Eddie Collins

This article was written by Paul Mittermeyer 
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Eddie-Collins/
Researched and compiled by Carrie Birdsong

An excellent place-hitter, slick fielder, and brainy baserunner, Eddie Collins epitomized the style of play that made the Deadball Era unique.  At the plate, the 5-foot-9, 175-pound left-handed batter possessed a sharp batting eye, and aimed to hit outside pitches to the opposite field and trick deliveries back through the box.  Once on base, Collins was a master at stealing, even though his foot wasn’t particularly noteworthy.  A believer in the principle that a runner steals off the pitcher and not the catcher, Collins practiced that art of studying pitchers – how they held the ball for certain pitches, how they looked off runners, all the pitcher’s moves.  He focused especially on the feet and hips of the pitcher, rather than just his hands, and thus was able to take large leads off first base and get excellent jumps.

An Ivy League graduate, Collins was one of the smartest players of his day, and he knew it.  Saddled with the nickname “Cocky” from early in his career, Collins drew the resentment of teammates for his self-confidence and good breeding that at times seemed as though it belonged more in a ballroom than a baseball clubhouse.  Perhaps for this reason, contradiction and complexity became a recurring theme throughout his 25-year major-league career.  He made his major league debut under an alias and later served as captain of the most infamous team in baseball history, the 1919 Chicago White Sox.  He won an award recognizing him as the most valuable player in the league, only to be sold off to another club in the subsequent offseason.  Despite his upper-class origins and education, Collins abided by a litany of superstitions, although he insisted he was “not superstitious, just thought it was unlucky to get base hits.”[1]

Edward Trowbridge Collins was born on May 2, 1887, in Millerton, New York, the son of railroad freight agent John Rossman Collins and Mary Meade (Trowbridge) Collins.  When Eddie was 8 months old, the Collins family moved to Tarrytown, New York, in the Hudson Valley 30 miles north of New York City.  Young Collins registered at the Irving School in Tarrytown for the fourth grade in 1895.  By legend, he played ball there that afternoon and continued smashing hits for Irving through the spring of 1903, when he graduated from the prep school.  That fall he entered Columbia University.  Though a slight 135 pounds, the precocious 16-year-old quarterbacked the freshman football team and later one season on the varsity before the school dropped football entirely -- "At that time,” Collins recalled, “I liked football better than I liked baseball”[2] – and was the starting shortstop for the college nine.

Shortly after beginning his amateur athletic career at Columbia, Collins began picking up paying gigs on the side.  In 1904 he pitched for the Tarrytown Terrors for $1 per game.  He also performed for the Red Hook (New York) squad, drawing closer to $5 a contest.  In the summer of 1096, Eddie played for a succession of semipro clubs – in Plattsburgh, Rutland, and Rockville – before his professional career was discovered, thus invalidating his senior year of eligibility at Columbia.  The summer was not to be a total loss, however.  While honeymooning, Andy Coakley, a pitcher with the Philadelphia Athletics, happened to see Collins playing for Rutland.  Coakley sent word of the youngster to Connie Mack, who dispatched backup catcher Jimmy Byrnes to develop an in-depth scouting report.[3]  When Byrnes confirmed the pitcher’s observations, Mack signed Collins to a 1907 contract, but not before Collins obtained a written promise that Mack would not send him to the minor leagues without his consent.  John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants, had been aware of the budding prospect but declined to offer him a trial.

At Connie Mack’s suggestion, Collins made his major-league debut under the alias of Eddie T. Sullivan on September 17, 1906, at Chicago’s South Side Park.  “I put on a uniform that did not fit me too well,” he recalled later.” "Gosh, I weighed about only 140 pounds.  I was self-conscious among all those big fellows – men like [Rube] Waddell, whom I had read so much about.”[4]  He played that first game at shortstop behind the future Hall of Famer Waddell, who completely subdued Eddie in batting practice.  Nonetheless, “Sullivan” managed to reach Chicago’s Big Ed Walsh for a bunt single in his first at-bat.  Six fielding chances were executed flawlessly that day, though Eddie’s tenure at short was not to last.

