Staff Blog
“The Death of Big Ed Delehanty”
“Delehanty’s body was mangled. One leg was torn off, presumably by the propeller of the Maid of the Mist.”
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| Big Ed |
| Dick Perez |
As a kid, I was obsessed with Phillies history. I’d head to the library and pore through old copies of The Baseball Encyclopedia and make up dream teams for my Microleague Baseball game. I became sort of obsessed with the Phils’ Hall of Fame outfield of the 90s… the 1890s.
In “Sliding Billy” Hamilton, “Big Sam” Thompson and “Big Ed” Delahanty (they weren’t terribly inventive with nicknames back then), the Phillies had an outfield that could hit, slug and run.
Delahanty’s career ended, two years after leaving the Phils, in the middle of the 1903 season. The story I, as a child, found was that Delahanty mysteriously fell off a bridge into Niagara Falls.
The real story is a big more sordid. The new album by The Baseball Project, Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (YepRoc), the songwriting endeavor of Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3) and Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, Minus 5, and R.E.M), full of darker-tinged baseball songs not in the vein of, say, John Fogerty’s “Centerfield,” tells the story of Big Ed’s untimely demise.
Essentially, dude got drunk and belligerent on a train and was thrown off by the conductor. Delahanty apparently started walking along the tracks, got to the bridge and, well… LIsten for yourself.
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.
