Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The newsletter that appreciates old-school uniforms with stirrups.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about a rising star who was killed by a jealous ex-husband.

Odds are, you've probably never heard of Lyman Bostock, but if he hadn't been murdered in the prime of his career, he could’ve become a Hall of Famer.

Bostock spent his early childhood in Gary, Indiana, but when he was about eight years old he moved out to Los Angeles with his mother.

Bostock had a stellar high school baseball career, but he chose not to play in college while he pursued student activism.

Even with the time off, he was still drafted by the Cardinals.

He turned it down and decided to start his college career instead.

Bostock earned all-conference honors in both seasons with the Matadors and hit over .300 lifetime; then the Twins drafted him in the 26th round.

By '75 he was in the big leagues, and starting to put up some serious numbers.

In '77, he hit .336, which was only 2nd in the league to his teammate, Rod Carew, who hit an INSANE .388 that year.

Free agency was a relatively new concept in the MLB, and Bostock was one of the first big-money free agents in the early days.

Going into the '78 season, he signed a six-year $2.3 million dollar deal with the Angels.

In his first season with the Angels, he had a brutal start; hitting .147 in April.

He felt so bad that he offered to pay the team back some of his salary.

When his request was denied, he committed to donate his April salary to charity.

Honestly, this guy couldn't have been a nicer human being.

After a rough start, Bostock had turned his season around and was batting .296 in late September.

That's when this whole thing went down.

On September 23, '78, the Angles were in Chicago playing the White Sox and Lyman went 2-4 with a walk and a run scored in a 5-4 loss.

After the game, he drove down to Gary, Indiana (about 35 minutes), to visit his Uncle, Thomas Turner.

His uncle had people over for dinner that night and after the meal Turner and Bostock drove to Joan Hawkins’ house.

Joan was a woman who Bostock had tutored as a teenager.

Her sister, Barbara Smith, was living with her at the time while she was separated from her husband, Leonard Smith.

After hanging out for a bit, Turner agreed to give Hawkins and Smith a ride to their cousins house.

Turner was driving, Hawkins was in the passenger seat, Bostock and Smith were in the back.

Unbeknownst to everyone, Leonard Smith, Barbara’s crazy ex-husband, was waiting… and watching.

Leonard thought his wife was cheating, and that was something he couldn’t accept.

When he saw his wife and Lyman Bostock climb into the backseat together, he believed the two were having an affair.

Leonard followed their vehicle, and when they both came to a stop light, he jumped out of his car and fired a shotgun into the backseat with the intent to kill Barbara.

Bostock took the majority of the blast at point-blank range and died two hours later.

It was a completely senseless tragedy that could’ve been easily avoided.

Now, because this was about as clearcut as homicide cases get, one would expect that Leonard Smith went to jail for life. Right?

His first trial resulted in a hung jury.

In the second trial, he was found not guilty, pleading insanity.

This guy spent seven months in a psychiatric care facility, at which point they let him out, and it was deemed he no longer had a mental illness.

Altogether, he spent a total of 21 months in custody.

The people of Indiana were so outraged that the state actually ended up changing its laws.

Indiana became the 12th state in which a person could be found both guilty and mentally ill.

Had these laws been in place before the shooting, it’s likely Smith would’ve gotten a life sentence, but he walked free and died of natural causes in 2010.

At the end of the day, Lyman Bostock was murdered over a woman he’d known for 20 minutes.

It's one of the most tragic deaths in baseball history.

BASEBALL TRIVIA

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:

Although his stats aren’t going to impress you at first glance, John Morris, aka Yellow Horse, had a lot of talent on the mound.

He won a World Series with the KC Monarchs in 1924, and dedicated most of his life to helping grow baseball on the west coast.

In 1949, he became a scout for the Chicago Cubs.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

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

• The Brooklyn Bout: Fan assaults an umpire at Ebbets

• The Massachusetts Game: New England’s alternative version of baseball

• The Softball Player: Meet the woman who struck out Ted Williams and threw 50 perfect games