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THE DUDE
Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that loves baseball as much as Chris Berman loved calling the Home Run Derby.
YIKES!
Let’s dive in.
Today’s story is about an eccentric player from the late 1800s who eventually went off the deep end.
A while back we featured Thomas “Dude” Esterbrook as our strange name of the day.
Turns out, this guy was a certified kook.
He was known by other ballplayers for his fancy dressing, big personality, and far-fetched theories about longevity.
Esterbrook legitimately thought he could live to be 150 years old by staying “childlike” and walking eight to ten miles a day.
But that was later on down the road, initially, he was a pretty decent ballplayer.
“The Dude” made his professional debut for the Buffalo Bisons in ‘80 and started to make a name for himself after a few years.
In ‘84, he had a breakout season playing for the New York Metropolitans of the American Association.
Esterbrook played 112 games and hit .314 and racked up 150 base knocks.
The Metropolitans played the Providence Grays in the World Series that year and got absolutely dominated by Old Hoss Radburn, who has some of the most ridiculous stats in baseball history.
Radburn threw three complete games in that series and won them all.
This was also the same season that Old Hoss won 60 games, setting a Major League record that will never be broken.
Gif by curbyourenthusiasm on Giphy
In ‘88, Esterbrook got into some squabbles on the field which hurt his reputation, and that was the beginning of the end for his career.
He bounced around over the next several seasons and stayed pretty low key.
Supposedly, he was known as one of the best defensive first basemen of this era, compared alongside Hall of Famers Cap Anson and Dan Brouthers even though both of them were much better at the plate.
In ’94, after a three-year hiatus from baseball, Esterbrook joined the New Orleans Pirates of the Southern League.
Apparently, he showed up looking flashy af with four trunks of clothes.
He was bringing that Roger Dorn kind of energy.
Esterbrook played two games before being released, and proceeded to walk home from New Orleans back to Baltimore; all 1,541 miles.
Technically, he stopped in DC first, where he ran into Hugh Duffy of the Boston Beaneaters.
Duffy gave Esterbrook 30 bucks to get himself cleaned up, and then “The Dude” was back on the road.
He was pretty much completely out of the game after that, but always maintained the mindset that he’d make a comeback.
In the years that followed, it was clear that Esterbrook’s mental health was deteriorating.
First, he reimagined himself as a great inventor and told people that he’d invented a flying machine.
Then it was reported in ‘98 that Esterbrook became “deeply religious” and started seeing things.
He also thought he’d live at least another 106 years:
“If a man, no matter how old, behaved like a boy, played in the street, walked eight or ten miles a day, and took plenty of exercise he could live to be a hundred and fifty.”
On April 30, 1901 Esterbrook boarded a train with his brother taking him to Middletown State Hospital where he would be institutionalized due to his mental health situation.
One the way there, he threw himself out the window of the train while going 50 mph.
Naturally, he did not survive.
Our friends at Dugout Mugs are the makers of the world famous bat mug.
They just dropped these special edition mugs inspired by Dia de los Muertos.
Personally, I think they’re pretty sweet.
All 30 MLB teams are available, but here’s a few quick links:
Use the code MUG25 for a 25% discount on Sugar Skulls mugs, or anything else on the site.
STRANGE NAMES
If you're just joining us, we play this game every day 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:
Clarence Henry “Pants” Rowland did just about everything there is to do in this game.
He was a player, a manager, a scout, an umpire, and an executive.
Rowland managed the White Sox from 1915-1918, and led them to a World Series in 1917, but he was let go in 1918 due to disagreements with Charles Comiskey.
Just in time to miss the Black Sox Scandal.
He continued to work in baseball through his later years including 11 seasons as the president of the PCL and many years as the Vice President of the Cubs.
THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE
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