Having played six games with the Athletics, Collins was back in class at Columbia shortly after the Mackmen completed their Western tour.  On March 26, 1907, the day of Columbia’s opening game, Collins ran out to take field at shortstop before being informed that the University Committee on Athletics at Columbia had ruled him ineligible for the 1907 season – not because of his time with the Athletics, which wasn’t revealed publicly until years later, but because he had been paid to play with semipro teams in Plattsburgh and Rockville.  Still, Eddie’s game smarts earned him the unprecedented position of undergraduate assistant coach for the Lions’ 1907 squad.  By this time, the baseball bug had a firm hold on Collins and the youngster postponed his plans for a legal career to rejoin the Athletics after graduation in 1907, appearing in 14 games for Philadelphia that summer.

Collins became a regular player in the majors in 1908.  That first full season, he split time at five positions: shortstop, second base, and all three outfield spots, hitting .273 in 102 games.  He converted to second base full-time in 1909, pushing Danny Murphy to right field, and from there his remarkable career took wing.  It was no small coincidence that when Collins became the starting second baseman, the team also took off.  Eddie played every game in 1909, hitting .347 as the club rose to second, chasing the pennant-winning Tigers to the wire.  The young second-sacker finished second in the circuit in hits, walks, steals, and batting average, and placed third in the league in runs, total bases, and slugging.  He led all second basemen in putouts, assists, double plays, and fielding average.

In 1910 the club broke through, winning the first of four pennants in five years by a convincing 14 ½ games.  Eddie led the American League in steals, was third in hits and RBIs, and fourth in batting while leading in most fielding categories.  Philadelphia dusted the Cubs in five games to give Connie Mack his first World Series title.  Collins was the star of the Series, batting ..429 and hitting safely in each contest.  His play in Game Two, when he had three hits, stole two bases, and made several outstanding defensive plays, confirmed his status as one of the American League’s top stars.[5]  A month after the championship was secured, Eddie married Mabel Doane, whose father was a close friend of Connie Mack’s; Mack himself had introduced them.  Collins and Mack had a standing bet as to who would get married first, which Mack won by a week.  The Collinses remained married for more than 30 years until Mabel died in 1943.

In 1911 the A’s, with the “$100,000 Infield” of Home Run Baker, Jack Barry, Collins, and Stuffy McInnis now intact, repeated as world champs, besting Detroit by 13 ½ games, and downing John McGraw’s Giants in six.  After finishing fourth in hitting (.365) during the year and leading the league’s second basemen in putouts, Collins had a modest Series, batting .286 with three errors.  Still, the A’s had successfully defended their championship and, Collins, just 24, had experienced little but success in his few years of prep, collegiate, and professional play.

Collins’s plainly evident self-confidence could run people the wrong way.  As educated and ostensibly sophisticated as he was, cockiness could lead to actions that in hindsight at least were not entirely smart.  During the Athletics’ championship run, some of his teammates groused about Collins’s loyalties and priorities.  Collins, like other baseball stars such as Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson, was often commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write articles on the inner workings of the game.  Some A’s players argued that other teams were able to correct the weaknesses Collins had pointed out in his articles, thereby hurting Philadelphia’s chances at winning the pennant.  In 1912 Collins led the league in runs and posted a .348 average with 63 stolen bases but the dissention in the clubhouse was at least in part attributable to the gifted second baseman, and the A’s finished out of first place.  The anti-Collins faction in the A’s clubhouse was led by backup catcher Ira Thomas, who Make named his field captain in 1914 spring training.

