(This is the third in a series on infamous or controversial historical figures who also had a notable association with baseball. For the first installment on John Dillinger, click here, and for the second installment on Billy Sunday, click here. The following is being syndicated from The Captain’s Blog).
childhood dream was to play major league baseball, but soon after realizing that goal, his career and life ended in a nightmare. In what is likely the most heinous act ever committed by a major leaguer, the former catcher awoke on the morning of January 19, 1900 and brutally murdered his wife and children with an axe before cutting his own throat with a razor. Just a stone’s throw from where he had been born, Bergen, and his entire family, lay dead amid a gruesome scene that defied description.
Bergen was born in North Brookfield, Massachusetts in 1871. Just five years later, professional baseball came within 60 miles of the town when the Boston Red Caps (today’s Atlanta Braves) were inaugurated as a charter member of the brand new National League. The proximity to the town and the game’s growing popularity in the region must have had an impact on the Bergen family because Marty and his younger brother Billy became absolutely enthralled by the sport.
Both brothers exhibited considerable aptitude for the game, so it wasn’t a surprise when Marty embarked on a professional career in 1892. The elder Bergen bounced around various leagues in New England before ending up playing for the Kansas City Blues of the Western League. In addition to being an outstanding defender, Bergen also exhibited impressive ability as a hitter, so not before too long, the now firmly established National League came calling.
In the 1890s, the Beaneaters emerged as of one of the National League’s best teams. In the first five years of the decade, they finished first or second in every season. After the 1893 season, however, the team lost star catcher to a train accident that resulted in the amputation of both his legs. Since the tragedy, the Beaneaters had been unable to find a suitable replacement, so the early reports about Bergen were very encouraging. After receiving a positive scouting report, the team reportedly paid over $1,000 to the Blues for the rights to Bergen. The only problem, however, was the suspicious catcher didn’t want to come. Instead of being excited about the chance to play for his hometown team, Bergen felted unfairly treated and insisted that he be compensated as well. Only after Beaneaters’ manager Frank Selee made personal assurances that he would be treated well did Bergen decide to return home.
Bergen was the Boston Beaneaters’ primary catcher from 1896 to 1899, a period during which the team won two additional pennants. Although his batting statistics never lived up to the advanced billing, he was widely considered to be the best defensive catcher in the game. Even the immortal referred to him as one of the game’s best backstops, and, in its May 29, 1898 “Current Baseball News” column, the New York Times concurred, calling Bergen the equal of and “a better man than Bennett was in his best days”.
While Robinson and Clarke of Baltimore are good catchers, old Ganzel and young Bergen of Boston can have my money.” – Cap Anson, The New York Sun, June 16, 1897
Despite enjoying a fine reputation as a player, Bergen was also widely regarded as somewhat strange. From his very first days in Boston, the talented catcher exhibited erratic behavior, which included unexplained absences, mood swings, and bouts of paranoia. Most in the organization and the media attributed his behavior to eccentricity, and looked the other way in favor of his great talent…an early day version of “Marty being Marty”. So, despite the numerous trade rumors that swirled around him, the Beaneaters were never really tempted to part with their elite backstop.
During the 1898 season, Bergen’s worst tendencies offered an early glimpse at his potential for violence. First, in the middle of the season, the catcher struck rookie pitcher and future Hall of Famer in the head during breakfast. Then, after an altercation on the bench toward the end of the season, the catcher expressed the desire to bludgeon some of his teammates with a bat. It was hardly the reaction you’d expect from a sane man…even one still angered by a fight. After the incident, the whispers about Bergen’s mental state grew louder. However, the Beaneaters won their second consecutive pennant in 1898, so even these drastic incidents were overlooked.
The 1899 Boston Beaneaters
Finally, in July, everything came to a head while the team was traveling from Boston to Cincinnati. Earlier in the month, the weary catcher had requested a leave of absence from Selee, but was turned down. So, when the train came to a stop in Washington D.C., Bergen simply hopped off.
Despite pleas from club president Arthur Soden and demands from manager Selee to immediately rejoin the club, Bergen remained on his North Brookfield farm until the team returned to Boston on August 4. In the interim, the weary catcher gave a scathing interview to former Beaneaters’ player and current Boston Globe sportswriter . In the exchange, Bergen talked about being mistreated by his teammates and threatened with fines by Selee whenever he would request time off.
Upon the team’s return to Boston, the desperate Beaneaters immediately placed Bergen back into the lineup, and, to everyone’s surprise, the hometown crowd greeted him like a conquering hero. When Bergen knocked in the game winning run, the cheers were even wilder. Apparently, Bergen’s interview had won the sympathy of the crowd. Needless to say, his teammates were not impressed.
