1957 Yankee of the Past: Carl Mays

MY PITCH THAT KILLED CHAPMAN WAS A STRIKE!

"Baseball fans of every generation seem to delight in having at least one player to heckle. In 1920 the target of their jeers was Carl Mays.

And, just as they chose certain players to taunt, they have others for whom they show a special affection. In 1920 the object of their cheers was Ray Chapman, peppery little shortstop of the Cleveland Indians.

Mays was cut out to be a villain. He pitched underhand, which was strange and somewhat suspect to begin with, and pitched a 'bean ball' that he was wont to pitch close by the skulls of batsmen and make them step back from the plate a little. Now, he was a pitcher for the New York Yankees, but he had come to them in an unorthodox manner which won him no friends.

Carl had been a member of the Boston Red Sox in 1918. He didn't like it and demanded that he be traded. The Red Sox refused to peddle him. Carl quit. Helplessly, the Boston club traded him to New York. The deal promised to set a bad precedent, and Byron Bancroft Johnson, president of the American League, placed a restraining order on him. Mays went ahead and worked every city in the league. That was Carl Mays.

Ray Chapman, on the other hand, was a popular little guy who had been with the Indians since 1912. This, his ninth season with the club, was going to be his last. He had planned to retire from the game at the end of the preceding season, following his marriage, but he had yielded to the wishes of the Cleveland fans.

The feeling was strong that the Indians could win their first pennant in 1920 if Chapman would stay with the team, and he agreed to play just this one, final year.

In mid-August, the Indians were engaged in a three-way fight for the pennant with the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox.

On the afternoon of Monday, August 16, the Clevelanders were at the Polo Grounds, which the Yankees shared with the Giants. Carl Mays was pitching for the Yanks; Chapman was batting second for the Indians.

Cleveland was winning, 3-0, when Chapman, a right-handed hitter, came to bat to open the fifth inning. Mays threw him a strike, then a ball. On the second pitch, Mays says today, Chapman shifted his feet to push the ball down the first-base line.

The third pitch was a little high. Mays says he thew it to prevent a poke down the base path. There was a resounding crack. The ball rolled toward Mays and the pitcher picked it up and started to throw to first before he noticed that Chapman had sunk to the ground.

Umpire Tommy Connolly called for a doctor. Several in the stands responded and, after several minutes, several of Chapman's teammates started to help him to the clubhouse in center field. Then Ray collapsed again.

Harry Lunte went to first to run for Chapman and scored to put the Indians ahead, 4-0. Mays pitched until the eighth. The Yankees scored three in the ninth but lost, 4-3.

After the game, Chapman was taken from the clubhouse rubbing table to the hospital. Regaining consciousness as he was being lifted into the ambulance, he asked that someone put on his finger a diamond ring he had been given by his young bride, Kate. 'Tell Kate I'm all right,' he said.

At 5 A.M. he died under ether at the hospital- the first and only ball player ever to lose his life in a major league game. His skull had been split for an inch and a half on the left side by Mays' pitch, and the brain was shoved against the bone on the other side.

Mays became the object of a whispering campaign. A petition was circulated to have him expelled. The district attorney exonerated him of all blame and eventually the furor died down, but until he wound up his baseball career with the Toledo Mud Hens 12 years later his name brought a bitter expression to the faces of most baseball fans.

Today, at 65, Carl Mays is working at public relations, visiting with his grandchildren, and building a home in the calm of a small town of 11,400, Bend, Oregon.

'I have never thought for one minute,' he says, 'of Chapman's death being other than a regrettable accident. He was very fast and would push the ball toward first base. No pitcher could throw him out if he pushed the ball fair. The only way you could break up the play was to keep the ball high and inside so he would either miss it or pop it up.

'In his hurry to get the jump on the pitcher, he ran into a pitch that would have been a strike if had stayed in the batter's box.'

Carl won 215 games and lost 127 during his major league career.

Three years after his diamond career ended, in the early '30's, Carl began a baseball school in Portland, Oregon, which he ran until 1947. Then, for five years, he was a scout for the San Francisco club of the Pacific Coast League. He began ranching in East Oregon in 1952.

Last June, he suffered a heart attack. On doctor's orders, he has given up ranching and is building his home on the Deschutes River in Bend. He and his second wife, Esther, whom he married in 1939, plan to see Mays' children and grandchildren often.

His son, Carl Jr., is personnel manager of the U.S. National Bank in Portland. His daughter, Mrs. Betty Jane Barker, is a rancher's wife in Dayville, Oregon. Carl Jr. has two boys, and Betty Jane has two girls.

The former pitcher and Esther hope to continue to help young men get college educations. Mays says they have helped send about ten boys to college.

Much of Mays' time is given to hunting and fishing and to advising boys about baseball."

-Phyllis Propert, Chicago Tribune (Baseball Digest, July 1957)

Editor's Note: Carl Mays wasn't sure he wanted his story told. He thought it "might rekindle the old fire" of public emotion. We are sure it won't. Such a blaze always is extinguished by a special compound- time and reason.