Mysterious Death of Ed Delahanty: Baseball’s First Superstar Lost at Niagara Falls

Dive into the captivating story of Ed Delahanty, one of baseball’s earliest legends. On this day in 1903, Delahanty vanished near Niagara Falls under mysterious circumstances. Was it accident, suicide, or murder? Explore his remarkable career, the clues behind his tragic end, and why his legacy still fascinates sports history fans.
Key moments, stats, and the enduring mystery—unravel the legend of “Big Ed” and the secrets beneath the falls.


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Speaker 1: So imagine one of the biggest stars in Major League

Baseball just vanishes. No one can find him, no one

knows what happened or where he went, And a few

days later his body is found at the bottom of

Niagara Falls, dead, missing all his personal belongings, in clothes,

and no one knows what happened. Today, this would be

front page news and Internet sluice would comb anything to

try to find the answer. But this happened in nineteen

o three when baseball great Ed Delahanty took a train

ended up at the bottom of Niagara Falls. But the

question is was in an accident, a suicide or murder.

That's what we're going to find out today as we

go into the background in the story of Ed Delahanti

and what happened on that train that ended his life.

Today on Daily Sports History, let's go Welcome to dailyes

Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your god because I analyzed

box scores like their ancient scrolls. So Ed Delahanty was

born in eighteen sixty seven in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew

up love and baseball and worked his way up just

like his brothers did. As four of his brothers also

eventually played in Major League baseball. He would eventually join

the Cleveland Shamrocks, a semi pro team in Ohio, in

eighteen eighty seven. He was known as a power hitter,

but he also was great at making contact, and in

first eighty three games he scored ninety runs and batted

with a three fifty five average, which really caught the

eye in Major League baseball, and he ended up playing

minor league baseball in Wheeling, West Virginia, and he really

caught the eye of the Philadelphia Phillies, where he's given

a nineteen hundred dollars contract, which today would be just

over sixty thousand dollars, which is a large amount, especially

back then, and they brought him in quickly as they

needed to replace Charlie Ferguson, who had died unexpectedly, which

is a weird foreshadowing. In his rookie year, he actually struggled,

batting only two twenty eight with only one home run

and thirty one RBIs, but he would continue to grow,

hitting two ninety in his next season and eventually passing

the three hundred batting mark, which is the benchmarker being

a good player. And then he did something that many

have done. In eighteen ninety four, he hit over four hundred,

going four oh seven. Needed the same the next season,

and in eighteen ninety nine he did it again and

he would start adding power as well, as he led

the league in home run eighteen ninety three with nineteen

Now doesn't sound like a lot compared to today and

even the Babe Ruth times, but this was known as

the dead ball era, where teams weren't focused on home runs.

You were focused on getting on base and scoring runs

rather than hitting home runs. But he would also lead

the league again in eighteen ninety six with thirteen home runs,

being known as the power hitter Guy, being known for

his power even though it doesn't seem like today, but

it was a huge moment. On July thirteenth, eighteen ninety six,

he became the second player in history to hit four

home runs in a single game, in the first to

do so in a losing effort. And he was really

a larger than life figure as he stood over sixty

to one over two hundred pounds. He was really just

known for his size and it got the nickname Big Ed.

But over the years he began to develop a drinking

problem and a gambling problem, even though he would go

on to earn a nineteen hundred over three thousand dollars

a year, which today would be over one hundred thousand dollars.

Back then, one hundred thousand dollars was huge, and he

was the valuable name. At this time. The National League

and the American laghbor separate, and he would bounce around

between teams and leagues looking for the best payday because

he really earned it, consistently hitting over three point fifty

throughout his career and at the time was known by

many pitchers as the best handed hitter. At the time.

There was no pitching around him, but he was starting

to struggle with alcohol abuse and he was allegedly in

gambling debt. Now this time, gambling was still an issue

in sports. Betting and players gambling and umpires and everything

was an issue. It happened in the Black Sox scandals,

which was still years away from at this time. On

July second, nineteen oh three, Dantley left his team in Detroit,

leaving behind all his personal belongings except his Washington Senators camp,

which was his team that he was playing for at

the time. He boarded a train on its way to

New York, hoping to negotiate a release from his contract

to hopefully join the New York Giants. But it said

that he actually got very drunk on the train, consuming

over the whiskies, became very disruptive. He was smoking even

though it was forbidden. He was breaking glasses. They said

he had a knife or a straight razor, scaring passengers.