The bright, confident, and successful Collins was given to a litany of less than “rational” practices and observances.  At the plate, he kept his gum on his hat button until two strikes, then would remove it and commence chewing.  He loathed black cats and would walk or drive out of his way to avoid crossing paths with one.  If he saw a load of barrels, he believed he’d make one or two hits that day.  Finding a hairpin meant a single, two hairpins a double.  Scraps of paper littering the dugout steps drove him crazy.  He would refrain from changing game socks during a winning streak, and as a player-manager for the White Sox is said to have fired a clubhouse man for acting in violation of this practice.  He believed it lucky to have someone spit on his hat before a game.  Each winter Collins soaked his bats in oil, dried them out, and rubbed them all down with a bone.  This practice became the stuff of lore, as it has even been said that he buried his bats in cow dung piles to “keep ‘em alive.”  On the more practical side, he would wear heavier shoes as spring approached so that his feet would feel lighter when the season opened.

Known as a gentleman off the field, the brainy star gave grudging quarter at best between the foul lines.  Hard-nosed play around the bag invited like responses and incurred the enmity of some.  One such encounter in 1912 would have long-term consequences.  An unflinching tag by Eddie broke the nose of Washington first baseman Chick Gandil.  Chick’s teammate Clyde Milan witnessed the play and noted that “for the rest of his playing career, Gandil was out to get even.  He went into the bag against Collins 200 times I guess and always got the worst of it.”[6]

In 1913 the A’s returned to form, winning their third World Series, in five games over the Giants, as Collins hit .421, with five runs, three RBIs, and three steals.  His standout autumn followed a regular campaign that featured 55 steals. 73 RBIs, and a robust .345 average.  In 1914 the A’s repeated as American League champs, and Collins was honored as the Chalmers Award winner, given to the league’s most valuable player.  Unfortunately, the bat that drove in 85 runs and registered a .344 clip was utterly absent in the Series, Philadelphia was stunned in four straight by the “Miracle Braves,” with Collins batting .214.

In the aftermath of the upset, his team’s harmony was fractured by overtures from the Federal League, and Connie Mack began to clean house in Philadelphia.  On December 8, 1914, Collins was sold to the Chicago White Sox for a reported $50,000.  As part of the deal, the White Sox agreed to pay Collins a salary of $15,000 per year, plus a signing bonus of $10,000.[7]  By 1919, his salary was still more than double that of any of his Chicago teammates.[8]

The White Sox had spent the first half of the 1910s languishing between fourth place and sixth place.  Collins’s tenure in Chicago lasted 12 years.  For all 12 seasons, he was a genuine star.  For the last two-plus years, he was player-manager.  During Collins’s first year in Chicago, the Great Cleveland outfielder Joe Jackson joined the club via trade with 45 games remaining in the campaign.  Through skill they were peers, and there was little evidence of friendship or social interaction between the two stars.  The educated and savvy Collins may have intimidated his illiterate teammate.

A sub-500 team in 1914, the White Sox steadily rose in the standings.  The 1915 club finished third, besting the .600 mark with 93 wins.  Collins was second in the league in batting, led in walks, was third in steals, and was fifth in total bases while leading second basemen in both assists and fielding average.  In 1916 the White Sox chased the Red Sox all summer, finishing a mere two games back.  Collins led the league’s second basemen in double plays and fielding average, while on the offensive side of the ledger, he was second in triples, third in walks, and fourth in steals.  In 1917 the White Sox won the pennant by a convincing nine games, with 100 wins for a .649 percentage.  Though Collins’s average dipped to .289, he led second basemen in putouts and was second in the circuit in steals and walks.

In that year’s fall classic, Collins enjoyed his third great World Series, with a .409 average, and scored the first run in the sixth and final game by outthinking the Giant's defense.  Though immortalized as the “Heinie Zimmerman boner,” it was actually catcher Bill Rariden, first baseman Walter Holke, and pitcher Rube Benton who were the real goats.  In a rundown between third base and home plate, Rariden allowed Collins to slip past him, and Holke and Benton neglected to cover home.  With a foot pursuit his only option, the lumbering Zimmerman failed to catch Collins as he slid across the plate with what proved to be the Series-winning run.  “In a World Series game, when you see a base uncovered you run for it,” Collins later recalled.  “Believe me, I didn’t waste any time on that play…At least two, possibly three other men could have covered the plate on that play.  why they didn’t I’ll never know.”[9]

Like many other players, Collins’s 1918 campaign was cut short by US involvement in the Great War.  On August 19, 1918, Collins joined the Marine Corps, missing the final 16 games of the season.  His decision to enlist in the military was greeted with patriotic fanfare – unlike his teammates Joe Jackson, Lefty Williams, and Byrd Lynn, who were harshly criticized for taking war-essential jobs in the shipyards.  Collins’s actual service wasn’t much different from theirs, consisting mainly of drills and guard duty at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, but he received a Good Conduct Medal and was honorably discharged on February 6, 1919, in time for spring training.

