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THE 1920s: SPORTS: DEATHS

Adrian Constantine "Cap" (later "Pop") Anson, 71, baseball player for the Philadelphia Athletics and player-manager for the Chicago Cubs, who during his record twenty-seven seasons as an active player in the Major Leagues had a lifetime batting average of .399 and more than 3,500 hits, 14 April 1922.

George Archibald, 37, American steeplechase jockey who won more than one thousand races in Europe, including 180 in England, two of which were for King George V, 5 April 1927.

Louis P. Bayard Jr., 46, a Princetonian who was the first National Intercollegiate Individual Golfing Champion in 1897, 3 July 1922.

August Belmont Jr., 72, New York City subway developer, financier, thoroughbred breeder, and chairman of the American Jockey Club, 10 December 1924.

Lee Bible, 42, dirt-track racer killed while attempting to set a world's automobile speed record in a 1,500-horsepower Triplex at Daytona Beach, Florida, 13 March 1929.

Thomas E. Burke, 54, runner who as a Harvard under-graduate won Gold Medals in the 100-meter and 400-meter races at the 1896 Olympics, the first Olympic Games of modern times, 14 February 1929.

Walter Chauncey Camp, 65, football authority who in 1888 became Yale's athletic director and the following year selected the first of the annual All-American football teams. Camp was largely responsible for giving football its modern form and rules, including the gridiron field, the eleven-man team, the quarterback position, and the four-down structure. His books on football and other sports stressed strategy and clean play, 14 March 1925.

Robert L. Cannefax, 37, one-legged billiards player who in 1917, 1919, and 1924 was the world's professional three-cushion champion, 27 February 1928.

Major Winthrop Astor Chanler, 62, who served in the Spanish-American War and World War I and who devoted much of his life to hunting in Canada, the Austrian Tyrol, and Sardinia, 24 August 1926.

Col. Ezekiel F. Clay, 79, owner of Runnymede Stock Farm in Bourbon, Kentucky, and president of the Kentucky Racing Association, 27 July 1920.

Alexander Smith Cochran, 55, carpet-fortune heir, philanthropist, and yachtsman, whose schooner Westward in 1910 defeated Kaiser Wilhelm's Meteor for the Jubilee Prize at Kiel and in 1911 won the Astor Cup, 19 June 1929.

Jimmy Delaney, 26, light-heavyweight boxer who fought sixty-seven bouts, twenty-nine of them no-decision exhibition matches; of his other thirty-eight fights, he won twenty-nine and lost nine. Delaney, who had served as a sparring partner to Tommy Gibbons and Gene Tunney before their title fights with Jack Dempsey, died of blood poisoning resulting from injuries suffered in a bout with Maxie Rosenbloom, 4 March 1927.

Budd Doble, 85, for more than thirty years beginning in 1865 owner and driver of great trotting horses, including Dexter, Goldsmith Maid, Axtell, and Nancy Hanks; in his poem "How the Old Horse Won the Race," Oliver Wendell Holmes included the couplet "Budd Doble, whose catarrhal name / So fills the nasal trump of fame," 29 March 1926.

William Earl Dodge, 43, wealthy New York socialite and avid speedboat racer, 4 May 1927.

William Edward "Wild Bill" Donovan, 47, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers from 1903 to 1912 and manager of the New York Yankees from 1915 to 1918; he died in a train wreck at Forsyth, New York, 9 December 1923.

Charles H. Ebbets, 66, president and part owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers who moved the Dodgers' playing field to Brooklyn and for whom it was later named, 18 April 1925.

Frank J. Farrell, 60, in 1903 cofounder with William S. Devery of the New York Highlanders, the American League team that later became the Yankees; after the partners sold the club to Col. Jacob Ruppert in 1915, Farrell became heavily involved in horse racing and gambling enterprises, 10 February 1926.

Charles Addison Ferry, 76, engineer who designed the Yale Bowl, 31 July 1924.

