Our Deadliest Pastime

his plans just kept falling apart. It was supposed to be simple, an easy way to get rid of a nuisance and get rich in the process. But try as Tony might, Michael Molloy simply would not die. The whole thing started late one night in nineteen thirty three in Tony Marine Knows Bronx Speakeasy. Tony was playing pe knuckle with the boys. There was Red Murphy, Tony's bartender, Daniel Kriegsberg, the fruit vendor, and Francis Pasqual the undertaker. As they

placed bets, they talked business, and business was bad. They was the depths of the depression, and all of the men were having trouble paying their bills. Wouldn't it be nice, someone said, if they had a rich aunt or uncle who died, or even a poor one with a big, fat life insurance payout. Too bad. None of them had such luck. And that's when Tony Marino first broached the idea. Maybe he said they could make their own luck. Pick someone expendable, someone who lived on the margins, someone nobody

would miss, someone like Michael molloy. Michael was a regular at the speakeasy. In another life, he'd been a fireman in Ireland, but now he just stumbled through the bronx looking for his next drink. The way they saw it, he was going to drink himself to death anyway, So who would mind if Tony and the boys just sped up the process. The gang quickly took an insurance policy out on poor old Mike for eighteen hundred dollars, the

equivalent of nearly forty four thousand dollars today. They would be plenty to settle their debts and help them through the depression. All they had to do was make sure that Mike died accidentally. The plan was simple. They would tell old Mike that it was his lucky day. Tony informed the man that he now had an unlimited tab. He could drink as much liquor as his liver could handle, and then some. Now all Tony had to do was sit back, relax, and wait. But Tony quickly realized that

he would be waiting for a long time. Every night, Michael drank himself into a stupor at the bar, and every morning he would reappear ready for another drink. So Tony and the gang decided to step it up. First, they gave him bad alcohol. With prohibition in place, there was plenty of dodgy spirits that Red couldn't serve the customers, but Michael drank them like they were water. Next, Tony tried anti freeze, then turpentine, rat poison, and finally ethanol,

the stuff that makes you go blind. The gang even made Michael a special sandwich equal parts rotten sardines, poison, and metal tax Michael's iron stomach prevailed. By this point, they'd been trying to kill Michael for an entire month. The next payment on the insurance policy was coming up, and if they didn't kill him soon, the policy might lapse, so they needed to try something completely different. The next

cold night, Tony waited until Michael drank himself unconscious. He and the gang dragged Michael out to the park, stripped him naked, and dumped him in a pile of fresh snow. They poured water on him and left him to freeze to death. Of course, Michael was back again in the morning without even a shiver. A few days later, they tried yet again. This time they enlisted the help of a cab driver named Harry Green. They lured Michael out into the street and had Harry run him down at

forty five miles an hour. Imagine their disappointment when Michael showed up three weeks later with a couple of broken bones and demand for more whiskey. Finally, Tony had had enough. If they were going to kill Michael, they needed to kill him right. So on February twenty second of nineteen thirty three, they waited for Michael to drink himself silly. Once he was out for the night, they brought him

upstairs to Red Murphy's room. They placed a hose in his mouth, connected it to a gas jet, and turned it on. An hour later, Michael Malloy was finally truly and completely dead. Carbon monoxide had finally been the thing to do him in. With all the attempts on Mike's life, rumors of an unkillable Irishman were swirling around the Bronx, so when he was finally declared dead, the police quickly

grew suspicious. Once they exhumed the body, it was easy enough to spot evidence of foul play, and the culprits were well known to the citizens of the Bronx with how often they had tried to kill Mike. All five were arrested for murder. The cab driver was given a prison sentence, while Red, Daniel, Francis, and Tony were all executed for their crimes. Tony and the boys probably thought that Michael Molloy would be easy money. It turns out killing Mike was a grave mistake. Sports are an incredibly

popular form of entertainment all around the world. As a result, sports injuries are just a fact of life. Whether it's Little league or the major leagues, athletes risk serious harm to play the games they love. When it comes to baseball, it's the fans who are the highest risk of injury. Baseball stands seem like a safe place. The hot dogs, the drinks, the cheering. Sure people get hurt by a stray ball from time to time, but no one ever

dies right. Well, a look back at a very unique baseball game from the early twentieth century might have you reconsidering your season tickets. The game in question took place in nineteen oh two in Morristown. Nineteen year old Stanton Walker was a big baseball fan. There was a baseball field directly behind his family home. A young sports enthusiast couldn't ask for a better setup. He and his friends Frank and Leroy would sit on a fence outside the diamond,

watching the local teams play. Once they were old enough, they became the official scorekeepers, and with no physical scoreboard, it fell to the three friends to track every inning. Now they used old fashioned pencil and paper to accomplish this task. The only problem was that occasionally that pencil needed to be sharpened well. On October twenty fifth of nineteen oh two, Stanton, Leroy, and Frank were all watching

a game from the fence. As usual, Stanton sat in between Leroy and Frank, and for this game, Frank was keeping score. When his pencil ran low, he asked lee Roy if he could borrow his knife to sharpen it. Leroy obliged, producing his knife and handing it to Stanton to hand to Frank. Stanton took the knife, gripping the handle so that the blade was pointed to his body.

Not the safest choice, and at that very moment they heard the crack of a ball being hit by a bat and looked up to see a ball flying right at them. Before they could react, it hit Stanton in the hand and drove the knife right into his chest. The blade entered between his ribs, severing an artery below his heart. He fell from the fence into the grass. Frank and Leroy jumped down next to him, asking if he was hurt, but by then it was too late.

He was already dead. Now, some listeners might hear this tale of a foul ball and suspect foul play, but Frank and Leroy had at least two full baseball teams worth of witnesses to back up their story. Each and every person on that field had their eye on the ball as it sailed through the air and made fatal contact with Stanton Walker's hand. It seems that in the end he was just really unlucky, but luck aside death in the stands around a baseball diamond are more common

than you might think. A September nineteen twenty eight game in Ifaca, New York, saw another tragic death when a player named Carlton Berger hit a foul ball. It went directly into the stands, where it struck and killed his father. But if these old school examples just seem like a case of low safety standards, consider that games have only

gotten more dangerous since the nineteen seventies. This was when many major league teams in the US began constructing the massive stadiums that we're familiar with today, with some rising as high as thirty feet into the air. Several fans have taken fatal plunges when trying to catch a home run, soaring above their heads. But even if you survive the fall, don't look for anyone to pay your medical bills. Many teams have what's now known in legal circles as the

Baseball Rule. It's printed on the back of your ticket and it says that the park is not responsible for any injury sustained from loose balls or bats. And look, I know that the old song says, take me out to the ballgame, but it seems like if we're not careful. We might just get taken out at the ballgame. And if that happens, I think we can call that curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.