As the great White Sox team coalesced, it became ever more socially segmented.  When Chick Gandil had arrived before the 1917 season, the calcification of some of these divisions was pretty much assured.  There was resentment, right or wrong, of owner Comiskey’s penny-pinching ways, and Gandil’s pre-existing bitterness towards Collins helped focus some of the discontents on the captain.  Collins came to represent management, and his status as one of Commy’s favorites further poisoned the atmosphere.  Of all the performers in this ill-fated cast, Collins was sharp enough to have sensed the malignant potential.  Perhaps his privileged status, his seemingly unbroken record of personal success, and the team’s burgeoning success combined to help dull such sensitivity.

One might expect that if Collins were so aware and adept at the multidimensions of leadership, he might have sensed and tried to mitigate intrasquad tensions.  the superficial machismo of clubhouse camaraderie should not have been too significant a hurdle for a well-bred, broadly experienced, established star.  The distinct cliques among the 1919 White Sox might have been immutable, but few were better equipped than Collins to initiate the select one-on-one rapprochements that might have modulated such tensions.

The 1919 White Sox finished with a record of 88-52 for a .629 percentage, besting Cleveland by 3 ½ games.  Collins hit .319 and drove in 80 runs while leading second basemen in putouts and finishing second in double plays.  The 1919 White Sox were the greatest he ever saw because, in part, they won despite widening dissension: “(The club) was torn by discord and hatred during much of the ’19 season,” Collins later said.  “From the moment I arrived at training camp from service, I could see that something was amiss.  We may have had our troubles in other years, but in 1919 we were a club that pulled apart rather than together.  There were frequent arguments and open hostility.  All the things you think – and are taught to believe – are vital to the success of any athletic organization were missing from it, and yet it was the greatest collection of players ever assembled, I would say.”[10]

Over the years Collins was inconsistent when discussing what he knew about his teammates’ plot to throw World Series games, as well as when he knew it.  After the scandal was first exposed in the fall of 1920, Collins was quoted in Collyer’s Eye, a small gamblers’ newspaper, as saying, “There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind” as early as the first inning of Game One that the games were being thrown.  Collins added, “If the gamblers didn’t have (Buck) Weaver and (Eddie) Cicotte in their pocket then I don’t know a thing about baseball” == and that he told “all this” to owner Charles Comiskey (which Comiskey always denied).[11]  Years later, Collins changed his story considerably.  “I was to be a witness to the greatest tragedy in baseball’s history – and I didn’t know it at the time,” he told Jim Leonard of The Sporting News in 1950.[12]

After the scandal gutted the club, Collins still starred.  He was one of the few bright lights for the decimated White Sox in the early 1920s.  he filled in as player-manager for 27 games during the 1924 season and assumed the role full-time for the 1925 and 1926 campaigns.  The club finished fifth in each of his full years at the helm.  Injuries cut into his playing time in both of these seasons.  Deposed as White Sox manager on November 11, 1926, Collins was released as a player two days later.  He signed with Philadelphia six weeks later and emerged as a solid pinch-hitter in 1927.  From 1928 through 1930 he mostly coached, finally playing his last game at age 43 on August 5, 1930.

Collins concluded his career with a .333 batting average, 1,821 runs scored, 3,315 hits, and 741 steals, figures that assured his induction into the Hall of Fame in 1939, as one of the original players honored by the baseball writers upon the museum’s opening.  Also in 1939, Eddie Collins Jr. made his debut with the Athletics, where he would spend three seasons as a light-hitting outfielder.  Collins’s other son, the Rev. Paul Collins, officiated his father’s marriage to his second wife, Emily Jane Hall, in 1945.

