1862.2
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
 |
| Prominent Milestones |
| Misc BB Firsts |
| Add a Misc BB First |
| About the Chronology |
| Tom Altherr Dedication |
| Add a Chronology Entry |
| Open Queries |
| Open Numbers |
| Most Aged |
The Death of Jim Creighton at 21
| Salience | Prominent |
|---|---|
| Tags | Baseball Professionalism, HazardBaseball Professionalism, Hazard |
| Location | |
| City/State/Country: | Brooklyn, NY, United States |
| Modern Address | |
| Game | Base BallBase Ball |
| Immediacy of Report | Retrospective |
| Age of Players | AdultAdult |
| Holiday | |
| Notables | |
| Text | Excelsior star pitcher James Creighton, 21 years old, suffered some sort of injury during the middle innings of a game against the Union of Morrisania on October 14, 1862, and died four days later of a "strangulated intestine" associated with a hernia. (Other accounts cite a ruptured bladder - ouch.) One legend was that Creighton suffered the injury in the process of "hitting out a home run." Excelsior officials attributed the death to a cricket injury incurred in a prior cricket match. Creighton was perhaps base ball's first superstar.
|
| Sources | R. M. Gorman and D. Weeks, Death at the Ballpark (McFarland, 2009), pages 63-64. Richard Bogovich, "The Martyrdom of Jim Creighton-- Excelsiors of Brooklyn vs. Unions", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 43-46 See Tom Gilbert's 3/4/2021 blog at https://howbaseballhappened.com/blog/how-baseball-killed-its-first-star-player. Tom's How Baseball Happened (Godine, 2020) carries Creighton's base ball career at p. 185ff, and his death is discussed on pp. 212-215. |
| Warning | Tom Gilbert, 3/5/2021-- "Creighton’s hernia did not “rupture”— it led to a strangulated intestine which became infected; the infection killed him. We know this because both Brooklyn Health Dept records and Green-Wood Cemetery records state the cause of death as “strangulated intestine.” |
| Comment | Tom Shieber, Hall of Fame curator who has studied Creighton extensively, believes the injury was an inguinal hernia which ruptured. In an article published on December 7, 1862, the New York Sunday Mercury recounts a conversation with Creighton before the Union game in which he states that he had injured himself in a recent cricket match. It is assumed that he received the hernia in the cricket match and that it ruptured during the Union game. Edit with form to add a comment |
| Query | Edit with form to add a query |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| External Number | |
| Submitted by | Bob Tholkes (2014) and Tom Gilbert (2021) |
| Submission Note | Bob 19CBB comment - 4/3/2014; Tom's blog-3/4/2021 |
| Has Supplemental Text |
1862.2 The Death of Jim Creighton at 21"
Comments
<comments voting="Plus" />