His Mind is Thought to be Deranged: The Tragic Madness of Ed Doheny and the Story of the 1903 World Series

 The Pittsburgh Pirates have just lost game seven of the 1903 World Series to the Boston Americans by a score of 7 to 3.  Unlike today, history’s first World Series was a best of nine game affair, but now trailing four games to three, the heavily favored Pirates are on the brink of elimination.

When news of the defeat reaches Ed Doheny at his home in Andover, Massachusetts, he becomes inconsolable and enraged.

Doheny, having been placed on a sort of suicide watch by his wife, is convalescing at his home under the twenty-four hour a day care of a physician.  But when he finds out that Pittsburgh has lost, he literally picks up his in-home doctor and throws him through the front door.

While his physician is lying on the front lawn Doheny screams, “Don’t ever come back here!  Ever!” and then he spits in his face.

The next day, still angry about the predicament of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the course of the inaugural World Series, Doheny in a fit of rage  picks up a cast iron poker lying by a wood-burning stove and beats his live-in male nurse to a bloody senseless pulp with it.

Fearing for her own life, Doheny’s wife runs next door to a neighbor’s house while her husband stands in the doorway with the blood soaked poker still in his hands shouting curses at the upstart American League Boston Americans.

From the neighbor’s home she contacts the police and two officers quickly arrive on the scene.  But still enraged and muttering obscenities, now armed with a hunting rifle, Doheny is able to keep the cops at bay for several hours before his wife and the police are able to end the tense standoff and convince Doheny to leave the home peacefully.

Two days later on October 13, 1903 the Pirates fell to the Boston Americans by a score of 3-0 and lost the first World Series 5 games to 3.  Pittsburgh Pirates Manager Fred Clarke had hoped to be able to start Ed Doheny that day.

Ed Doheny

Near the end of the 1903 baseball season, Pittsburgh Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss is so confident in his team’s abilities that he challenges the rival American League Champion Boston Americans to a postseason World Championship Series.

In September of that year, before either team had officially clinched the pennant, Dreyfuss met with rival Boston owner Henry J. Killea and the two owners agreed that their clubs, beginning on October 1, 1903 would square off in a best of 9 series to determine a true World Champion of baseball.  The first modern World Series was born.

Dreyfuss had reason to be confident.  1903 marked the third consecutive year in which his Pirates were the best team in the National League.  The Pirates had a powerful lineup led by “The Flying Dutchman” Shortstop Honus Wagner, perhaps the best all-around player in baseball at the time, who batted .355 that year, led the league in stolen bases and drove in over one hundred runs.

1903 Pittsburgh Pirates

However, despite being the betting favorites, going into the series against Boston that October the team from Pittsburgh had a lot to be worried about.  Wagner was injured, having both broken his thumb and sprained his ankle earlier in the season and he played through constant pain.  In the last week of the season, backup catcher and star utility player Otto Krueger, had been hit in the head by a pitch and knocked unconscious.  Krueger would be unable to play in the World Series at all, and then on top of that, on the eve of the first ever World Series the Pirates all-star pitcher Ed Doheny had lost his mind!

Doheny’s Major League career had begun in 1895 with the New York Giants.  He had been discovered by a Boston based sports writer that same year while playing semi pro ball in his native state of Vermont.  After seeing him pitch, and recognizing his raw talent, the New York Giants signed Doheny to a professional contract for $100.

He made his big league debut for the New York Giants at the age of 21 on September 16, 1895 and he got rocked.  In fact, Doheny’s Major League career got off to a very inauspicious beginning as he lost his first three starts for the Giants, but despite the bad results, the New York Times reported, “Doheny, though slaughtered, shows the earmarks of a real ballplayer.”

Gifted with raw natural talent Doheny’s performance with the Giants would dramatically improve over the next two seasons, however despite his success on the field, Doheny would be suspended several times by the New York Giants between 1897 and 1900 for “breaches of discipline”.