Collins coached full-time for Philadelphia in 1931 and 1932 before joining the Boston Red Sox as vice president and general manager when fellow Irving schooler Tom Yawkey purchased the team in early 1933.  Collins remained with the Red Sox for the rest of his life, and in one notable scouting trip to California signed two future Hall of Famers, Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams.  But his most notable act as general manager may have been his failure to pursue and sign Jackie Robinson after Robinson and two other Negro League players tried out for the Red Sox.  Facing pressure from local press and politicians, Collins and Yawkey had offered the sham tryout only reluctantly, and their failure to take Robinson and the other black prospects seriously resulted in the Red Sox becoming the last to integrate instead of the first.

Due to deteriorating health, Collins turned over the general managers’ reins to Joe Cronin after the 1947 season but remained as vice president.  A cerebral hemorrhage in August 1950 left Eddie partially paralyzed and visually impaired.  Devoutly religious throughout his life, he succumbed to complications from cardiovascular disease on Easter Sunday evening, March 25, 1951, at age 63.  He was buried in Linwood Cemetery in Weston, Massachusetts. And was survived by his wife and two sons.

An updated version of this biography appeared in “Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox” (SABR, 2015). This biography originally appeared in “Deadball Stars of the American League” (Potomac Books, 2006).

Sources:

1.     Asinof, Eliot. Eight Men Out (New York: Henry
        Holt, 1988).

2.     The Baseball Encyclopedia, Eighth Edition
        (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1990).

3.     Bryant, Howard. Shut Out: A Story of Race
        and Baseball in Boston (New York: Routledge,
        2002).

4.     Eddie Collins player file, National Baseball Hall
        of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York.

5.     Huhn, Rick. Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography
        (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.,
        2008).

5.     Ritter, Lawrence. The Glory of Their Times
        (New York: Collier Books, 1971).

6.     Verral, Charles S. The Mighty Men of Baseball
        (New York: Aladdin Books, 1955).

Notes:

1.     Undated article in Eddie Collins player file,
        National Baseball Hall of Fame Library,
2.     Cooperstown, New York.

3.     The Sporting News, October 11, 1950.

4.     Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 1930.

5.     The Sporting News, August 16, 1950.

6.     Rick Huhn, Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography
        (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland &
        Co., 2008), 74-75.

7.     Washington Post, March 27, 1951.

8.     St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 22, 1929. AL
        President Ban Johnson claimed that he promised
        Collins an additional $5,000 for considering the
        White Sox’ offer, and that Collins insisted he
        make good on the promise after signing. “I
        signed my personal check for $5,000,” Johnson
        said.

9.     According to historian Bob Hoie, based on his
        research of American League contract cards
        housed at the Baseball Hall of Fame, Buck
        Weaver’s $7,250 salary was the second-highest
        to Collins among all White Sox players in 1919.
        See Bob Hoie, “1919 Baseball
        Salaries and the Mythically Underpaid Chicago
        White Sox,” Base Ball: A Journal of the Early
        Game (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland
        & Co., Spring 2012).

10.   The Sporting News, October 25, 1950.

11.   The Sporting News, August 30, 1969.

12.   Collyer’s Eye, October 30, 1920. For an
        analysis of Collins’s statements about the fix,
        see Rick Huhn’s Eddie Collins, 179-83.

13.   The Sporting News, October 25, 1950.

Full Name: Edward Trowbridge Collins

Born: May 2, 1887 at Millerton, NY (USA)

Died: March 25, 1951 at Boston, MA (USA)

Ed Delahanty

 This article was originally written by John Saccoman
Ed Delahanty – Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org)

