I was thumbing through a recent addition to my baseball library — The Baseball Anthology: 125 Years, edited by Joseph Wallace — and came across a couple of pages devoted to the tragic death of Ray Chapman in 1920. A common misconception is that Chapman was killed right there on the field of play. David Nemec and Peter Palmer in 1001 Fascinating Baseball Facts claim he was “the only on-field fatality in major league history.” According to at least one eyewitness, though, he died not on the field but in a hospital several hours after the event. And I can think of several ballplayers who died in similar fashion. James Creighton, the 19th-century pitching phenom, comes immediately to mind.
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