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Thursday, October 21, 1999 By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The big-leaguer could drink as hard as he could hit, which was saying a mouthful.
An occasional look at people and events in the news 100 years ago
He traveled from saloons and railroad liquor cars to the ballpark, where he batted over .400 in three different seasons.
His various exploits -- going 9 for 9 in a doubleheader and smashing four inside-the-park home runs in one game -- made him a hero to the sports-reading public. His behavior off the field was hushed up by club executives and sports writers.
The player was Ed Delahanty, National League batting champion in 1899, with a .408 average.
A century later, Delahanty's athletic achievements are largely forgotten. When he is remembered, it is usually as one of the tragic figures in sports history.
Things didn't have to be that way. Big Ed, as he was called, seemed to have it all, including control of his own destiny, when the 20th century began.
Delahanty was one of the first professional athletes to jump leagues for more money. He bolted the Philadelphia Phillies, his employer for 13 seasons, after the upstart American League was formed in 1901.
As a member of the Washington Senators, Delahanty made $4,000 a year, roughly equal to a $75,000 salary today. He rewarded his bosses by winning the American League batting title in 1902 with a .376 average.
Then Delahanty became enraged at league owners. He regarded them as skinflints who conspired to hold down his paycheck.
A deal had been arranged early in 1903 for Delahanty to be shipped to New York of the National League, where he was promised a $500 raise. But the trade was voided after the two leagues made a peace that curtailed bidding for players.
Delahanty turned sullen. He feuded with his manager, Tom Loftus, plunged deeper into the drinking life that was common for ballplayers of the time, and threatened to kill himself. Team executives were so worried that they summoned Delahanty's mother to calm him down.
Despite the distractions, Delahanty was batting a solid .333. Then, he skipped a June game in Cleveland, his hometown, and Loftus suspended him. Even so, Delahanty continued to travel with the Senators. He grew angrier by the day.
On July 2, Delahanty apparently decided he'd had enough. After brooding on the bench during a game in Detroit, he caught a train for New York. His mother, still trying to keep tabs on her 35-year-old son, didn't know where he was headed or why.
A conductor later said Delahanty drank five shots of whiskey after boarding the train. He turned nasty, pulling a razor, threatening a passenger and haranguing the crew.
They kicked him off the train just after midnight in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Under Canadian law, Delahanty could have been arrested for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Instead, the conductor simply ejected him and steamed ahead, apparently trying to stay on schedule.
A watchman named Sam Kingston said he tried to help Delahanty, only to be repaid with a punch to the face. Kingston saw Delahanty walking across the Niagara River drawbridge. When Kingston warned him that the bridge was up, he claimed the baseball hero knocked him out.
No one knows what happened next, except that it ended Delahanty's life.
Tourists on a Niagara River dock found Delahanty's body six days later, some 20 miles from the famous falls. His money and jewelry were missing. So was his left leg.
The circumstances sparked speculation in the press that Delahanty had been robbed and murdered.
Bill James, the famous baseball historian, said the media launched a cover-up to save what was left of Delahanty's image.
"Some of the press of the time and many writers of kids' books after that time did not want to come right out and say that one of the game's greatest stars had died of damned foolishness, drunk and disorderly."
Susan Hofacre, a professor of sports management at Robert Morris College, believes most of the media in that era had no appetite to bring down heroes they had helped create.
Sports writers traveled with teams and felt devoted to the franchises. Many considered it their duty to perpetuate the myth that great athletes were free of flaws.
That bending of the truth extended well beyond the sports pages.
"Even into the '40s, when we had a president with polio, the media was careful not to use a photograph unless it was favorable to him," Hofacre said of coverage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Newspapers continued to prop up sports stars until the 1970s.
Even in that era, many high-profile players spent their off-seasons drinking or carousing, never training until a new season rolled around. Then, a few tell-all books were written by players, most notably New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton's "Ball Four." They shattered the image that professional athletes were innocents.
"Things changed even more when salaries began to escalate so dramatically that there was a definite gap between the players and the sports reporters," Hofacre said.
After Big Ed's death, the Delahanty name lived on in the newspapers for a time. Four of his brothers played in the big leagues.
Ed Delahanty was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945 by a committee of the game's veterans. By then the country had been through a Depression and two world wars. Delahanty's life and bizarre death were a distant memory.
Today, a hundred years after Delahanty's last .400 season, he ranks fourth in all-time batting average. He hit .346 for his 16-year career in the majors.
He also was one of a handful of players to average a run per game and a run batted in per game for an entire season. Delahanty accomplished that three times. Babe Ruth had four such seasons; Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio one each.
Had Delahanty lived to an old age and died a natural death, his name might be spoken of in the company of those players.
"The press, and society in general, was much more willing to overlook or ignore negative things in that era," Hofacre said.
But Ed Delahanty, perhaps the greatest ballplayer of his time, lost a chance at immortality on the night his excesses took him over the edge.
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