  One of the greatest right-handed sluggers of all time, Ed Delahanty dominated in the 1890s like no other hitter, batting better than .400 three times, and capturing three RBI crowns on his way to a lifetime batting average of .346, the fifth-best mark in baseball history.  Known as “Big Ed,” and the “King of Swat,” the muscular Delahanty was more than a one-dimensional slugger; he was also a fleet-footed, rifle-armed left fielder who was good enough to play center, and an excellent base runner who once led the league in stolen bases,  “Delahanty is an awfully even, well-balanced player all around.”  Sporting Life once observed.  “You look at his batting and say well, that chap is valuable if he couldn’t catch the measles, and then you look at his fielding and conclude that it wouldn’t pay to let him go if he couldn’t hit a bat bag.”  Despite such versatility, the temperamental star was destined to make more headlines off the field than on it, and his death less than two years into his tenure with the Washington Senators, still is one of the most fascinating mysteries in the annals of the sport.

The eldest and most talented of the five major-league brothers, Edward James Delahanty was born on October 30, 1867, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Bridget and James, Irish immigrants who had immigrated two years earlier.  Ed was their second child born and the first to survive infancy.  To support his family, James Delahanty took on a variety of blue-collar jobs in Cleveland, while his wife converted the family’s spacious Phelps Street home into a boardinghouse.  Young Edward and his brothers (see also: SABR bios for Jim, Tom, Joe, Frank, and Willie) managed to steer clear of the crowded family home by playing a variety of sports, but especially baseball, in the neighborhood’s vacant lots.  Ed’s impressive hitting caught the eye of local scouts, who recruited him to play for the Cleveland Shamrocks, a semipro club.  His success there led to a $50 per month contract with Mansfield of the Ohio State League, where Delahanty spent the 1887 season, batting .351 with 90 runs scored in 83 games.  After appearing in 21 games and posting a .412 batting average for Wheeling (West Virginia) of the Tri-State League in 1888, Delahanty’s contract was picked up by the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League for approximately $2,000.

A strapping 6’1” tall and 170 pounds, Delahanty was not an instant success in the majors, as opposing pitchers took advantage of the youngster’s free-swinging approach at the plate, holding him to a .228 batting average.  He improved to .293 in 1889, then jumped to Cleveland of the Players League in 1890, where he batted .296 in 115 games.  After that league failure, Delahanty returned to Philadelphia, struggling to a .243 average, though he scored 92 runs and drove in another 86, eighth best in the circuit.  Having failed to live up to his potential after more than three years in the minor league, Delahanty rededicated himself to his profession in the offseason, working out every day and reporting to camp in 1892 in the best shape of his life.  He responded with his finest season to date, batting .306 while leading the league in triples (21) and slugging percentage (.495).  It was a performance that drew praise from Sporting Life, which credited Delahanty for his “hard and timely” batting, but the slugger was just getting started.

From 1892 to 1901 Delahanty anchored a powerful Philadelphia lineup that featured the likes of Billy Hamilton, Sam Thompson, Napoleon Lajoie, and Elmer Flick.  During that span, he led the National League in a major offensive category 24 times.  In 1899 he became the first player in major league history to bat better than .400 three times, when he led the league with a .410 mark.  Among his league-leading 238 hits he collected that season were a career-high 55 doubles.  He also captured two home run titles during the decade, blasting 19 round-trippers in 1893 and 13 in 1896.  That season he became just the second player in history to hit four home runs in a single game, turning the trick on July 13 against the Chicago Colts.  Two of the four homers were inside the park.  Three years later, on May 13, 1899, Delahanty hit four doubles in a single game, making him the only player to achieve both feats.

A pull hitter who kept opposing defenses honest by occasionally hitting to the opposite field, Delahanty once confided to a reporter that he often liked to swing at the first pitch, because a pitcher with good control usually tried to “do his business” with the first offering.  Nonetheless, Delahanty could be a patient hitter too, as shown by his ranking among the league’s top ten in walks four times in his career.  When outfielders, fearing the legendary slugger’s power, played him deeper, Delahanty responded by place-hitting the ball over the infielder's heads.  Delahanty’s ability to adjust his hitting approach to confound opposing defenses made him, in the estimation of Cincinnati Reds pitcher Red Ehret, “the hardest man in the league for pitchers to puzzle.”  Longtime catcher Jack O’Conner concurred, noting, “If Del had a weakness at the bat, I never could discover it.”