By 1900 Ed Doheny’s alcoholism was out of control and he would often show up to the ballpark drunk prior to games, or simply forget to show up at all, even on days that he was scheduled to pitch.  He got in repeated fistfights with his teammates because he would constantly falsely accuse other players of stealing things from his locker.

In 1901, after yet another suspension and a major falling out with ownership, Doheny was traded by the Giants to the Pittsburgh Pirates.   While with Pittsburgh in 1902 Doheny’s career started to take off and he firmly established himself as a top-notch pitcher in the National League by posting a record of 16 wins and 4 losses and helping to lead the Pirates to their second consecutive National League Championship.

Fans at the 1903 World Series

The following year Doheny got off to another fast start and won 12 out of the first 18 games he started, but by the beginning of May Doheny began to act very erratically both on and off the field.

Off the field he started to accuse teammates of stealing items from his locker once again during games.  He also started to fervently believe he was being followed on road trips by an undercover police detective at all times.

On May 18, 1903 Ed Doheny purposefully hit Joe McGinnity and Dan McGann of the New York Giants in the back with fastballs simply because he, “hated the Giants since they traded him away,” as he later stated after the game.

During that same game, after hitting a pop-up and supposedly unaware that he was already out due to the infield fly rule which states that a batter is automatically out if he pops the ball up in the infield while there are runners on base, Doheny intentionally threw his bat at the Giants catcher in an attempt to interfere with the play.  His actions drew the ire of the New York crowd, who lustfully booed Doheny as he trotted off the field.  In response to the jeering fans Doheny bowed and may have (by some reports) exposed his buttocks to the Giants faithful.

After the game, Doheny was chased back to the clubhouse and pelted with rocks by angry Giants fans and the National League suspended him for three games.

In July Doheny mysteriously left the team without permission and travelled to his home in Andover without any explanation.  For two weeks he remained away from the team before mysteriously returning.

It was during his unannounced break from the team in July of 1903 that the Pittsburgh Post first ran the insensitive and pitiless headline, “His Mind is Thought to be Deranged” in a feature article on the troubled Pirates player.

However, after returning from his brief hiatus, Doheny continued his outstanding pitching and helped the Pirates jump out to a 5 game lead in the National League. But then in September, with Pittsburgh in a heated pennant race with Doheny’s hated former team the New York Giants, and a trip to the first ever World Series on the line, the star pitcher’s mental health really started to deteriorate.

Doheny did not pitch or appear in a single game during the first two weeks of September.  It was reported that he often felt too fearful to leave the clubhouse and believed that were he to take the field he would be murdered by so-called police detectives.   In late September Doheny attacked several of his teammates and was ordered home-- this time by Pirates management.

While resting and recuperating at home, Doheny’s wife in conjunction with Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss placed Ed under twenty-four hour doctor’s supervision with the hopes that he would recover and return in time to face Boston in the first World Series, but tragically, that never happened.

Danvers State Asylum

After the standoff with the police and the assault with the cast iron poker Doheny was arrested and dragged off in handcuffs.  He was charged with aggravated assault and eventually declared insane and sentenced by a judge to be committed to Danvers State Asylum for the Insane near Lowell, Massachusetts.

During his time at the Danvers Asylum a local newspaper in Lowell, reported that, “Mrs. Doheny writes that her husband, the pitcher, shows no signs of improvement while at Danvers Asylum and that he will never recover his reason.”

Mrs. Doheny also wrote that her husband was, “no longer able to recognize anybody,” despite the fact that he received frequent visits from friends and family.

Ed Doheny would go on to live for thirteen more tragic years, unaware of who he was or what he had ever been, before passing away at the young age of forty-three on December 29, 1916 at the Medfield State Asylum the place where he had been transferred to after the staff at Danvers had determined that his sanity was too far gone to ever be recovered.

Honus Wagner

The Pittsburgh Pirates, after losing the first World Series in 1903, would go on to fall to fourth place in the National League in 1904, but under the leadership of the steady Honus Wagner the Pirates would rebound in the years to come and win the franchise’s first ever championship in 1909 when Pittsburgh defeated the Detroit Tigers and the hated Ty Cobb in a best of seven World Series.