More than 10 years ago (!) I wrote about a false report of Rafael Figarola’s death in 1915, supposedly caused when a batting practice pitch from his teammate José Méndez struck him on the chest, triggering heart failure.
This turned out to be a mistake or hoax of some sort, and was retracted a week later, when it emerged that Figarola was alive and well in Cuba. As I pointed out back in 2007, however, the details of Figarola’s imaginary death uncannily echoed an event that had really happened in 1909. On July 10 of that year, in French Lick, Indiana, the catcher for the French Lick Plutos, a young man named John Chenault, died after being struck on the chest by a pitch from William Brannon of the Evansville O.K.’s.
This was one of three known on-field deaths of black professional ballplayers in the 1900s, the others being John García of the Cuban Giants, who suffered a heart attack during a 1904 game in Jamaica, Queens, and William Bedford, also of the Cuban Giants, who was struck by lightning in Atlantic City in 1909, about six weeks after Chenault’s death. A fourth, the pitcher George Washington of the Philadelphia Giants, died of heart failure in the clubhouse before a 1908 game in Winsted, Connecticut.
Here is a series of three items about the Chenault incident printed in The Freeman of Indianapolis (July 17, 1909, p. 4), which I originally posted as part of the piece about Figarola and Méndez:
I never followed up on Chenault beyond that initial post. But now, a decade later, Kevin Pope has sent me the following image:
It is a cabinet card, owned by the French Lick, West Baden Historical Society, showing “Johnnie Chenault,” with a typewritten note attached. This is, needless to say, the only photograph of Chenault I’ve ever seen, and it has inspired me to look a bit further into the sad occasion of his death, to see if anything can be added to the bare bones we already have.
The attached note adds a little detail to the scene of the incident, explaining that Chenault was “trying to bunt a fast inshoot”—an inshoot being a pitch that curves inside, toward the batter. I think the fact that it is captioned “Knight. Johnnie Chenault” indicates that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, which is corroborated by the remark in the Freeman article entitled “French Lick Mourns” that Chenault “was a dutiful lodge member.”
I’ve also found a death record that gave his age as 21, and specified July 10 as his death date (perhaps settling the disagreement between the first two Freeman items above). I’ve been able to find a number of men named John Chenault in the Midwest who were born around the right time, and though I’ve ruled out a couple of them, I haven’t been able to positively identify anyone as the ballplayer.
As for the opposing team on that fateful July 10: the Evansville O.K.’s, a.k.a. the “E.O.K.’s,” were a black semipro team and, according to some sources, the reigning city champions of Evansville. They were active in 1908 and 1909. The pitcher who hit Chenault appears to have been a lefty named William Jennings Brannon, only 19 at the time. At 5’4” he was quite short for a pitcher; his World War I draft card would describe him as “stout,” though this may not have been the case when he was playing baseball.
Brannon may have been upset after Chenault’s death, but he was seemingly back pitching within a week (he sometimes appeared in the papers as “Brandon”; as far as I can tell Brannon and Brandon were the same person) :
(Evansville Journal, July 19, 1909, p.8)
In later years William Brannon worked as a tailor and as a domestic servant, and served in World War I in the Second Development Battalion at Camp Dodge, Iowa. By the 1940s he was blind and no longer working, and he passed away of heart trouble in 1947 at the age of 57. He is buried in Evansville’s Oak Hill Cemetery.
Brannon’s World War II draft card:
UPDATE 12/15/2018: It is possible that Chenault was a victim of “commotio cordis,” which the Merck Manual describes as:
the sudden stopping of the heart caused by a blow to the front of the chest. Typically this blow involves a hard object that is moving fast (such as a baseball or a hockey puck). Thus, commotio cordis usually occurs during sports activities in young people. The exact reason for cardiac arrest is unclear, but commotio cordis does not result from an underlying heart disorder or from physical damage to the heart muscle. Some experts think that cardiac arrest occurs because the blow occurs at a critical moment during the cycle that produces each heartbeat. The blow then disrupts the electrical signals that keep the heart pumping continuously and regularly.
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