Ed "Big Ed" Delahanty was a pioneer in the early days of Major League Baseball. Born in 1867 in Cleveland, he was one of 6 boys, 5 of those 6 boys went on to play in the Majors, which is a record for most brothers from one family to play Major League ball. Their names are bad ass too for the time, besides Big Ed, there was Frank, Jim, Joe, and Tom. Their parents must've took notes from me when I was 6 years old naming all of my stuffed animals.
Big Ed played for 4 teams in his 15 year career spanning from 1888 -1903. He started out playing for the Philadelphia Quakers (now the Phillies) when his contract was bought from his semi-pro team in Wheeling, West Virginia because the Quakers second baseman at the time died from typhoid fever. He had a decent rookie year batting .228 in 74 games, and .293 in his sophomore year. In 1890 though, Big Ed went home to Cleveland to play for the Cleveland Infants in the Players League. He was no Lebron James though, and could not bring a title home to The Land. After one year back home with the Cleveland Infants, and no title, the Players League fell and Big Ed was back playing for the Philadelphia Phillies.
This is where some alcohol problems came into the picture for our fella Big Ed. He won the starting left field job, YAY, but he was severely limited on his playing ability due to having a bendy elbow of a guy who rides a Harley Davidson with a barbed wire tattoo, nay. There was even a story that he broke a St.Louis browns infielder, George Pinkney's ankle because Pinkney knew the Phillies signs, saw the 3rd base coach give Big Ed the bunt sign, but of course Big Ed was hammered, like your step father on a Tuesday night, and swung at the ball breaking Pinkney's ankle who was charging because Ed was supposed to bunt.
Big Ed's breakout year was in 1893 when he hit 19 bombs with 146 RBI's slashing .368/.423/.583. He would go on to put up similar numbers like that throughout the rest of his time with the Philadelphia Phillies with his best season coming right before the turn of the century. In 1899 he led the league in hits (238), 2B (55), RBI's (137), BA (.410), SLG ( .582), and OPS (1.046). Oh and by the way only 2 of those were career highs with hits and average. He was also the second player to hit 4 home runs in a game in 1896 when the Phillies, in Phillies fashion, lost that game to the Chicago Colts 9-8. He is also the only baseball player in the history of the game to have 4 bombs in a game, and 4 doubles in a game over the course of his career. One last thing to note about his career accomplishments is that he had not one, but two six hit games and he also had a hit in 10 straight at bats.
In 1902, Big Ed wanted to chase the bag, and probably a ring too as the Phillies were still 80 years away from winning their first title, and he joined the new American League playing for the Washington Senators. After a good first year with the Senators hitting .376 and winning the batting title, making him the first to win the batting title in both leagues. Big Ed started his decline of his career at the age of 35 when through 42 games he was hitting .333. Thats nothing to sneeze at, but when you have the 5th best batting average of all time at .346, its a step back. Now you might be thinking to yourself "why do I now know all this knowledge about a baseball player from 125 years ago when all I wanted to know is how he died" well for you my friend, this next part is for you.
So our boy Big Ed has had this drinking problem, I could not find any mention of it from his early career to the end of his career so it looks like he either cleaned up his act, or he was just so good it did not matter. I, personally am going with the second option, but who am I to tell you what to believe. At this point, the Senators were not a good team, Ed's wife had left him, and he had developed a bit of a gambling problem as he was known to beg his teammates for money to bet on the ponies. It is noted that he even go as far as threatening to kill himself if his teammates did not give him money.
The story is told as so. The senators lost to the Detroit Tigers 6-0 and fell to 16-43 and this was the last straw for old Big Ed. He did what any man would do when you're past your prime, lost your wife, love drinking booze, and got some gambling debt, go back to NYC to get your wife back. Its a long train ride from Detroit to the Big Apple and Big Ed found a solution to this problem. Whiskey!!!!!! 5 shots of whiskey to be exact. This made Big Ed a little uncontrollable as he broke the glass to the emergency cabinet, and began to threaten passengers with a straight razor. What, you've never done that after 5 shots of whiskey?
The conductor kicked Ed off of the train at the Niagara falls right before entering back into America. His body was found at the bottom of Niagara falls a week later. It is not known whether Ed had jumped into the falls himself, or was thrown in there by security guard Sam Kingston who had reported getting into a little fight with Ed. Kingston Claims it was too dark to see what exactly happened.
Whether Ed committed suicide, or was thrown into the falls remains unknown to this day. But one thing is for sure, the legacy Big Ed Delahanty left behind is quite something. His career stats of 2597 hits, 101 home runs, and the 5th best career batting average of all time was enough to get elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1945. He is a pioneer at the turn of the century, and his untimely death shocked the baseball world. If there is one lesson to learn here, is that if you have a gambling problem, and your wife left you , you better not have a drinking problem.
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And thats the Tea, with T
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