In eight seasons for the Indians (1912-20), Chapman hit .278 with 18 homers and 364 RBI. An expert base stealer, he had the franchise record of 52 in a season (1917) that stood until 1980. (Another unusual record that he held occured on June 14, 1914, when he commited four errors in one inning. And in 1919, he set a mark with four sacrifice bunts in one game).

An extremely charismatic and well-loved player, it made it all the more outrageous that he should be killed by one of baseball's most disliked "bad guys" in Mays, according to some baseball historians. Some believe Mays threw the spitball directly at Chapman's face.

In those days, spitballs were hardly balls loaded with spit, but with stuff more like grease or oil or lard, to make the ball harder coming off the bat, as well as harder to pick up by the batter's eyes. The spitball was outlawed after Chapman's death.

The 29-year-old Chapman, hitting .303 for the season at this point in 1920, crowded the plate as usual when he faced Mays on this date at the Polo Grounds in New York. Mays, a submarine pitcher, threw the spitter that barely missed the strike zone, but nontheless hit Chapman in the temple. Even more gruesome, the sound of the ball crashing into Chapman's skull was so loud that Mays thought it hit his bat, fielded the ball, and threw to first base.

Chapman was taken to a local hospital, briefly regained consciousness, but died 12 hours (the next day, actually) from a fractured skull.

As for Mays, he was persona non grata in Philadelphia for previously injuring two fans by angrily throwing a baseball into the stands, and was later investigated for accusations of throwing the World Series in the "Black Sox" scandal. Hounded and hated, he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds, then briefly to the Brooklyn Dodgers, then he gave up and went into early retirement.

For more on Chapman's career, check ou the Baseball Alamanac Website entry.
In 2004, author Mike Sewell wrote a critically acclaimed book on the subject, "The Pitch That Killed" that's available at many places online.

A trivial postscript to this story:

John Ireland, Mr. Know-it-all from Channel 2/9 and KSPN-AM (710), passes along this note about Chapman:
When I was a senior at UCLA in 1984, I was taking a Greek history class and on the first day, the professor announced that he had the world's hardest trivia question. He went on to say that we each had a week to solve it, and if we could, he would give us an "A" for the class and we wouldn't have to take the final.
Here it was: "There has only been one player in baseball history to be killed as a result of something that happened in a game. Ray Chapman was killed when he was hit by a pitch thrown by Carl Mays. My question is: Who pinch ran for Ray Chapman?"
Remember, this was before the invention of the internet. I got on the phone and called Baseball America, The Sporting News, anybody I could think of that may have solved this previously. I struck out. But three weeks later, my friends' Dad got the answer.
I tell this story whenever somebody says they can answer almost anything. Probably 20 times over the years. The one guy who got it right away was Fred Willard, the actor. It turns out he owned the book you referenced in your article. Nobody else has ever come up with the answer.
For what it's worth, the answer is Harry Lunte, who was a back-up infielder that played in the majors for about three years.

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One more piece of trivia from that:
Who replaced Chapman as the Cleveland Indians' shortstop?
Joe Sewell, a rookie, who went on to have a Hall of Fame career.