Controversy
While Lombardi played for the Reds as the starting catcher, teammate and backup catcher Willard Hershberger became the only major league player to commit suicide during a season. Hershberger oddly enough told manager Bill McKechnie that "my father killed himself, and I'm going to do it, too!" After failing to appear at the stadium the next day the Reds checked Hershberger's room at the hotel only to find that he had slit his throat and wrist.
A sad footnote to the Hershberger suicide was Lombardi's eerily similar suicide attempt in 1953. Lombardi had been battling depression for some time and agreed to go to a sanitorium at his wife's urging. While staying overnight at a relative en route to the facility, Ernie slit his throat from ear to ear with a razor and begged not to be saved. Papers described him as "clinging to life" but he made a full recovery.
Read more about this topic: Ernie Lombardi
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
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