Delahanty left an impression in the field as well, where he developed into one of the game’s finest outfielders.  After spending his first years in the majors as a subpar infielder, Delahanty found his home in the outfield in 1892, displaying enough range to merit the occasional start in center field.  At his accustomed position, left field, Delahanty ranked among the league’s best.  He became known for his strong arm, which he used to collect 238 career assists, and his hustling style of play, which helped him to reach balls lesser outfielders allowed to drop in for base hits.  That same aggressiveness carried over to the basepaths, as Delahanty swiped 455 bases in his career, including a league-best 58 in 1898.

Blessed with the ability to hit for average and power, exceptional range in the field, a strong arm, and excellent speed, Delahanty was a five-tool player long before the term came into use.  Arguably the game’s greatest player in the 1890s, Delahanty nonetheless failed to win a pennant with the Philadelphia Phillies, who often found themselves, despite their robust offense, hampered by injuries and short on pitching.  While the club struggled, Philadelphia owner John Rogers also managed to suppress the salaries of his top stars.  By the beginning of the twentieth century, the great Delahanty earned only $3,000 per year, only a slight increase when he entered the major leagues over a decade earlier.  Nearing 34 years of age after the 1901 campaign, in which he batted .354 with 108 RBI for the Phillies, Delahanty decided to join many of his teammates in seeking higher pay and better treatment with the rival American League.

Indeed, during the final two months of the 1901 season, reports circulated that Delahanty had become an agent for the upstart league, selling his fellow players on the merits of the new circuit.  Delahanty’s success can be measured by the number of players for the 1901 Phillies who donned uniforms for the American League the following year[?] -- a total of nine players, including Elmer Flick, Red Donahue, Ed McFarland, Monte Cross,  Harry Wolverton, Al Orth, and Delahanty himself, who signed a $4,000 contract with the Washington Senators, including a $1,000 signing bonus.

Following the club’s disappointing sixth-place finish in 1901, Del gave Washington instant baseball credibility, both to the fans and to the players.  He was named captain of his new club and joined friend Jimmy Ryan in the outfield.  As a result of a judge’s ruling, any players from the Phillies were forbidden from playing in the state of Pennsylvania, thus preventing Delahanty and his fellow Philadelphia jumpers from playing against the Athletics.  To circumvent the court order, Del and the other jumpers would typically get off the Philadelphia train in Delaware and head to the team’s next destination.

Big Ed battled former Phillies teammate Nap Lajoie of the Cleveland club for the batting crown in 1902.  Though unofficial figures at season’s end showed Lajoie with a 15-point lead, .387 to .372, the official statistics released two months later declared Delahanty champion by a seven-point margin, which would have made Big Ed the only player ever to win both an NL and AL batting title.  However, Research in later years uncovered that Lajoie bested Delahanty, .378 to .376.  By today’s standards Delahanty would have been declared champion anyway because Lajoie had only 381 plate appearances.

Despite his continued on-field success, however, by the end of the 1902 season, Delahanty’s personal life was beginning to unravel, as his wife, Norine, became ill, and Delahanty squandered the couple’s financial resources by gambling on horses and binge drinking.  Looking to pay off his mounting debts, Delahanty signed a three-year contract with the New York Giants, reported at either $6,000 or $8,000 per season.  The deal also included an advance on his salary of $4,000.

However, the contract was never fulfilled.  Before the 1903 season, the leagues agreed to honor each other’s contracts, with the result that Delahanty’s deal with the Giants was declared void and the rights to his contract were returned to Washington.  Even worse news for Delahanty, he was ordered to pay back the $4,000 advance he had already received.  Since Delahanty’s 1903 contract with Washington called for a salary of $4,500, of which $600 had already been advanced, the ruling effectively cost the already cash-strapped Delahanty $100 to play the 1903 season for the Nats.  For a man suddenly on the brink of personal and financial ruin, it was the worst possible outcome.  A few days before the start of the 1903 season, Delahanty ended a lengthy holdout when Washington agreed to pay the $4,000, he owed New York, but in return, $2,000 per year would be deducted from the slugger's salary in 1903 and 1904.  Even after reporting, however, Delahanty continued to see opportunities to jump from the Senators, including a dalliance with Denver of the Western League which never came to fruition.

