MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

Possibly killed before he was thrown off? I haven't read the book. But one theory I've seen believes Delahanty may have run afoul of gamblers or owed somebody a lot of money. They perhaps got even with him just before the train reached the falls.

There's a lot of cool stuff that happened between 1901 and 1905. John McGraw imploded the Baltimore franchise in the middle of the 1902 season, hoping to throw the AL into disarray. The AL was winning the attendance battles in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis. The AL got stronger when it added a team in New York to replace the Orioles in 1903. McGraw refused to play the World Series in 1904. And Johnson even considered moving the Tigers to Pittsburgh as late as 1905, before Henry Ford figured out the whole selling cars deal and Detroit's population exploded.

On second thought, that might have been better for my mental health.

 

He was drunk and supposedly was harassing the passengers, so the train stopped and the conductors kicked him off the train. He then went to a bridge, where he either fell, jumped or got into a fight and was pushed. What really happened to him will likely never be known.

 

Like many ballplayers of his era, Delahanty was a very heavy drinker. He had some major financial problems, despite a big salary for his era, because he played the horses and was bad at it. He was also prone to depression and had been acting erratically in the month or two before he died. His mother and brothers had been with him in Detroit just prior to his accident, trying to get him straightened out.

The conductor undoubtedly erred in removing him from the train on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. Had he kept him on the train for five more minutes and let him off in Buffalo instead, he would not have been on the train trestle at all. The fight/pushed theory has been pretty well debunked. Most likely he jumped, or fell accidentally.

He left his widow and young child in dire financial straits. And the Senators would not hold a benefit game for his family, common in that era, using the justification that they had already advanced him most of his 1903 salary and therefore didn't owe him a thing or have to do anything for his family.

That kind of ownership thinking segues perfectly into the book I'm reading now, "Lords of the Realm," John Helyar's recounting of the rise of the MLB Players Association in the 1960s-1990s, aided in no small part by stupid, headstrong, stuck-in-the-past owners like Bob Howsam and Gussie Busch who thought it was their God-given purpose to screw the players.

 

Tried to. Putz wasn’t amused by Schmuck’s entreaty, which was based on their common misfortune.

 

Just got an MLB alert about a combined no-hitter going for the Twins against the Royals. Can I shut off this notifications? I’m never going to pretend a combined no-hitter is an accomplishment.

 

Went away with a thud, anyway.

 

56 and 57

 

Yankees star Aaron Judge hits balls over the fence for 56th, 57th times this season

 

Ruth hit 15 HR in September the season he hit 60.

 

I was at Fenway. Someone *please* tell me why you pitch to Judge in the eighth inning of a one-run game.

 

Because if you walk him and Stanton hits a two-run homer, you're now behind