Deaths on July 2

Ed Delahanty, American baseball player (b. 1867)

Edward James Delahanty (October 30, 1867 – July 2, 1903), nicknamed "Big Ed", was an American professional baseball player, who spent his Major League Baseball (MLB) playing career with the Philadelphia Quakers, Cleveland Infants, Philadelphia Phillies, and Washington Senators. He was renowned as one of the game's early power hitters, and while primarily a left fielder, also spent time as an infielder. Delahanty won a batting title, batted over .400 three times, and has the fifth-highest career batting average in MLB history. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1945. Delahanty died falling into the Niagara River or being swept over Niagara Falls (undetermined), after being removed from a train while intoxicated.

Delahanty's biographer argues that:

Baseball for Irish kids was a shortcut to the American dream and to self-indulgent glory and fortune. By the mid-1880s these young Irish men dominated the sport and popularized a style of play that was termed heady, daring, and spontaneous.... [Delahanty] personified the flamboyant, exciting spectator-favorite, the Casey-at-the-bat, Irish slugger. The handsome masculine athlete who is expected to live as large as he played.Delahanty's younger brothers, Frank, Jim, Joe, and Tom, also played in the big leagues.