Upon his return to the Senators, Del was out of shape and soon injured his back and ankle.  Washington manager Tom Loftus sent him to a health spa in Michigan to shape up, and he rejoined the team on May 29.  Though he continued to bat well upon his return to the lineup, posting a .333 average in 156 at bats, Delahanty feuded with Loftus, who ordered him to play right field, while Del adamantly insisted that he only play left.  Amidst the turmoil, Delahanty’s drinking increased, and his behavior became more erratic.  He started giving away precious keepsakes, including his gold watch, to teammates, and it was even rumored that he had once attempted suicide by turning the gas on in his room in Washington.  Prior to embarking on a lengthy road trip with the Senators on June 17, Delahanty took out a life insurance policy on himself, naming his daughter Florence as the beneficiary.  On June 25, Delahanty played the last game of his career in Cleveland.  When the following morning’s newspapers reporters that NL President Harry Pulliam had decided to violate the nascent peace agreement by allowing contract-jumping shortstop George Davis to play for the Giants, Delahanty presumably saw his opportunity to finally join the New York club.  He abandoned the Senators that morning and went on a drinking binge which left him angry, disoriented, and in no condition to play.  He reportedly threatened to kill himself, and several teammates, fearing for his safety, felt it necessary to keep a close watch on him at the team hotel.  Delahanty chased one of them away with a knife.

Del went with the Senators to their next stop in Detroit, where his mother and two brothers were summoned to help straighten him out.  He continued to drink heavily, however, and again abandoned the team on July 2.  By this time, he knew he would be unable to jump to the Giants, as a court order issued the previous day prohibited Davis from playing for New York.  Delahanty nonetheless boarded a train to New York that afternoon but, perhaps tellingly, left his belongings in his Detroit hotel room.  Del misbehaved on the train, smoking when he was not supposed to, drinking excess, and accidentally breaking the glass in front of the emergency tool cabinet.  Finally, he fell asleep.  When the train made a scheduled stop in Bridgeburg, (now Fort Erie), Ontario, Del became disoriented and tried to enter an already occupied berth.  The commotion seemed to confuse him more, and he had to be subdued by three men.  The conductor, John Cole, had understandably had enough of him for the evening and ordered Del off the train.

The train crossed the International Railway Bridge over the Niagara River into Buffalo.

In the darkness, Big Ed walked out onto the 3,600-foot-long bridge and was standing still at its edge, staring down into the water, when he was accosted by night watchman Sam Kingston on the lookout for smugglers.  A scuffle ensued, with Kingston dragging Delahanty back to the middle of the wide bridge, but Kingston then fell down and Delahanty got away.  Moments later, according to Kingston – who claimed it was too dark to see what happened – Del either jumped or drunkenly stumbled off the edge of the bridge, falling 25 feet into the 40-foot-deeep Niagara River.

His naked body (except for tie, shoes, and socks) was found 20 miles downstream at the base of Horseshoe Falls [?] – the Canadian portion of Niagara Falls – seven days later.  Dead at the age of 35, we were buried in Calvary Cemetery in Cleveland.

Note:

1.     A version of this biography originally appeared in
        David Jones, ed., Deadball Stars of the American
        League (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc.
        2006).

Sources:

1.     Mike Sowell. July 2, 1903. Macmillan Publishing
        Co., 1992.
2.     Jerrold Casway. Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age
        of Baseball University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.
3.     Frederick Ivor-Campbell, Robert Tiemann, Mark
        Rucker (editors) Baseball’s First Stars (SABR,
        1996).
4.     New York Times.
5.     Cleveland Plain Dealer

Full Name: Edward James Delahanty
Born: October 30, 1867, at Cleveland, OH (USA)
Died: July 2, 1903, at Niagara Falls, ON (CAN)