Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The baseball newsletter that loves the game as much as The Big Unit loved intimidating hitters.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about an influential ballplayer, his double life, and the speculations about what happened to him on his final day.

Arthur Irwin is a great example of why we shouldn’t know the personal lives of our heroes.

Irwin played and managed from 1880-1899, and he’s credited with popularizing the fielder’s baseball glove.

He also invented an electric scoreboard for football.

They say necessity is the mother of all invention, and that was certainly the case for Arthur.

The only reason he started using a glove in 1883 was because this crazy son of a bitch was playing with two broken fingers and he needed extra protection.

Sporting goods company Draper & Maynard produced a model based on “the Irwin glove” and it became the dominant glove used amongst Major League players.

Irwin was already known by his peers to be a little cocky, and honestly, this just inflated his ego even more.

He was a bold and flamboyant dresser who always wore loud colors and strutted around town with a cane.

But the bastard was good!

And he definitely knew baseball.

When he worked as a scout, Irwin discovered players like Ray Caldwell and Nap Lajoie before they were stars.

In 1921, Irwin started having digestive problems and dropped 60 pounds in two weeks.

The illness forced him to stop coaching and he was told he had stomach cancer that June.

The next month, he boarded a steam boat from New York to Boston, and told fellow passengers he was “going home to die.”

But he never made it to Boston. 

During the trip Irwin was lost overboard in what many believe to be a suicide, but there have been other theories too.

Prior to boarding the ship, he sold the rights to his electronic scoreboard and pocketed $2,000 - about $70,000 in today’s money.

Some have speculated that he was been robbed and murdered, while others thought that he might have faked his death.

And that wasn’t the only strange thing that came to the surface…

Irwin’s son, Harold, visited him in the hospital and that’s when he met his brother, Herbert, for the first time.

Turns out, Irwin had married a woman named Elizabeth in 1883, and they had Herbert and two other children; Elizabeth lived in Boston.

While coaching at Penn in the 1890s, Irwin met May.

They lived in New York as husband and wife, and also had a son - Harold.

May and Harold were Irwin's top priorities, and he devoted nearly all of his spare time and money to them.

He made so few trips to Boston that no one in New York had any suspicions of his other life.

Irwin sent $500 to Elizabeth and the rest of the scoreboard money went to May and Harold.

Sad thing is, Elizabeth never even realized he did her dirty.

Whether Irwin committed suicide, was murdered, or faked his death, one thing is certain: he's definitely dead now.

Case closed.

FROM THE GALLERY

This piece is based on a gigantic painting (7 x 8 ft) that Australian artist, Jamie Cooper, was commissioned to create.

It’s called “The Greatest All Stars Dream Scene”, and it took three years to conceive, paint, and deliver from Jamie’s studio in Melbourne to the collector’s home in San Francisco.

The print version is available in our gallery, along with with the rest of the story behind it; definitely worth a read.

RIDICULOUS STATS

BASEBALL TRIVIA

Hint: Tony Hawk, Michael Phelps, and Kobe Bryant were in it as well.

By the way, if you haven’t seen this, it’s probably the most random commercial of all time.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

This last name is just unfortunate.

Although its technically pronounced “cooks”, most people are not going to know that at first glance.

Luckily, Johnny did a whole lot more than just watch during his career.

In ‘56, he had a magical season.

Kucks made his first-and-only All-Star appearance, finished 30th in the MVP voting, and got the W in Game 7 of the World Series.

By the way, this was the same World Series that Don Larsen threw his Perfect Game.

TELL ‘EM WE SENT YOU

Alright folks, this is the part of the newsletter where we shamelessly plug a few cool companies that we love.

• The Underdog Newsletter: A free weekly newsletter that drops on Sundays. They cover the greatest and most unlikely comeback stories in sports history; always a great read.

• Fanatics: They have the world's largest collection of official sports apparel from all the major leagues. Plus, they offer some pretty amazing deals (up to 70% off site-wide right now).

• Just Gloves: Amazing website to buy a glove. They have a huge selection, free shipping, and you’ll always get the best deal. If you find the same glove for cheaper elsewhere, they’ll price match.

The cool thing about all of these sites is that when you subscribe to or buy any of their stuff, we get a little kickback.

So by supporting them, you’re supporting us.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

• The Hack: Cardinals employee goes rogue

• The Pitch of Death: HBP kills Ray Chapman

• The Never-Ending Game: 882 pitches later

• The Outlaw: Baseball Wilson lived hard and died hard

• The Frozen GOAT: A cryonics lab in Scottsdale supposedly decapitated Ted Williams and froze his head to a tuna can