Caught Between Leagues: The Tragic Death of Ed Delahanty
William J. Kovatch, Jr.
On July 9,
1903, the naked, mangled body of a man with his leg shorn off was fished out of
the Niagara Gorge, downstream from Niagara Falls. The body was identified as Ed Delahanty,
outfielder for the Washington Senators and former offensive powerhouse for the
Philadelphia Phillies. Delahanty had
last been seen on July 2, when a train conductor, John Cole, fed up with
Delahanty’s drunken misconduct, threw him off of the train before crossing the
International Railway Bridge. A New York
Times obituary reported that Delahanty had an open razor and was terrorizing
passengers in a sleeper compartment.
Delahanty had been drinking too excess, and became confused and irate
when he tried to enter a sleeper compartment that was already occupied. Cole failed to follow proper procedures and
simply left Delahanty at the Bridgeburg station, instead of leaving Delahanty
in police custody. Delahanty then tried
to cross the bridge on foot. A night
watchman stopped him, but Delahanty pushed the watchman to the side. When the draw bridge opened, Delahanty
plunged into the Niagara River.
* * *
Albert
Pujols, Manny Ramirez, Miguel Cabrera, Ryan Howard: showing offensive prowess in the major leagues
can translate into lucrative contracts worth millions of dollars. The sluggers bring fans to the
ballparks. With free agency, once a
player’s contract is over, he can pick up and leave for the team that is the
highest bidder. Teams have shown a willingness
to pay millions of dollars to have a slugger draw fans to the ballpark.
But it
wasn’t always this way. In the
mid-nineteenth century, when the sport first organized, the National
Association of Base Ball Players vowed that no player would be paid for his
services. Soon this rule was being
observed in the breach, as clubs began paying the more talented men secretly to
play ball. By the winter of 1868, the
association relented and permitted teams to become fully professional.
Henry Wright was the first to take
advantage of the new rules in 1869, when he organized the first
all-professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Players, like Wright’s brother and shortstop
George Wright earned as much as $1,400 to play in front of crowds who bought a
ticket to watch the game. Despite having
an undefeated season, the Red Stockings’ investors earned a profit of $1. 39.
Since then, team owners sought to cut costs to squeeze profits out of ticket
sales. One method was through the
reserve clause.
Under the
reserve clause, once a player signed with a team, he was required to play the
following season for only that team.
While the team could trade the player to another club, the player did
not have the freedom to move from team to team on his own. It was a system abhorred by many players. It meant that a player could not sell his
services to the team that was the highest bidder. In the nineteenth century, men did not play
baseball professionally to become rich.
They played to escape the coal mines, or the cotton fields, or the
factories, or the shipyards.
Into this
world came Ed Delahanty, a tall Irishman from Cleveland, Ohio. While playing ball in sandlots, he was signed
to play semi-professionally by the Cleveland Shamrocks. By 1887, he was earning $50 per month in the
Ohio State League. That same year,
Delahanty quit college to devote himself to baseball full-time. In 1888, he batted .412 for a team from
Wheeling in the Tri-State League. His
skills were impressive enough for the Philadelphia Phillies to purchase his
contract for approximately $2,000.
Dissatisfaction
with the economics of baseball, however, was spreading amongst the
players. In 1889, Delahanty’s first full
year with the Phillies, John Montgomery Ward averted a players’ strike by encouraging
members of the young Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players to seek
financial backing to form a league of their own. The result was the Players League of
1890. About fifty-five percent of the
players from the National League, and seventeen percent of players from the
American Association left their teams in 1890 to join the Players League. Ed Delahanty was one of them.
In 1890,
Delahanty played for the Cleveland Infants.
He posted a .296 average in 115 games.
When all three leagues posted huge financial losses in 1890, investors
in the Players League got cold feet and disbanded. Teams from the National League and the
American Association drew up their reserve list, which forced players to return
to their original teams. In 1891,
Delahanty returned to the Phillies, and posted a batting average of only
.243. Still Delahanty scored 92 runs,
and drove in 86.
