Sep 10, 2026 · 25 min · 9 segments
There are stories that come along once in a while that send sparks flying inside your brain. That's what happened to me when Tom Gilbert first told me about Jim Creighton, this young ballplayer…
Tom Gilbert has a line in his book, Death in the Strike Zone, that exemplifies much of this story.
He writes, quote, "James Creighton was the most famous baseball player who had ever lived when he died a sudden and shocking death." End quote.
What fascinates me about this statement is that not only do people not remember who Creighton was But they have no idea what a big deal he was and what a big deal his death was at the time, in eighteen sixty-two.
And right after this line in his book, Gilbert says that the only comparable moment in baseball to Creighton was when Ray Chapman died from getting hit by a pitch in nineteen twenty.
But this is hardly a comparison because Chapman was a good ballplayer, but not great.
With Creighton, it was the sudden, unexpected death of the best ballplayer in the world, and he was only twenty-one years old.
We have to pause here because I think we need to keep a whole stockpile of yellow flags nearby, because every other sentence warrants a yellow flag to indicate this is crazy, or this is unique, or this is astonishing.
Like, at the time, Creighton was the most famous baseball player who'd ever lived, but he died at the age of twenty-one? Yellow flag.
But let's jump into the time machine [time machine powering up] and we'll try to ignore what a shock it would be to simply appear in eighteen sixty-two from twenty twenty-six.
If we go back and we focus specifically on Jim Creighton's death, we see what a big deal it was.
And who better to shed light on the impact of Creighton's death than the man who spent thousands of hours trying to solve this one-hundred-and-fifty-year mystery? [calm music]
Tom Gilbert has a line in his book, Death in the Strike Zone, that exemplifies much of this story.
He writes, quote, "James Creighton was the most famous baseball player who had ever lived when he died a sudden and shocking death." End quote.
What fascinates me about this statement is that not only do people not remember who Creighton was But they have no idea what a big deal he was and what a big deal his death was at the time, in eighteen sixty-two.
And right after this line in his book, Gilbert says that the only comparable moment in baseball to Creighton was when Ray Chapman died from getting hit by a pitch in nineteen twenty.
But this is hardly a comparison because Chapman was a good ballplayer, but not great.
With Creighton, it was the sudden, unexpected death of the best ballplayer in the world, and he was only twenty-one years old.
We have to pause here because I think we need to keep a whole stockpile of yellow flags nearby, because every other sentence warrants a yellow flag to indicate this is crazy, or this is unique, or this is astonishing.
Like, at the time, Creighton was the most famous baseball player who'd ever lived, but he died at the age of twenty-one? Yellow flag.
But let's jump into the time machine [time machine powering up] and we'll try to ignore what a shock it would be to simply appear in eighteen sixty-two from twenty twenty-six.
If we go back and we focus specifically on Jim Creighton's death, we see what a big deal it was.
And who better to shed light on the impact of Creighton's death than the man who spent thousands of hours trying to solve this one-hundred-and-fifty-year mystery? [calm music]
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3 of 3
Thirty-Nine Causes of Death
The death reports hid a darker truth.
He Invented the Curveball
The evidence points to baseball's first curveball.
Pitching That Changed Everything
Creighton's achievements sound impossible by modern standards.
1 min 4 sec of audio in all
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