King Kelly’s Funeral

On November 9, 1894, the Boston Globe reported, “At 9:55 PM last night, King Kelly heard the decision of the Great Umpire from which there is not appeal.”1 The best loved ballplayer of the nineteenth century was dead.

Even after he retired from major-league baseball in 1893, Mike “King” Kelly was arguably America’s biggest sports star. He was the first ballplayer to have a hit song (“Slide, Kelly, Slide”) written about him. Some writers believe Kelly was the model for the Mighty Casey in the poem “Casey at the Bat.” Baseball Hall of Fame historian Lee Allen said, “Kelly was, in his day, as popular a figure as Babe Ruth would later be, and there was hardly a boy in the land who did not follow the daily doings of The King.”2

When Kelly was at his peak, he was the highest-paid player in the game. He bragged that he would never be a pauper. However, by November 1894, one year after his retirement and after spending a year playing for a minor-league team in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the King was broke. A Boston Globe reporter wrote, “[H]is money went like the mist before a noonday sun, for it came easy and he thought it would last.”3

The Cincinnati Reds signed Kelly in 1878. He had his first great year for the Reds in 1879, batting .348, but the financially-stripped club released all its players after the season. Albert Spalding and Cap Anson brought Kelly to Chicago to join the White Stockings for the 1880 season. In Chicago Kelly became a national star, soon called “King” Kelly or “The Only” Kelly.  His fans lived in every city. Kelly’s Irish heritage helped him become particularly popular in Boston. In 1887 the Boston franchise payed the princely sum of $10,000 to bring Kelly to Boston. Kelly also managed the Boston entry in the short-lived Player’s League.

In 1893 an out-of-shape and 34-year-old Kelly managed to play only 20 games for the New York Giants. It’s fair to say that his lack of playing time and diminishing skills didn’t diminish the great affection of Kelly’s fans.

When Kelly was at the height of his fame as a ballplayer he made extra money during the offseason by appearing in stage shows and vaudeville. Kelly loved attending the theater and enjoyed the company of actors almost as much as he did other ballplayers during his storied career.

Kelly’s Boston fans loved him, and producers expected them to turn out in great numbers to see him on stage. Kelly needed money to support his wife, baby boy, and lavish lifestyle. In 1894 acting offered Kelly the only reasonable opportunity to earn a salary approaching what he earned in baseball.

Kelly took a ship from New York City to Boston to start his tour. Cold winds blew and snow fell during his trip. Kelly walked the deck in this weather. He felt sympathy for a stowaway discovered by the crew, and Kelly gave his best suit to the ship’s bursar as security to cover the man’s fare. Over time, stories grew that Mike gave that stowaway his winter coat, which left Kelly with no defense against the snow and cold winds that assailed the boat as it sailed from New York to Boston.4

During his life Kelly was famous for his generosity, even to strangers. As Cap Anson, Kelly’s White Stockings manager, said, “He was a whole-souled, genial fellow, with a host of friends, and but one enemy, that one being himself.”5

Losing control of his best suit should not have significantly impaired Kelly’s health. Even his famed drinking would not have brought on pneumonia. Still, one can imagine a drunk Kelly roaming the deck of his ship in a snowstorm, forgetting to button his winter coat or perhaps not even wearing one. After all, Mike Kelly never thought anything bad would happen to him.

No matter what the cause, Kelly took ill on the passage. When he arrived in Boston, he was too ill to appear on stage. He rested at a friend’s house, hoping the chills and fever would go away. When they did not, Kelly’s friends summoned Dr. George Galvin, former team doctor for the Beaneaters. He saw Kelly at 2 P.M. on Sunday, November 4, and found he had difficulty breathing. By 4 P.M. on Monday, it was clear that pneumonia had set in, and Galvin moved Kelly to Boston’s Emergency Hospital. It was reported that when Kelly came to the hospital the stretcher carrying him slipped to the floor, and he said, “This is my last slide.”6

Doctors gave Kelly oxygen. News organizations around the country kept his fans updated on his condition. On Wednesday many papers reported that he was improving. Despite the encouraging reports, Dr. Galvin contacted Kelly’s wife, Agnes, to tell her to hurry to Boston. Agnes had friends and family watch their four-month-old baby and took the first train she could. She thought she was coming to help nurse her husband to health, and was astonished to find out when she arrived on Friday, November 9, that Kelly was gone.

As a reporter from the Boston Evening Record put it, “[H]is mind had been wandering all day.”7 Father Hickey from St. James Catholic Church administered the last rites. Around 6 P.M. on Thursday, Kelly roused himself to say, “Well, I guess this is the last trip.”8 Kelly lingered until 9:55 P.M., and then died.

A former teammate, the evangelist Billy Sunday, did not attend the funeral, but for years afterward in his temperance sermons would say Kelly “died a drunkard and was buried in a pauper’s grave.”9 While it was true that Kelly died a pauper, he was not buried in a pauper’s grave. Kelly was an Elk, and the Boston chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks made sure he was laid to rest in style.

Elks chapter members who wanted to remain anonymous paid the stowaway’s fare to the steamship company and recovered Mike’s best suit to bury him in.10 They felt it was important to send Kelly out in the style that he lived – in his best clothes, in front of a large audience.

They succeeded. Kelly’s body lay in state at the Boston Elks Hall on Sunday, November 11. Admirers sent so many flowers, according to the Boston Globe, that only “a narrow path” could be excavated to allow mourners to view the body.11 Playwright Charles Hoyt and vaudevillian Eddie Foy sent wreaths. Cap Anson sent a pillow of roses, as did the members of the Actors Protective Union. Albert G. Spalding, owner of the White Stockings during Kelly’s greatest years there, did not attend, but sent a white flower arrangement in the shape of a baseball with violets representing the laces. Reporting on the “grand” flower arrangements filled many column-inches in the Boston papers that week.