Catcher Bergen got out of a row with the Boston players by claiming that Tim Murnane ‘incorrectly’ quoted him. That’s an old dodge, resorted to by all shades of men when reflection brings for things that had better be left unsaid. But will Murnane stand for being made out a prevaricator and news fakir?” – Deseret Evening News, August 23, 1899
In order to avert a strike by the rest of the team, Bergen claimed that he was misquoted, but the writing was already the wall. Over the final months of the season, there would be more unexplained absences, louder whispers from disgruntled teammates and increasing examples of bizarre behavior. Finally, in October, Bergen suffered from a mental breakdown during a game. According to reports at the time, the troubled catcher feared that someone was trying to stab him as each pitch was thrown, causing him to move out of the way after each delivery. After numerous passed balls, Bergen was lifted from the game and then derided by the Boston press.
After the crazy events of 1899, there was little doubt that Bergen would be traded. The Cincinnati Reds were rumored to be in hot pursuit that December, but no deal had been reached as of January 19. According to the press accounts, Bergen awoke before dawn on that fateful morning and committed the three grizzly murders. In what can only be assumed was a psychotic stupor, Bergen struck down his wife Hattie and three-year old son Joseph with the forceful blows of an axe before cutting the throat of his six year old daughter Florence and then doing the same to himself. When Bergen’s father Michael discovered the bodies that afternoon, the house was covered with blood. Before much longer, the newspapers were filled with ink.
Unlike many other incidents of extreme violence, everyone who had known Bergen didn’t seem that surprised. “Tragedy Explains All” blared The Boston Globe’s banner. The signs of impending tragedy were everywhere. Bergen knew it; his family knew it; and his teammates knew it. For some reason, however, no one was able to do anything about it.
Almost the entire town of North Brookfield bid farewell to the Bergen family at the funeral on January 21, but only one teammate, , attended. In a sad touch of irony, Bergen’s feelings of abandonment by his teammates, which in life were born of paranoia, were finally confirmed by his death.
At the time of the tragedy, Marty’s brother was on the verge of making it to the majors. Although he spent 11 years playing for the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Superbas, one wonders if Billy would have traded it all in for just one more game with his older brother?
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rich Stowe, TheYankeeU. TheYankeeU said: New post: Fear Strikes Out: Mental Illness Turns Star Catcher Into an Axe Murderer http://bit.ly/eLbmkP [...]
I’m really enjoying this series. Thanks for a another (wonderfully) woeful tale.
Just a horrible, horrible story.Sounds like a paranoid schizo during an era they knew little about such stuff.
Imagine the horror of those poor children as they died and that grandfather discovering the carnage.To terrible to imagine.
” The signs of impending tragedy were everywhere. Bergen knew it; his family knew it; and his teammates knew it. For some reason, however, no one was able to do anything about it.”
This sounds like it could have been written about Jared Loughner or Seung-Hui Cho, the Va. Tech madman.
Other than this case, I have never heard of a pro baseball player developing paranoid schizoprhenia. But given that it tends to come on in ones late teens or 20s, it would make sense that there have been others besides Martin Bergen. In fact, it’s not that unlikely that there is a schizophrenic in pro baseball right now–hopefully on meds.
Today we have great medications which can allow a person with paranoid schizophrenia to live a normal life. The challnege is getting them into treatment and making sure they take their medicines. Back in Bergens’s day, all they had were insane asylums. I’m sure that’s where he was headed, if he had not killed himself and murdered his family.
At one point, Bergen was prescribed medications, but he refused to take them because he was sure someone was trying to poison him.
An interesting takeaway is it seems as if sports teams have always treated destructive behavior in two ways: ignore/tolerate it when the player is a star, and get rid of the player when he ceases to be.
Great post. Very vivid, well told, awesome amount of detail. The story’s definitely tragic, though I admit I’m almost always drawn to ones of its kind. I look forward to checking out the rest of the series.
On a side note, I never knew about Bennett’s legs being amputated. That would explain why his career was so short but some people today consider him one of the best players not in the Hall of Fame.
When I first really learned of Marty Bergen it was when I was going back through every year’s Hall of Fame voting results. I was absolutely fascinated to learn that he received 2, 1, and 1 votes from 1937-1939. I wonder if the same guy voted for him 3 years running, but that even one person would vote for him even once just boggles my mind.
It would be like Rae Carruth getting votes for the football HOF or Chris Benoit getting votes for the WWE HOF if there was an actual vote for that.
Excellent comment…I wanted to include that in the piece, but it just didn’t seem to fit. It is interesting, however, to think that someone could have overlooked the murders. I am not big into heavily weighting the character clause, but mass murder of one’s own family strikes me as a just disqualifier.
If you look at it through the eyes of the voter/voting process in the 1930s, it makes a little more sense. I don’t think they had an actual ballot back then and voters were sorting through 60-70 years of baseball history (having only elected the initial class in 1936) without the resources we have today, so they basically had to pull names from memory. It was probably his gruesome act that enabled him to get a few votes, as some voter(s) may have simply recalled his name from some headlines without recalling the reason they remembered the name.
[...] Fear Strikes Out: Mental Illness Turns Star Catcher Into an Axe Murderer (TYU). Wow. Bill Bergen is one of my favorite historical ballplayers because of his complete inability to hit baseballs, but I had no idea he had a brother who went psycho. [...]