Arthur Irwin - Death

Death

On June 21, 1921, Irwin gave up his managerial role with the Hartford club in the Eastern League due to health concerns. He was experiencing abdominal trouble and severe nervous attacks. Irwin was diagnosed with stomach cancer; he had lost 60 pounds in two weeks. While in the hospital, he was told that he only had a few days to live. While traveling from New York City to Boston on the vessel Calvin Austin, Irwin was lost overboard in an apparent suicide on July 16. Shortly after his death, a theory emerged that Irwin had been robbed for $5,000 and then murdered aboard the ship. This theory was discounted when it was learned from family members that Irwin had taken only $35 on the trip.

During the investigation into Irwin's disappearance and death, two widows emerged; one lived in Boston and the other lived in New York. He first married the woman in Boston in 1893. Together they had three children, including a son who was 37 at the time of Irwin's death, and nine grandchildren. Within a year of his first marriage, he married again, this time in Philadelphia to a woman he met while coaching baseball at the University of Pennsylvania. They settled in New York and had a son who was 24 when Irwin died.

Neither widow knew of the existence of the other until after Irwin's death. In fact, his widow in New York said that he had not been away for more than a few days at a time in 27 years. She said that his only long trips were baseball-related, when he would scout players in other cities. Before he left New York for the final time, he told his wife there that he was going to say goodbye to friends in Boston and that he would return to New York. Though neither woman knew of the other, Irwin's New York son Harold learned about an unknown brother while he was visiting his father in the hospital just before Irwin's death.

His brother John Irwin was also an MLB player and later became a hotel proprietor. When Arthur was last seen aboard the ship around midnight on July 16, he told a friend that he was "coming home to his brother John's to die."

In 1989, Irwin was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. He was the first Canadian to win a big league championship with the 1884 Providence Grays.