The Strange Life & Death Of Ed Delahanty

The Strange Life & Death Of Ed Delahanty

The strange death of baseball great Ed Delahanty plays directly out of an Agatha Christy mystery novel. Elements include a train, bridge and at least one potential suspect. The backdrop is the wide expanse of Niagara Falls on a foggy night.

But, wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. A few paragraphs about Delahanty, the baseball player, are appropriate. After all, he had a Hall of Fame career that spanned 16 years with a combined .346 batting average.

“Big Ed” Delahanty a towering 6’1” 170-pound ballplayer began his career in 1888 with the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1890, he jumped to the short-lived Players’ League but soon returned to the Phillies where he became the team's starting left fielder. It is around this time that Delahanty began a life-long struggle with alcoholism which sadly often affected his performance and ultimately lead to his death, but again more about this later.

That same year, Delahanty was involved in one of the wackiest baseball plays of all-time. Cap Anson of the Chicago White Stockings hit a ball to deep center field which landed in a box that was used to store numbers for the manually run scoreboard. Delahanty tried reaching into the box but fell getting stuck inside. Before teammate Sam Thompson could free Delahanty, Anson had rounded the bases.

In 1893 Ed compiled a .368 average with 19 home runs and 146 RBI, narrowly missing the Triple Crown. Between 1894 and 1896 Delahanty had astonishing batting marks: .407, 4 HR, 131 RBI; .404, 11 HR, 106 RBI; .397, 13 HR, 126 RBI.

On July 13, 1896, Delahanty became the second player to hit four home runs in a game. In 1899, Delahanty hit four doubles in the same game. He remains the only man in baseball history with a four-homer game and a four-double game. The same year Delahanty collected hits in 10 consecutive at bats. He tallied six-hit games in 1890 and 1894.

By the turn of the century, even though he still was a baseball powerhouse, his personal life began to quickly fall apart. His wife, Norine, became ill, and Delahanty lost most of his savings by betting on horses that most usually lost. He was so despondent that he reportedly threatened to kill himself. He subsequently took out a life insurance policy and named his daughter as beneficiary.

In 1902, Delahanty switched over to the American League for the Washington Senators which now leads us up to that fateful train ride.

On July 2 after visiting with family in Detroit where the Senators had played, Delahanty boarded a train to New York to catch up with his teammates. Oddly, he had left most of his belongings in his Detroit hotel room. His behavior on the train became unmanageable and after consuming several whiskies, he threatened a passenger with a shaving razor and broke the glass cover on an emergency fire extinguisher. The passengers and train conductor had enough and eventually threw him off in Fort Erie, Ontario near Buffalo, New York.

In the darkness the disoriented drunken Delahanty walked out onto a 3,600-foot-long International Railway Bridge high above the raging Niagara River swollen with rain water which must have been unnerving even to someone who was not afraid of heights. Somewhere in the foggy darkness, Ed was approached by a night watchman who evidently confused the ballplayer for a smuggler. The watchman says a fight ensued and that Delahanty ran away though the watchman later testified that he never saw Delahanty fall off the bridge.

Seven days later, Delahanty’s body was found 20 miles downstream at the base of Horseshoe Falls which is the Canadian portion of Niagara Falls. Even stranger was the fact that Ed was missing a leg (evidently dismembered by a paddle boat) and wearing no clothes except for a laced shoe with sock on the one attached leg. This discovery has led many to assume that Delahanty had been robbed if not murdered possibly by the watchman or someone else.

Delahanty’s family immediately claimed foul play though no real police investigation ensued. Some say the family did so in order to assure that Delahanty would be allowed a Catholic burial as suicide automatically disqualified a proper ceremony in those days.

Whatever happened to Delahanty, suicide, murder or simply a bad step, he will be forever remembered as one of baseball’s early greats!