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Top 10 Strangest Baseball Deaths

10. Thurman Munson
The Yankees are developing a strange legacy of players dying in plane crashes. The Yankee captain from 1976-79 was never one for the big city. The Akron, Ohio-born Munson learned to fly an airplane so he could make quick visits home to his family when the Yankees had a day off. While practicing his landings in Akron on August 2, 1979, Munson did not lower the flaps for landing, missed the runway and crashed into a tree top. The plane fell to the ground and burst into flames. Trapped inside the burning plane, Munson suffocated at the age of 32. Munson was a 7-time All-Star and won a Rookie of the Year (1970) and an M.V.P. Award (1976). Munson's locker at Yankee Stadium, to this day, remains in tact.

9. Ray Chapman

Ray Chapman, shortstop for the Cleveland Naps from 1912-20, holds the distinction as the only baseball player to have been killed during a game. If you're thinking Billy Wagner in Game 2 of the NLCS, I mean killed as in dead or no longer living. Chapman was a scrappy and speedy ball player who was known to crowd the plate. In a game against the Yankees on August 16, 1920, Yankee submarine pitcher Carl Mays threw one high and inside. Chapman froze and got drilled in the head so hard, Mays thought the ball had hit the bat, fielded it and threw to first. Chapman, knocked unconscious, was carried off the field and died the next day in a New York hospital. He was 29 years old.

8. Donnie Moore
We've seen it many times--Ralph Branca, Bill Buckner, Mitch Williams--one play has the potential to ruin an entire career. Donnie Moore, a 14-year veteran with a career 3.67 ERA, knew this better than anyone. In Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS, Moore's Angels led the Boston Red Sox 5-4 in the top of the ninth. The Angels led the series 3-1 and with a win in game 5, would play in the World Series. With a runner on first, two outs and a 2-2 count on Boston slugger Dave Henderson, Moore was one strike away from winning his team a pennant. Instead, Donnie served up a 2-run dinger to Hendu and Boston went on to win the game and the series. Moore never quite recovered from his inability to get this one out in this one game of an otherwise stellar career. The relief pitcher, who had battled depression and drug abuse throughout his career, hit rock bottom after the '86 loss, lingered around baseball for two more seasons and by 1989, when he retired from the game, his life had spiraled out of control. On the evening of July 18, 1999 Moore, after an argument with his wife, shot her 3 times in front of their children and then took the shotgun to his head. His wife survived the shooting but Donnie did not. The pitcher was 35 years old.

7. Darryl Kile

Anytime a player dies during the season, it qualifies as a strange baseball death. Darryl Kile did just this on June 22, 2002 while in a Chicago hotel on a road trip with his St. Louis Cardinals. Kile was found dead in his room hours before a game against the Cubs at the age of 33. The righty, who had a history of heart problems in his family, was found to have had 90% blockage in two coronary arteries and suffered a massive heart attack. To make this death even stranger, four days earlier when Kile pitched a gem in his final game, beloved Cardinals announcer Jack Buck passed away. When Kile left the game that day, he was given a standing ovation. Kile was the first player to have died during the regular season since Thurman Munson (#10) in 1979.

6. Darrell Porter

The only thing stranger than Darrell Porter's death is his taste in eyeglasses. The 17-year veteran, 4-time All-Star was an excellent defensive catcher who won a World Series MVP when his Cardinals won it all in 1982. Like many players of his time, Porter played hard and partied hard. Besides his admitted use of marijuana, 'ludes and alcohol, as my friend Greg put it, "he was an ill cokehead". He checked himself into rehab before the start of the 1980 season and appeared to his family and teammates as though he had overcome his drug abuse. However, after Porter's retirement in 1987, he had a rocky time adjusting to life post-baseball. He turned to Christianity and then turned again to coke. On August 5, 2002 at the age of 50, Porter told his wife he was going out to buy a newspaper. And by newspaper, he meant a bag of cocaine. Hours later, Porter was found dead next to his car outside of a neighborhood park. The cause of death was "toxic effects of cocaine". Porter is the only entry on the list to die from drugs.

