<p>The recent death of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock brings to mind other tragic incidents of ballplayers dying before their time.<br />Books about such players who died during the baseball season include <em><span class=”bigger”>Ed Delehanty in the Emerald<a onclick=”window.open(this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=240,height=240,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false” href=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/00dela.jpg”><img width=”125″ height=”125″ border=”0″ src=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/my_weblog/images/00dela.jpg” title=”00dela” alt=”00dela” style=”margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;” /></a>
Age of Baseball</span></em> <a href=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/my_weblog/2007/03/a_st_patricks_d.html”>(see a previously posted review</a>) and <em><span class=”sans”>July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed
Delahanty,</span></em><span class=”sans”> the latter written by Mike Sowell, who might get something of a morbid reputation: he also wrote </span><em>The Pitch That Killed</em>, a biography about Ray Chapman ( d. Aug. 17, 1920), the only on-field fatality. <br />Yankees cather Thurman Munson was killed in a plance crash on Aug. 2, 1979. His story is told in <em>Thurman Munson: A Baseball Biography</em>. I was working at a
sleepaway camp in Quebec when I heard the news that fateful day. Information was hard to come by in those
pre-wired days, but as the only person from the U.S., I received a lot
of commiseration. Ironically, Munson’s autobiography, written with
Marty Appel, was released that year.<a onclick=”window.open(this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=240,height=240,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false” href=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/00_nec.jpg”><img width=”125″ height=”125″ border=”0″ src=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/my_weblog/images/00_nec.jpg” title=”00_nec” alt=”00_nec” style=”margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; float: right;” /></a><br />
Other players have succumbed during the regular season, including Lyman Bostock (Sept. 23, 1978)
and Willard Hershberger (Aug. 3, 1940), but no books have been devoted strictly to them. There stories, and those of other ballplayers, have been collected in <em><span class=”sans”>The Baseball Necrology: The Post-Baseball Lives and Deaths of over
7,600 Major League Players and Others</span></em>, published in 2003 by McFarland.</p>
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