Ed Delahanty

AKA:

Big Ed

Birth Name:

Edward James Delahanty

Birth Date:

October 30, 1867

Birth Place:

Cleveland, Ohio

Death Date:

July 2, 1903

Place of Death:

Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

Age:

Cause of Death:

Swept over Niagara Falls

Cemetery Name:

Calvary Cemetery

Claim to Fame:

Sports

Ed Delahanty was an American professional baseball player who spent his Major League Baseball (MLB) playing career with the Philadelphia Quakers, Cleveland Infants, Philadelphia Phillies, and Washington Senators. He was renowned as one of the game's early power hitters, and while primarily a left fielder, also spent time as an infielder. Delahanty won a batting title, batted over .400 three times, and has the fifth-highest career batting average in MLB history. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945.

Not-So-Fun-Fact

Ed Delahanty died when he fell from the International Bridge on a Thursday night, swept over Niagara Falls, and was taken from the river at the lower Niagara gorge. It all started with a long train ride from Detroit to NYC, and Big Ed decided to down five shots of whiskey. The liquor made him uncontrollable. He crashed into an emergency tool cabinet, breaking the glass. He pulled a woman by her ankles out of her berth, then began threatening passengers with a razor. A drunken Delahanty was terrifying other passengers with an open razor so much so that the conductor simply removed him from the train at Bridgeburg at the Canadian end of the bridge. Delahanty began to walk across the bridge illegally when he simply fell off the tracks.

When they found the body a week later his mangled corpse was missing a leg and was found with an unrelated female body nearby.