5. Steve Olin & Tim Crews

These two names will be forever linked. That is because the two Cleveland Indians relief pitchers died together in a boating accident in 1993. Olin, 27, and Crews, 33, along with Bobby Ojeda were enjoying a beautiful day of boating near Winter Haven, Florida where the Indians held spring training that year. As the sun set and visibility worsened, their boat crashed into a pier. Olin and Crews died at the scene while Ojeda miraculously survived. Olin and Crews, when they died, were the first active players to die since Thurman Munson. Both players were in the primes of their career and for years after the tragic event, the Indians honored the pitchers by hanging their jerseys in the Tribe's locker room.

4. Ed Delahanty
Ed Delahanty, who played from 1888-1903, ranks third on the all-time Major League leaders in career batting average. "Big Ed" was the best hitter of his day, winning batting titles in both the American and National League, ending his career as the single season doubles leader (55 in 1899), holding the distinction as the only player to have a four-homer game and a four-double game and was inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945. Ed Delahanty was no joke. I can't say the same, however, about the way he died. Big Ed, like many players of his time, liked to drink heavily. On July 2, 1903, Delahanty boarded a train bound for New York to go play for the Giants. Ed got hammered on the train, whipped out a blade and started threatening other passengers. The conductor kicked him off the train at Niagara Falls. A drunken Delahanty attempted to cross the International Bridge over the Niagara River and is believed to have fallen off the bridge into the falls. Any player's death in which the deceased is found at the bottom of Niagara Falls qualifies as a mighty strange baseball death.

3. Roberto Clemente

Roberto Clemente joins Ed Delahanty on the list as the only Hall of Famers to have died strange deaths. The one-time MVP (1966) played for 18 years with the Pittsburgh Pirates and was the 11th player in Major League history to reach 3,000 hits. A hero in his native Puerto Rico, Clemente prided himself in doing charity work on the island in the off-season. On New Year's Eve in 1972, Clemente boarded a plane headed for Managua, Nicaragua where he was transporting relief supplies to earthquake victims. The plane crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico and not one passenger survived. What makes the death of Roberto Clemente so strange is that his body was never recovered and the slugger represents the only player on the countdown whose body was not or will not be properly buried. Clemente was 38.

2. Bo Diaz
Bo Diaz, a catcher for the Red Sox, Indians, Phillies and Reds from 1977-89, was a baseball icon in his home country of Venezuela. Diaz was a two-time All-Star and gained a reputation as a disciplined hitter, a sound defensive catcher and an excellent manager of pitchers. Strangely, while playing in the Venezuelan Winter League, Diaz caught 2 no-hitters 13 years apart. Even stranger was how Diaz checked out in 1990. On November 23, Diaz was adjusting a satellite dish on the roof of his home in Venezuela. Mid-adjustment, the satellite dish toppled over onto Diaz, crushing him to death. Diaz is the only entry on the list to be killed by a household appliance. He was 37.

1. Cory Lidle

I'm not sure whether the word "strange" does justice in describing this one. There are so many bizarre elements to this story. The #1 Strangest Baseball Death is the death of Yankee pitcher Corey Lidle. First strange thing, he crashed a plane into a New York City building. Second, no one in the building or on the street were killed. Third, the building he crashed into is where Mets third-base coach Manny Acta lives and where former Met Jason Isringhausen lived. Fourth, he is the second Yankee to die piloting a plane. And fifth and most strange is the fact that the woman who lived in the apartment into which the plane crashed is the same woman who was struck by a lamppost during N.Y.C.'s 1997 Thanksgiving Day Parade. What are the chances? There have been some strange deaths in baseball. But this one is so much stranger than all the rest. When Corey Lidle came to the Yankees over the summer in a deal with Bobby Abreu, no one imagined he would do anything memorable for the Yanks. On Wednesday, when Lidle's plane crashed into a high-rise building on Manhattan's upper East Side, we were all proven wrong.

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