April 12, 2004
Deadball
Find your favorite dead ballplayer, lovingly presented. The Page of the Unknowns is a nice touch.
I found the site while looking for info about Paul Edmondson, a White Sox pitcher who'd gone 1-6 with 3.86 ERA as a rookie in '69. That record is slightly misleading because he two-hit the Angels in his debut and later combined with Wilbur Wood (then still a reliever) to one-hit the Pilots. He was a big, hard-throwing guy with promise.
When he died in a car crash on Friday, February 13, 1970, just as spring training was about to start -- one day after his 27th birthday -- Edmondson joined a long line of Sox tragedies that my dad pointed to as evidence that the team is star-crossed (as the standings could have told us). In '69, cinch rookie of the year Carlos May lost his thumb in a national guard mortar accident. Two-time 15-game winner Monty Stratton shot off his leg in 1938. Etc. . .
The Deadball site didn't shed much light on Edmondson's fate, but I found this brief write-up by someone who knew him. Deadball did come through with the New York Times obit for Stratton.
The lengths to which a man will go while avoiding his tax return . . .
Posted by Vernam at April 12, 2004 10:54 PM | TrackBack