Theodore "Tiger" Flowers, 32, the only black boxer to win a major title during the 1920s; he defeated Harry Greb for the middleweight championship in February 1926, defended his title against Greb in August of that year, and lost in a highly controversial decision to Mickey Walker in December 1926. Of his 149 fights, Flowers won 115, lost 19, and had 15 no-decision contests, 16 November 1927.

Margaret Crozer (Mrs. Caleb F.) Fox, 67, the "Grand Old Lady of Golf," who had played in the first national championship for women golfers in 1895 and who, when she was sixty-two years old, beat the reigning women's champion, Glenna Collett, in a Florida tournament with a score of 77, 10 August 1928.

Harry H. Frazee, 48, theatrical producer (whose shows included No, No, Nanette in 1925) and former owner of the Boston Red Sox, whose team won the World Series in 1918; on 3 January 1920 Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000 plus a substantial loan, 4 June 1929.

Eugene J. Giannini, 55?, champion rower who was on the New York Athletic Club's national-championship crews for eight-oared sculls in 1891 and 1892, who won more than thirty races in single and double sculls, and who served as a rowing coach both at Yale and at the New York Athletic Club, 3 March 1923.

Charles Jaspar Glidden, 70, telephone and telegraph executive, who in the first years of the twentieth century organized round-the-world and United States motoring tours; sponsored by the American Automobile Association, the U.S. tour, which between 1905 and 1913 included twenty-five to fifty entrants annually, covered one thousand miles, and had as its prize the Glidden Trophy, 11 September 1927.

Harry (Henry Berg) Greb, 32, boxer who, of his 291 bouts, won 114, lost 9, and fought 168 no-decision contests. In May 1922 Greb beat Gene Tunney for the light-heavyweight title, which Tunney reclaimed in February 1923. In August 1923 Greb took the middle-weight title from Johnny Wilson, a title he successfully defended until February 1926, when he lost it to Tiger Flowers, 22 October 1926.

Irving Grinnell, 81, a grandnephew of Washington Irving, an inaugurator of rowing at Columbia University, and a yachting enthusiast who at one point served as commodore of the New York Yacht Club, 11 May 1921.

Captain Harry P. Haff, 61, skipper of world-class racing yachts for such owners as William E. Iselin, Henry I. Lippitt, Alexander Smith Cochran, and the Belmont family, 1 February 1922.

Fred "Pop" Hanlon, 65, for twenty-three years secretary and business manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and an authority on baseball rules, 2 August 1927.

John A. "Jack" Highlands, 51, in the 1890s a notable Harvard pitcher who later had interests in a motion-picture company and in a cotton-production plant in Haiti, 15 April 1920.

Samuel Clay Hildreth, 63, trainer of thoroughbred racing horses for such breeders as Harry F. Sinclair, James Corrigan, William C. Whitney, and the Belmonts; among the horses Hildreth trained were Grey Lag, Purchase, Stromboli, and Zev, 24 September 1929.

Samuel Shaw Howland, 75, inheritor through birth and marriage of New York banking fortunes, who was a patron of both flat-track and steeplechase racing and a founder of the American Jockey Club and the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association, 27 April 1925.

Miller J. Huggins, 50, legendary manager of the New York Yankees from 1918 to 1929; between 1921 and 1928 Huggins led the Yankees—including Babe Ruth and, after June 1925, Lou Gehrig—to six American League pennants and three World Series championships, two of them sweeps in 1927 and 1928, 25 September 1929.

Hugh Ambrose Jennings, 56, baseball player who batted .300 or more for twelve seasons, most of them with the Baltimore Orioles, in the 1890s and early 1900s; an aggressive plate hugger, he was regularly hit by pitched balls. In 1907 Jennings began a distinguished career as a baseball manager, leading the Detroit Tigers to American League pennants in 1907, 1908, and 1909; he remained with Detroit until 1921, when John McGraw hired him as field manager for the New York Giants, who won National League pennants from 1921 through 1924. In 1925 he became the Giants' full-time manager but retired the following year because of ill health, 1 February 1928.

