the iron trusses. Kingston didn't recognize the slugger, even after shining his lantern in his face; when Delahanty became belligerent, the watchman lunged at the stranger in an effort to subdue him. Delahanty ran, and the next thing Kingston heard was a splash in the water some 20 feet below.

Frank Delahanty, Ed’s younger brother and an outfielder for Syracuse in the International League, arrived to observe the body. He questioned how Ed’s tie could be in place, yet his diamond tie pin and rings had disappeared. Conducting further investigations of his own, he never could accept Kingston’s story.

Frank refused to see how the septuagenarian Kingston had come out on top in a scuffle with the "King of Swat," and even though Kingston asserted that the stranger had wielded a lump of coal as a weapon, there was no coal in the vicinity of the bridge. To add to the intrigue, LeBlond found the body of a local farmer under the same waterfall shortly afterwards, minus 1,500 dollars he had been carrying when he left home.

Plus in this article the Delahanty family got a $5000 settlement from the railroad.

[RickD]

I'd like to see their Sourcing for this info.