Over 5,000 mourners filed through the rooms of the Elks Hall to pay their last respects to their baseball hero. Thousands more stood in the street outside St. James Church when Kelly’s funeral Mass was conducted later that day. The crowd in the streets was so large that carriage drivers found it difficult to drop mourners close to the church for the funeral. The crowds spilled back from the church steps down Heyward Place and Washington Street as far as anyone could see. Not a few women and children, and many men in the crowd, wept.

The Boston Post reported the day after the funeral, “Safe at Home is Michael J. Kelly. … Now the sturdy form that used to electrify the crowds at the ball grounds are but memories.” The Post reporter described the lines of fans waiting to view Kelly’s body as a “never ending procession.”12

Sweet-scented flowers surrounded Kelly’s casket in the Elks lodge and on the way to the burial. Father Hickey, who had administered Kelly’s last rites, led the Mass. Kelly’s widow, Agnes, and his brother “Honest John” Kelly were the only family members who attended. Pallbearers included Beaneaters manager Frank Selee, Captain William M. “Billy” Nash, and players Tommy McCarthy and Hugh Duffy. Cincinnati’s Morgan Murphy, F.L. “Red” Donahue from Kelly’s last team, the Allentowns, and Elks Charles A. Kelly and Dennis P. Sullivan also came. Other attendees included Andy Leonard, a member of the 1869 Red Stockings, Boston players Herman Long, P.H. “Cozy” Dolan, and Fred Doe, Baltimore Orioles star Joe Kelley, and former stars Tommy Bond and Harry Schafer.

So many floral tributes filled the nave of the church that it took one large open wagon and two carriages to transport all the flowers to the burial. It was a closed-casket funeral. A large photo of Kelly in his prime sat on top of the coffin.

Fans also lined the streets on the way to Mount Hope cemetery. Several sources estimated the crowd outside the church and on the way to the cemetery at 7,000, which made Kelly’s funeral one of the largest for any major-league star before Babe Ruth’s in 1948. When the procession reached the grave site, Boston Elks Exalted Ruler William H. Blossom conducted the Elks funeral rituals with Leading Knight Sidney Sprague and chaplain John Waterman.

The hymn “Simple Yet Beautiful was sung. Elk Tom Henry played “The Lost Cloud” on the coronet while the casket was lowered into the earth. Five thousand people who followed the procession stood and watched the funeral rites with uncovered heads.13

Kelly left her nothing, and she had no means of support. The Boston Globe reported that the fund had raised $372 as of that day, including a $25 gift from DeWolf Hopper, famous for his vaudeville recitations of “Casey at the Bat,” and a $10 gift from Connie Mack. That amount was less than half of what Kelly earned in a month at his peak, but at least it was something.14

Agnes returned to Paterson, New Jersey, where her money soon ran out. She supported herself as a seamstress until her eyes went bad. A sister who lived in New Brunswick took her in, and Agnes lived with her sister until her death in 1937. It’s not clear what happened to her son. This writer was unable to find a record of him outside of the mentions in contemporary accounts. It’s probable that the baby died before adulthood; it’s hard to believe he would have let his mother move in with a sister had he lived into the twentieth century and could support her.15

Kelly’s fine funeral would remain the last ceremony the baseball world would give him. When he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1944, because of World War II no induction ceremony was held. (An induction ceremony was held in 2013 for Kelly and others who never received a formal induction because of the wartime restrictions.

 

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Appel, Marty. Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike “King” Kelly (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996).

Kelly, Mike “King.” Play Ball, Stories of the Ball Field (Boston: Emery & Hughes, 1888, issued digitally in 2008).

Thorn, John. Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

Tiemann Robert L., and Mark Rucker, editors. Nineteenth Century Stars: 2012 Edition (Phoenix: SABR, 2012). 

The Hall of Fame file on King Kelly contains a great deal of contemporaneous accounts of his career and funeral.

Thanks to the Baseball Hall of Fame Library and the Boston Public Library.

 

Notes

1 “Death of Kelly,” Boston Globe, November 9, 1894: 1.

2 baseballhall.org/hof/kelly-king.

3 “Funeral Report,” Boston Globe, November12, 1894: 5.

4 Joe Buchicio, The Evangelist (Albany, New York): 10A. Undated article from Kelly’s Hall of Fame file.

5 Adrian “Cap” Anson, A Ball Player’s Career (Chicago: Era Publishing, 1900), 115-116.

6 James A. Cox, “When Fans Roared ‘Slide, Kelly, slide!’ at the Old Ball Game,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 1982, 130.

7 Boston Evening Record, November 9, 1894.

8 Boston Post, November 10, 1894: 3.

9 Joe Vila, “Setting the Pace,” from Mike Kelly’s Hall of Fame file – no page or publication listed.

10 Joe Buchicio, The Evangelist.

11 Boston Globe, November 12, 1894: 5.

12 Boston Post, November 12, 1894: 3.

13 The funeral coverage relies upon reports in the local papers, the Boston Globe, the Boston Post, and the Boston Record. The coverage was remarkably similar.

14 Boston Globe, November 18, 1894: 5.

15 Alfred P. Cappio, The Story of Michael J. Kelly, The King of Baseball (Passaic County Historical Society, 1962), 18. This publication may have relied on local sources in Paterson and Passaic County, New Jersey.