George M. Kelly, 80, champion jumper with American circuses; he was the first man to perform a triple-somersault leap over eight animals—horses, camels, and elephants—lined up in a circus ring, 4 April 1921.

John Walker "Jack" Lapp, 35, former catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics who had played a substantial role in the Athletics' World Series championships from 1910 through 1913, 6 February 1921.

George H. "Kid" Lavigne, 58, from 1893 to 1899 light-weight boxing champion, whose opponents included Joe Walcott, Dick Burge, and Young Griffo; though he had reportedly earned a small fortune in the ring, Lavigne spent his final years as a night watchman at the Ford Motor Company plant in Detroit, 10 March 1928.

Thomas Le Boutillier II, 50, president of the Dubois Fence Company, pistol marksman, and member of the Old Westbury, Long Island, club polo team; he died of a heart attack while playing in the Autumn Plate Polo Tournament at Westbury, Long Island, 18 September 1929.

Captain Martin J. Lyons, 88, yacht skipper for James Gordon Bennett and winner of many races between 1866 and 1900, 21 July 1920.

John E. Madden, 73, financier, turfman, and, in his youth, amateur runner and boxer who was a sparring partner and "second" for John L. Sullivan. Most notably, Madden founded and operated a Kentucky racing stable, Hamburg Place, where he bred many famous horses, among them six Kentucky Derby winners: Plaudit (1898), Old Rosebud (1914), Sir Barton (the first Triple Crown winner, 1919), Paul Jones (1920), Zev (1923), and Flying Ebony (1925), 3 November 1929.

Christopher "Christy" Mathewson, 45, legendary New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds pitcher who was among the first five players named to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Mathewson played four seasons in which he won thirty games or more and eight others in which he won twenty games or more. During the 1903 season, while playing for the Giants, he pitched 267 strike-outs, a record that stood for more than fifty years. Mathewson was a master of the fadeaway pitch (later called the screwball); by the time of his retirement as a player in 1916, his win-loss record stood at 372-187, and he had struck out 2,499 batters. His early death was in part the result of gassing during World War I army service, 7 October 1925.

Joseph Jerome "Iron Man" McGinnity, 58, baseball player who, in the 1900 National League pennant race, pitched and won seven games in six days, helping his team, the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, beat out the Pittsburgh Pirates for the title; in 1904 he won thirty-five of the fifty-one games he pitched for the Baltimore Americans. McGinnity continued pitching for major- and minor-league teams until he was fifty-four years old, 14 November 1929.

James Pilkington, 77, New York subway contractor and all-around athlete who in 1879 won amateur heavy-weight boxing and wrestling titles in a single evening, in 1889 won the national doubles sculling championship with Jack Nagle, and for twenty years served as president of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen; a longtime member of the American Olympic Committee, Pilkington was known as the "father of amateur rowing," 25 April 1929.

Myer Prinstein, 46, broad jumper who won gold medals in the 1900, 1904, and 1906 Olympics (the latter a special event held in Athens to placate the Greeks who felt that Athens should be the permanent Olympic site). In 1900 Prinstein placed second in the running broad jump because his university, Syracuse, refused to allow him to compete in the Sunday finals; the following day he took the gold in the running hop, skip, and jump. In 1904 he won first place in both events and, in 1906, the gold in the broad jump, 10 March 1925.

Paul J. Rainey, 46, independently wealthy big-game hunter, whose tracking of African lions with American bear hounds became a favorite subject of early news-reels, 18 September 1923.

