August 16 and 17, 1920: The Beaning and Death of Ray Chapman

 

August 16, 1920, 100 years ago: The New York Yankees, now in their 1st season with Babe Ruth, are playing the Cleveland Indians at the Polo Grounds in New York. These 2 teams are in a 3-way American League Pennant race with the Chicago White Sox.

Submarine-style hurler Carl Mays hits Indian shortstop Ray Chapman in the head with a pitch. The impact makes such a sound, and the ball comes back to Mays with such force, that Mays thinks Chapman actually hit the ball -- shades of the Roger Clemens-Mike Piazza incident 80 years later -- and throws to 1st base.

This backs up Mays' claim, which he held for the last 51 years of his life, that he did not intentionally hit Chapman, who was known at the time for hanging over the plate.

The audience gasped at the sound -- no batting helmets in those days -- and Chapman got up, and told Yankee catcher Wally Schang, "I'm all right. Tell Mays not to worry." He took some steps, then collapsed, with his left ear bleeding. He never regained consciousness, and died the next day. He was 29 years old.

Aside from the possibility of Mike "Doc" Powers of the 1909 Philadelphia Athletics, whose death may not have been caused by an on-field injury, but was surely worsened by it, Chapman is the only Major League Baseball player to die as the result of an on-field incident.

The Indians won the game, 4-3, and went on to win the World Series in spite of Chapman's death, with rookie Joe Sewell taking his place, and building a Hall of Fame career. They dedicated a monument to him at League Park, but it got lost in the move to Cleveland Municipal Stadium. It was placed in a trunk, and, without anyone still with the team knowing it was in the trunk, it got moved to Jacobs (now Progressive) Field, and was found, and became the centerpiece of the Indians' version of the Yankees' Monument Park, their Heritage Park behind the center field fence.

So the only uniformed person ever to kill another person on a Major League Baseball field, intentionally or otherwise, was a Yankee. Amazingly, this is not often cited by Yankee Haters (Flushing Heathen, Chowdaheads and others) as a reason why they hate the Yankees. It's been 100 years, and pretty much everybody who cared about Chapman and the Indians at the time is gone. But it's still a dark day in Yankee history.

On August 17, only the Yankees-Indians game was postponed in Chapman's memory. Also not playing were the Chicago White Sox, the Philadelphia Athletics, the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers -- but that was because they weren't scheduled, anyway.