Delahanty’s
career began to take off in 1892, when he batted .306 and led the National
League in triples with 21. He anchored a
dominating Phillies line-up that included Sliding Billy Hamilton, Napoleon
Lajoie, Sam Thompson and Elmer Flick. By
1899, Delahanty had batted over .400 three times in his career, and had led the
league in home runs twice.
But
Delahanty’s success on the field did not translate into financial success off
the field. By 1900, Delahanty was
earning $3,000 per year. He had barely
been given a raise since the time he first joined the National League.
In 1901, the
American League burst on to the scene, giving the National League its first
real competition since the demise of the American Association in 1891. Eager to compete on equal footing, American
League teams signed stars away from the National League. Delahanty’s teammate, Nap Lajoie, had been
promised the same salary as Delahanty. However, Lajoie learned that he was
earning $2,600 compared to Delahanty’s $3,000.
When the Phillies refused to give Lajoie a raise in 1901, he jumped
leagues, joining Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics who offered Lajoie
$24,000 over four years.
Delahanty
likewise began looking for greener pastures in the American League. He found them in the Washington Senators, who
offered Delahanty a $4,000 salary for the 1902 season. Delahanty encouraged his Phillies teammates
to join his in the new venture. Soon
Elmer Flick and six other Phillies joined Delahanty in the American League. A lawsuit by the Phillies, however, resulted
in an injunction that prevented former Phillies from playing baseball for the
American League whenever their teams played in Pennsylvania. Lajoie, Delahanty and other former Phillies
would wait for their teams outside of Pennsylvania when road trips took their
teams to play the Athletics.
The 1902
season saw a heated battle between Lajoie and Delahanty for the batting title. While Lajoie’s average, .378, was higher than
Delahanty’s, Lajoie only had 381 plate appearances compared to Delahanty’s
539. Under current rules, Lajoie’s plate
appearances would not have qualified him as the batting champion.
Off the
field, demons plagued Delahanty. He was
addicted to the horse races and drank heavily.
To top it off, his wife Nellie fell ill.
Delahanty tried to parlay his on the field success to a new lucrative
contract by jumping leagues again. He
signed with the New York Giants for the 1903 season for a three year
contract. Statistics are vague, but it
believed that Delahanty was going to earn between $6,000 and $8,000 per
season. In addition, he was given a
$4,000 advance.
But the
National and American Leagues called a truce in 1903, and agreed to honor each
other’s contracts. This meant that
Delahanty’s contract with the Giants was now null and void. Moreover, he was required to pay back the
$4,000 advance. With the Senators,
Delahanty was set to make only $4,500 in 1903.
Washington agreed to pay the Giants the $4,000 he owed, but it would be
taken out of his salary in the 1903 and 1904 seasons.
Delahanty
did not get along with Washington manager Tom Loftus. Delahanty considered himself a left fielder
and balked at the idea of Loftus playing him in right field. He began drinking again, and sold off many of
his valuable possessions. He took out a
life insurance policy, and name his daughter, Florence, as the
beneficiary. Delahanty then heard the
National League President Harry Pulliam would allow George Davis, a shortstop,
to jump leagues and play for the Giants.
Hoping to renew his opportunity to play for New York, Delahanty
abandoned the Senators and boarded a train to New York. His last major league game was against
Cleveland on June 25, 1903, where he made his 2,597th hit of his
career. Two weeks later, Delahanty’s
mangled body would be found by William LaBlond, the operator of the Maid of the
Mist in the Niagara River.
In the end,
Delahanty was caught in the middle of a high stakes battle among wealthy team
owners. But even if Delahanty had found
the lucrative contract he desired, it is not clear that it would have solved
his financial problems. Delahanty’s
excesses off the field fueled his need for cash, and ultimately created the
perfect storm that led to his tragic death.
References
“Delahanty’s Body Found,” New York Times (July 10, 1903).
“Ed Delahanty,” Baseball-Reference.com,
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/delahed01.shtml.
“The Life and 1903 Death of Ed Delahanty,” Cleveland Plain
Dealer (July 2, 1995).
Lisle, Ben, “Wright and the Reds,” http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/INCORP/baseball/wright.html
(2000).
Saccoman, John,
“Ed Delahanty,” Deadball Stars of the
American League, David Jones, ed., (Potomac Books, Inc., 2006).
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