That the conductor at the time of the train finally

stopped the train and made him get out at a

really odd place over the Niagara River which leads the

Niagara Falls. But there was a walkway on this bridge,

so it wasn't like they just left him on the tracks.

But it was a three thousand foot span bridge, and

he was very intoxicated at the time, and there was

a night watchman named Sam Kingston who encountered him on

the bridge and actually ended up in an altercation with

him and tried to restrain Dantly, but he broke free

and ran off into the night. That is what he says.

Moments later, Dantley wasn't on the bridge anymore, and we

would go on to find out that he either stumbled

off the bridge, falling twenty five feet into the fast

moving river or jumped or maybe even was pushed, but

no one really knew it was missing for a week. Now,

this wasn't uncommon at the time because there was no phones.

You didn't know where anyone was, especially an athlete that

was traveling across the country. You wouldn't see people for

months and months, so you just didn't expect them to

be missing. But he was missing for a week. No

one had heard from him, never seen him until his

body was found at the bottom of Niagara Falls. His

clothes and personal belongings were all gone, So the question

was what happened. So let's walk through the scenarios that

could have happened. One it was an accident. He was

drunk on a bridge, stumbling, got into a fight, was

running away from somebody, got into an altercation, easily could

have slipped fell over the railing. Safety standards were not

what they are to day. Things like this happened a lot,

so this is a very likely outcome that it was

an accident. He fell over. Twenty five feet isn't the

longest thing. You can't survive that, but it was a

rushing river at night, and if you're drunk, it's even worse,

so very easily could have been an accident, a suicide.

You could say that he didn't bring any personal belongings,

which is weird. Normally you would bring stuff to go

on a cross country trip, but why would you do that.

Why would you leave all your stuff and not take

it unless you were planning to maybe end your life.

And suicide is usually a split second decision. So if

you were drunk, you just got kicked off a train,

you feel like you're being slided in work, you have

massive debts, people coming at you to collect, like, maybe

you jump off, try to kill yourself, even though twenty

five feet isn't that long, you're not thinking straight. Definitely possibility.

Third possibility wasn't murder. There are actually witnesses on the

train that said they saw someone possibly following him around

and even may have gotten off the train and they

may have saw a figure. Now, maybe it was the

night watchman, maybe it was someone else. They didn't get

a clear description of it. It was dark in the

middle of nowhere. No one really knows. But his brother

Frank really thinks that while he may have been drinking,

he thinks ed held his drink well enough that he

wouldn't fall off the bridge, so something had happened to

make him go off the bridge. That's just his feeling.

He wasn't there, and maybe no one was there. We

don't really know. This is a mystery that happened over

one hundred years ago, nineteen oh three. There was no DNA,

no cameras, no cell phones. Investigations into murder or deaths

was just very minimal back then, and you had to

have like lots of evidence or catch someone red handed

to really have a murder. So we will never know.

And this is such a crazy story that likely if

it happened today with one of the stars in Major

League Baseball, it would end the same way. If a

star was taking a train, which honestly is unlikely today,

but if they were taking a train and had to

get off, which is something they don't do today, in

the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night,

chances are this could happen. It be a mystery still

to this day, as it was over one hundred years ago.

The details we have about that night are so scarce

that we do not know what happened, and unfortunately this

ended his legendary career. He ranks seventh all time in

career batting average all time with a three forty six

batting average, batting over four hundred three times, a National

League record, a feat only matched in the National League

by Hall of Famer Roger Hornsby. He would have over

one hundred home runs, which doesn't sound a lot now,

but at the time it was a lot, and hit

over two thousand, five hundred hits, and in nineteen oh

two he was the only player to win a batting

title in both the National and American League. He was

arguably a great player that we forget about and only

gets recalled for his tragic end. He would get inducted

into the Hall of Fame in nineteen forty five, have

his jersey retired by the Philadelphia Phillies, and be part

of the Philadelphia's Wall of Fame, and the ending to

his life is unfortunate and a mystery that helped him

live on more than some other players. Sometimes things happen

in our lives that make us even more infamous than

the great accomplishments we had, And the question is should

Ed be more remembered for his mysterious passing or what

he did on the field. Thank you for listening to today's

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