George Lewis "Tex" Rickard, 58, legendary fight promoter who turned boxing into a glamorous sport by making attendance at bouts popular among the rich and fashionable. Beginning as a gambling-house operator and speculator in the Klondike and Nevada, Rickard had his initial boxing success with the 1910 James J. Jeffries-Jack Johnson title fight, which he promoted as a contest between the first black heavy-weight champion (Johnson) and a "white hope" (Jeffries) and which Johnson won. In 1919 Rickard arranged a championship fight for Jack Dempsey—the Dempsey-Jess Willard bout, which brought Dempsey the heavyweight crown. Other title fights that Rickard promoted included the 1921 Dempsey-Georges Carpentier contest (which produced the first "million-dollar gate"), the Dempsey-Luis Firpo bout in 1923, the 1926 Dempsey-Gene Tunney fight (with receipts of nearly $2 million), and the 1927 Dempsey-Tunney rematch, which grossed more than $2 million. Dempsey, who was with Rickard when he died of peritonitis, reported that among the promoter's final words were, "Jack, I've got this fight licked," 6 January 1929.

Arnold Rothstein, 46, gambler and racketeer indicted for fixing the 1919 World Series. Known as "The Brain" and "The Bankroll," he was never convicted of a crime. He was found shot to death on a stairwell in Manhattan's Park Central Hotel following a high-stakes card game. His murder was not solved, 6 November 1928.

Sir Mortimer Singer, 65, American-born British citizen and an heir to the sewing-machine fortune; he was a pioneer in cycling, motoring, and flying, and his racing stables produced several English racing champions, 24 June 1929.

George Stallings, 63, who managed the Boston Braves from 1913 to 1920; his 1914 team went from last place in the National League in late July to pennant winner on 25 September to a sweep of the World Series over the Philadelphia Athletics. Stallings' dying words were supposedly, "Bases on balls did this to me," 13 May 1929.

Walter J. Travis, 65, Australian-born American golfer who in 1904 became the first American to win the British amateur championship; he also took the American amateur championship in 1900, 1901, and 1903 and throughout his career served as a notable golf-course architect, 31 July 1927.

William Kissam Vanderbilt, 70, railroad heir, arts patron, and sportsman; in 1895 he sailed the yacht Defender that retained the America's Cup for the United States, 22 July 1920.

Pancho (Francisco Guilledo) Villa, 23, Filipino fly-weight champion of the world since 18 June 1923; he died of an infected tooth ten days after a bout with Jimmy McLarnin, 14 July 1925.

Ellis Ward, 77, one of nine Ward brothers who were famous rowers, served for thirty-five years as the University of Pennsylvania crews coach, 25 August 1922.

Freddie Welsh, 41, lightweight boxing champion from 1914 to 1917, who died pennyless and alone; his wife, from whom he was separated but on good terms, said of other boxers, "This is a hard-boiled age.… Freddie knew them all when he was on top, but none of them knew him when he was down and out," 28 July 1927.

Edward Payson Weston, 90, long-distance walker; over the course of five decades he participated in walking tours and races, including a walk from New York City to San Francisco and back (3,895 miles in 103 days 7 hours), when he was in his early seventies, 12 May 1929.

Howard Frederic Whitney, 52, longtime member of the New York Stock Exchange and avid golfer, who as a member and officer of the United States Golf Association had been largely responsible for bringing about agreements between the U.S.G.A. and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of Saint Andrews, Scotland. At the time of his death Whitney and Bobby Jones were the only Americans to hold honorary memberships in the Saint Andrews club, 30 June 1927.

Payne Whitney, 51, multimillionaire financier and sportsman who had been a champion rower at Yale and who with his wife, Helen Hay Whitney, and brother, Harry Payne Whitney, was active in thoroughbred horse racing, 25 May 1927.

Walter Winans, 68, independently wealthy world-champion marksman and huntsman who had won a gold medal in the running-deer double-shots competition of the 1908 London Olympics and had taken first prize for a sculpture in the new fine-arts division of the 1912 London Olympics; he was also a hackney-and trotting-horse fancier who died while driving a sulky in a London trotting race, 12 August 1920.