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Researcher unpacks county baseball mystery

George Barclay “Win” Mercer seemingly had everything to live for on the day of Jan. 12, 1903.

The 28-year-old veteran of seven National League and two American League campaigns was a part of a barnstorming tour featuring a strong pool of baseball talent from across the country including Cleveland stars Nap Lajoie and Addie Joss.

Mostly known for his exploits on the mound, the East Liverpool resident was set to make a salary $8,500 as a Detroit Tigers player-manager and was also in line to make $2,400 as the manager of the University of Michigan baseball team (college baseball seasons ended before the start of the professional baseball season in those days). The total sum of those salaries was about equal to $280,000 in today’s money.

As far as his pitching skills were concerned, Mercer had just posted a career-best 3.04 ERA during the 1902 season with the Detroit Tigers. On the personal front, he was engaged to be married to Martha Porter of East Liverpool.

On that fateful Monday, Mercer spent the afternoon betting on horses with teammates at a racetrack in Oakland, California. He was staying with the members of the touring group at the Langham Hotel in San Francisco and had returned to that hotel at around 6 p.m.

A few hours later he checked into the Occidental Hotel, 12 blocks away from the Langham, under the name George Murray. In the range of 1 to 2 a.m. on the morning of Jan. 13, he was discovered dead in his room by hotel personnel of what appeared to be a suicide by way of asphyxiation by breathing in fumes from an illuminating gas fixture through a 12-foot rubber hose.

The circumstances which led up to his demise continue to remain shrouded in mystery.

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Society of American Baseball Research member Jimmy Keenan gets excited when he talks about some of the discoveries he has made pouring over old baseball press clippings.

“I recently changed (Shoeless) Joe Jackson’s middle name,” the Glen Rock, Pennsylvania resident and Baltimore native said.

Keenan said he found evidence that proved Jackson’s middle name was Walker despite many published books, reports and articles suggesting it was Jefferson. The Society of American Baseball Research accepted his findings according to Keenan.

“Of all the thousands of hours I’ve spent writing and researching baseball, it has never seemed like work,” Keenan said.

A few years back while researching the pitcher “Doc” McJames for the SABR Biography Project, Keenan happened to come across a player from the same 1890s National League Washington Senators team that caught his attention.

That is when he started investing more than 1,000 hours into researching what would become the book “The Life, Times, and Tragic Death of Pitcher Win Mercer: A Baseball Biography.”

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Win Mercer was by all accounts a strong all-around baseball player. The right-hander pitched in 333 career games and had an ERA of 3.98 with 532 strikeouts. Playing on some truly awful teams that never remotely sniffed a pennant, he only managed a career record of 132-164. A lefty at the plate, he batted .285 for his career with 506 hits including 197 RBIs. In the field, he played every position except catcher and had a .879 fielding percentage in an era where field conditions were a world away from what they are today.

“He’s kind of an enigma,” Keenan said. “He was such a great pitcher, yet he was a great fielder and a really good hitter.”

Mercer was likely born on June 20, 1874, but no birth records exist to confirm the date. Although it is unclear where he was born it was somewhere in the Ohio Valley and he ended up being raised in the East Liverpool area. His exploits on the diamond as a youth molded him into a top talent on the local Eclipse club team. He was eventually coaxed to New England to play professional baseball before landing with the National League Washington Senators for the start of the 1894 campaign.

Over the course of six seasons with the Senators, the hurler won his share of fans, especially the ladies. Having handsome features, women flocked to his pitching performances on popular “Ladies Day” promotions set up by the Washington club. There is uncorroborated club folklore suggesting one incident where women came out of the stands to go after an umpire that ejected Mercer from a game.

Mercer was also known for his fiery spirit on the diamond. He had no qualms about arguing calls with umpires and being a vocal team leader when it was needed.

To contrast that he was also viewed as an educated gentleman who penned well-composed and thoughtful letters discussing baseball to news publications across the country.

When the National League contracted in 1899, the Senators were one of the teams axed. Mercer landed with the New York Giants in 1900 and played his home games at the Polo Grounds before switching over to the new American League Washington Senators (the current Texas Rangers franchise) in 1901. After struggling on the mound with the new Senators club, he was sold to the Tigers and rejuvenated his career.

Known by his peers as a man who would go out of his way to help younger players find their way in professional baseball, Mercer was a well-known and well-liked man throughout the country.

“One thing I liked about him was that he was very open to working with young players,” Keenan said. “He wanted to share what he knew. He would have been a great coach at Michigan I think. He might have stayed there for 30 years and have been one of the greatest college baseball coaches of all time.”

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News of Mercer’s death reached East Liverpool in the morning hours of Jan. 13, 1903. A telegram sent to the East Liverpool Review from San Francisco was received and two of Win’s five brothers were notified by a newspaper employee. The family, including his mother Maggie, had trouble coming to terms with the conclusion that Win took his own life. Many questions were asked during this dark period and answers were few and far between.

His body, accompanied by some players from the tour, arrived in East Liverpool on Jan. 19 and hundreds were there to welcome the baseball hero home.

Six thousand paid their respects on Jan. 20 at Maggie Mercer’s residence in the city. The following day his funeral was held at the First Presbyterian Church and was the largest the city had seen up to that time.

An estimated 3,000 people attended the service inside the church and another 1,000 stood outside.

He was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery where the inscription on his rather simple marker reads “A token of love from his many friends.”

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Keenan’s book documents Mercer’s time in baseball thoroughly, but it’s also a personal quest to figure out what really led to the death of the young baseball player.

“Of all the people I’ve talked about it with, 60 percent say it’s suicide, 30 percent say it’s murder and 10 percent say it’s inconclusive,” Keenan said.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the evidence and see if there’s a chance this mystery can still be solved.

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Keenan’s book is available on Amazon.com in both print and Kindle editions.

Starting at $2.99/week.

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