Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that loves baseball as much as Billy Crystal loves the Yankees.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about the murder of a former All-Star.

That quote was about Iván Calderon - a promising young phenom from Puerto Rico.

He signed with the Mariners back in ‘79, and tore through the minor leagues.

Calderon played the game with a lot of flair; some people called him flashy.

He wore thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, both on and off the field - which is completely the norm today, but Calderon played during an era when much of baseball's traditional establishment disapproved of that kind of thing.

In reality, there just wasn’t many players like him at the time.

Eventually, he became one of the best outfielders of his time, playing his best seasons with the White Sox and the Expos (‘89-’91).

The Expos wanted him so badly that they traded Hall of Famer Tim Raines to get him - and he delivered.

In ‘91 he hit .300, swiped 31 bags, and had a .368 OBP.

Unfortunately, Iván couldn’t stay healthy, and his injuries led to his decline in the big leagues.

By the end of the ‘93 season, he was no longer playing in the show.

After baseball, Calderon moved back to Loiza, PR.

He married Elsabeth Figueroa and had two children with her.

One evening, when Elsabeth was out of town with the kids, Iván went down to his favorite local bar, El Trompo, to have a few drinks.

El Trompo wasn’t known for being the safest place in town - there had already been a couple of murders there.

Nonetheless it was one of Iván’s favorite spots.

While he sat at the bar unsuspectingly, two gunmen rolled up behind him and started unloading gunfire, hitting him in the back and head several times.

Calderon was killed instantly, but no one was arrested.

Even though there was witnesses to the murder, no one could identify the suspects.

It’s also possible that people didn’t want to identify them out of fear for their own lives.

There were a lot of theories about who killed Iván and why.

It definitely wasn’t a robbery, because they left him with all his jewelry, but Calderon was known to lend money to friends and even posted bail for people sometimes as a side hustle, so others thought that might have something to do with that.

At the end of the day, though, police came up empty handed.

To this day, the murder remains unsolved.

TEES FOR 20

As you may know, our friends at Homage make some of the coolest and most timeless threads in the game.

I just stumbled upon this section of their website where they’ve got a bunch of shirts on sale for 20 bucks.

These are my top picks:

Quick Links:

• It’s Just Me and the Boys Boppin

• If You ain’t First, You’re Last

• Coffee is For Closers

• NASA

• Straight Cash Homie

• Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can’t Lose

• Wild Thing

• Just Tap It In

• The Church of Baseball

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:

Jumbo is a baseball OG, he was the 519th player in MLB history.

Most of his six-year career was spent with the St. Louis Brown Stockings, and the guy was an absolute workhorse.

Over that short period of time, McGinnis threw 177 complete games - over 1,600 innings pitched.

As you can imagine, that created some arm problems, and ultimately, ended his career.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

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

• The Sultan of Sausage: Babe Ruth goes to the hospital

• The Collision: This man is the reason we have padded outfield walls

• The Undercover Bust: Ex-big leaguer caught with 255 grams