As right-hander Carl Mays of the New York Yankees wound up, he detected a slight shift in the batter’s stance, as if he intended to bunt for the third time in the game. Just like that, the pitcher decided to fire the ball high and tight to make a sacrifice more difficult.
At the plate, the batter inexplicably never moved as the fastball sailed toward his head. It struck him in the left temple with a resounding crack heard all over New York’s big Polo Grounds. Suddenly the crowd of 23,000 was deathly silent - a sadly appropriate adverb, as it turned out.
The date was Aug. 16, 1920. Roughly 12 hours later, popular Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman died at nearby St. Lawrence Hospital. Eighty-nine years later, he remains the only player fatally beaned in a major league game.
The Indians, locked in a dramatic struggle for first place with the Yankees and the not yet blackened Chicago White Sox, eventually won the American League pennant and the World Series - triumphs marred forever by the Chapman tragedy.
Chapman was in his ninth season at age 29. A sunny sort liked by both teammates and opponents, he was known as one of the majors’ best shortstops and a dangerous clutch hitter. His lifetime batting average was .278, and he had led the American League in walks and runs during a 1918 season shortened by World War I.
Mays, an early Yankees star who would win 26 games that season and 27 the next, had a reputation as a nasty customer who didn’t mind firing his underhand deliveries at hitters. Back then, of course, batting helmets did not exist. The batter had no protection except his reflexes when a baseball - often discolored and misshapen - rocketed at him.
And Chapman’s reflexes failed him. He stood transfixed as the pitch clobbered him and rebounded to the mound. Mays, thinking the ball had struck the bat handle, grabbed it and fired to first base. Meanwhile, Chapman sank to his knees without uttering a sound as blood poured from his left ear.
With players from both teams gathered around, Chapman tried and failed to speak. A short time later, incredibly, he struggled to his feet and began walking toward the clubhouse in center field. As he neared second base, his knees buckled. Other players carried him the rest of the way.
While Chapman was being placed in the ambulance, his thoughts were with his 26-year-old wife of 10 months back in Cleveland. According to author Mike Sowell in his 1989 book “The Pitch That Killed,” Ray turned toward former catcher John Henry, a close friend, and whispered, “John, for God’s sake don’t call Kate. But if you do, tell her I’m all right.” Then he lost consciousness.
Talking with reporters later at the hospital, Indians manager and star center fielder Tris Speaker noted that he had been beaned in 1916 but suffered no permanent damage.
“I am hopeful Chappie will be back as soon as I was,” Speaker added. “I was out 10 days.”
A short time later, the doctors told Speaker that Chapman’s skull was fractured, necessitating surgery that could be not postponed until his wife arrived. Speaker gave permission. A 90-minute operation was completed around 2 a.m., and it appeared very briefly that Chapman was improving. But at 4:40, he was pronounced dead.
When Kathleen Chapman arrived by train at 10, she and a priest went to Speaker’s room at the Ansonia Hotel, where Mrs. Chapman asked the manager, “He’s dead, isn’t he?” When Speaker nodded, she fainted.
About the same time, Mays answered the door at his apartment to find Yankees official Mark Roth standing there.
“Carl, I’ve got some bad news for you,” Roth said. “Ray Chapman died at 4 this morning.”
Stunned, Mays shut the door in his face.
Police soon arrived to protect Mays and took his statement. Though he was cleared of any malicious intent, players from the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers later threatened to boycott games with the Yankees unless the pitcher was barred from baseball. Nothing came of it.
Mays subsequently insisted that a rough spot on the fatal ball caused it to sail and said the umpires should have thrown it out.
“My conscience is absolutely clear,” he said. “If it was not, I could not think of ever going near a baseball park again.”
Mays pitched in the major leagues for another nine seasons, winning 207 lifetime games, and lived for another half-century. Yet in one sense he was as much a victim as Ray Chapman because when he died at age 79 in 1971, that one deadly pitch was all anybody remembered.
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