Ray Chapman
Raymond Johnson Chapman (January 15, 1891 – August 17, 1920) was an American baseball player, spending his entire career as a shortstop for Cleveland.
Chapman was hit in the head by a pitch thrown by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays, and died 12 hours later. He remains the only Major League Baseball player to have died from being hit by a pitch. His death led Major League Baseball to establish a rule requiring umpires to replace the ball whenever it became dirty. His death was also one of the examples used to emphasize the need for wearing batting helmets (although the rule was not adopted until over 30 years later). His death was partially the reason MLB banned the spitball after the 1920 season.
Famous quotes containing the words ray and/or chapman:
“How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“I know an Englishman,
Being flattered, is a lamb; threatened, a lion.”
—George Chapman c. 1559–1634, British dramatist, poet, translator. repr. In Plays and Poems of George Chapman: The Tragedies, ed. Thomas Marc Parrott (1910)