A Dark Date in Annals of Major League Baseball

Of all baseball’s numbers that statisticians love to crunch, the most amazing of all may be one.

Only one player in the century-plus history of major league baseball has been killed by a pitched ball, providing mute testimony to the speed with which the human body can react to imminent danger--such as a fastball coming at your head from 60 feet, 6 inches away.

In all that time, how many brushback pitches? 100,000?

In all that time, how many beanings? 1,000?

Yet only one death, and it happened 79 years ago today.

Ray Chapman, 29-year-old Cleveland shortstop, was hit in the left temple by a fastball thrown by New York Yankee pitcher Carl Mays on Aug. 16, 1920. Chapman, with a skull fracture, died early the next day.

A Kentuckian, Chapman was in his ninth season at Cleveland. He died after having played in his 1,051st game and had a .278 batting average.

Mays played 15 major league seasons, nine of them after Chapman’s death, retiring in 1929. His record was 208-126. He was 79 when he died at El Cajon, Calif., in 1971.

Also on this date: In 1966, Willie Mays passed Jimmie Foxx on the home run list with his 535th, putting him second to Babe Ruth. . . . In 1973, Mays hit his 660th and final homer, off Cincinnati’s Don Gullett. . . . In 1987, Reggie Jackson of the Oakland Athletics hit his 563rd and final home run, off Mike Witt of the Angels. . . . In 1933, Lou Gehrig of the Yankees set a new consecutive-games record with his 1,308th straight game, breaking Everett Scott’s major league record.