Gee, I Didn’t Know That!
Unusual deaths and more
Bygone baseball: The unfamiliar, the unusual, the dramatic
By C. Philip Francis
Rookie of the Year award?
Arthur Albert Irwin is the only Major League baseball player to ever die at sea. Irwin was born on February 14, 1858 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and drown somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean between Boston and New York City on July 16, 1921. He began his ML career as a shortstop with Worcester of the National League, joined the Providence Grays three years later, and moved frequently during his 13 years in the big leagues. He became a manager/player before retiring to full-time managing in 1895.
Irwin is credited by some to be the first player to use a fielder’s mitt in 1895 when he added padding to a buckskin glove to help protect two broken fingers. It was ten years after his death when the public first became aware that Irwin had a double identity, a family with wife and children in New York and also a family with wife and children in Boston. His lifestyle might have caused his death while computing between his two families, and it is not known if he accidentally fell off the ship or not. Not only did the Canadian-born infielder turn over 303 double-plays on the playing field, and it could be said that he really had one more “double-play”, this one in his personal life.
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The First and the Last
Patrick “Paddy” Livingston played in one game for the fledging Cleveland Indians in 1901, the year that the American League joined the National League beginning the Major Leagues that has survived the past 100 years. The Cleveland, Ohio part-time catcher spent time with five teams in his seven years in the major circuit before retiring from the game with a batting average of .209. When Paddy died in 1977 at the age of 97, he was the last surviving member of the American League class of 1901.
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Death Aloft
Although the place of death for Leonard Koenecke is listed as Toronto, Ontario, Canada, he really died 10,000 feet above, one of baseball’s most calamitous stories. Len was born in Baraboo, WI in 1904, and made it to the majors in 1932 with the New York Giants as a centerfielder. He was with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the ’34 season where he had his best season hitting .320, 14 home runs, and set a NL fielding record. But the next year Koenecke was often disciplined by Manager Casey Stengel for breaking training rules (drinking), and bizarre and erratic play.
After a series in St. Louis, Koenecke was released by Stengel. The troubled player boarded an American Airlines plane in St. Louis heading for Buffalo where he had played in the minors and had friends. Leonard took a bottle on board, and during an argument with a passenger, stewardess Eleanor Woodward came to investigate the fracas. Koenecke floored her with one punch, and was ordered off the plane when it landed in Detroit. There the agitated traveler chartered a small three-seat plane for a trip to Buffalo. There were three men aboard - Koenecke, pilot William Joseph Mulqueeney, and Irwin Davis, a friend of the pilot.
Ballplayer Koenecke sat beside the pilot, and somewhere over Canadian territory Len began playing with the controls. When ordered to stop Koenecke continued to be a danger, and was told to get out of the seat and move to the rear. Soon the paying passenger and Davis were wrestling on the floor, and Mulqueeney said at the hearing, “It was either a case of the three of us crashing or doing something to Koenecke.”
Pilot Mulqueeney was still flying the plane, but able to grab a fire extinguisher and vigorously hit Koenecke in the head several times. Finally the ballplayer was down and quiet. The fight had damaged the inside of the airplane, there was blood in the compartment, an unconscious man was on the floor, but Mulqueeney was able to land on a Toronto racetrack. When the officials arrived Koenecke was dead of a brain hemorrhage, and the two men were arrested for manslaughter and jailed.
At the trial the two accused told their story, and when it was determined that the deceased had alcohol in his body, the jury ruled that it was self-defense and the men were released. A lawyer representing Mulqueeney and Davis said that he believed Koenecke was going to force the plane into a suicide dive for a “spectacular death.” Casey Stengel later said that he regretted his failure to recognize and act on Len’s obvious mental illness
Answer: Gil McDougald who hit .306 compared to Mickey’s .267, and hit the first grand slam by a rookie in the World Series.