Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero

by Thomas W. Gilbert

He threw the first fastball. The first curveball. He was baseball’s first star—and its first tragedy.



In Death in the Strike Zone, acclaimed historian Thomas W. Gilbert uncovers the forgotten life of James Creighton, the first American ballplayer to become a national sensation. On the eve of the Civil War, Creighton invented something utterly new in baseball – modern pitching. Creighton was so dominant, so mesmerizing, that the game had to rewrite the rulebook to catch up with him. He is the reason we have a strike zone. Then, in one fateful game he collapsed—and four days later, he was dead at the age of twenty-one.



Was it a freak injury or was baseball somehow to blame? Was there a cover-up? Why has Creighton been denied the credit he deserves? Death in the Strike Zone is part biography, part detective story, and part time machine. With vivid storytelling and groundbreaking research, Gilbert revives a vanished era of barehanded fielders, heroes and gamblers, and the strange, thrilling beginnings of America’s pastime and sports stardom itself.



Death in the Strike Zone is a remarkable journey into the past that will keep you on the edge of your seat and profoundly change how you see the game of baseball.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, History, Biography, Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

Published March 24, 2026

Reviews

[Rick Goff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great topic: the first pitcher to throw a fastball and a curveball ( first at both), James Creighton died in 1861 at age 21. Most modern baseball historians accept accounts and conclusions written decades after his death that his throwing motion was illegal, but his contemporaries did not. He was the first team sport star in U.S. history.

In Creighton’s day, baseball rules dictated the pitcher must throw underhanded with no break at the elbow and no snap of the wrist. So the pitch was understood to be a neutral act to start the play. Creighton was the first pitcher to dominate the game, or even to attempt it.

It should be said that the book title is misleading. This book is about baseball history, not about a man’s death. I think mystery/mysterious in a book title promotes sales, like X in a brand name. But that’s okay. There’s plenty here for a baseball fan with an interest in its history.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike other reviewers I enjoyed the scene-setting and tangents in here; you get a really interesting picture of the baseball world and, to some extent, the social world of New York City/Brooklyn in here. I came as much for that as I did for Jim Creighton. There's simply a lot of good information in here, and a significant portion of it because of the author's own original research. Of particular note is the insight into how Creighton pitched, and the ultimate fate of Joe Leggett.

This could have used another round of editing; there are organization issues in that key pieces of information are on occasion repeated in a confusing manner, or, conversely, omitted until far too late in the book to avoid unnecessarily confounding the reader. Another less-distracting flaw is the fact that basic patterns of inference are often over-explained in a didactic manner.

Outside of these gripes I don't have much in the way of complaints. This is a plenty interesting and very readable little book.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s tough to write a biography of someone who seems to have very little contemporaneous record of him. But such is Thomas Gilbert’s task in recounting the life of Jim Creighton, a baseball player who died in 1862, long before the game turned professional (although Creighton was a pro) and for a man who died in his early 20s of reasons no one could explain. (There actually is a fairly prosaic manner of death.)

Gilbert wants to show Creighton as the first true national baseball hero and a revolutionary figure.

Learning about the very early days of baseball can be challenging. But they can also be fascinating

[John Purlia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s difficult to say that a book of only 186 pages suffers from padding, but… there is a LOT of padding in this book that otherwise provides essential defense of James Creighton’s importance to the development of baseball. As such, the author frequently loses the narrative with lengthy paragraphs that would be better placed in a book about the development of amateur baseball – a book that Gilbert has already written to great effect. The book also could have used a good editor, as there are multiple places where the author repeats himself, sometimes in the same paragraph, or falls into chronology traps where the reader is left scratching their head and asking, “Wait… who is this?”

All in all, though, I did enjoy the book in spite of its many flaws.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating little book, though ultimately not quite the biography it aims to be. Early amateur-ish baseball is an interesting topic, one I've not spent a lot on. As a cursory dive into the Brooklyn Excelsiors, especially Joe Leggett, Gilbert spins a compelling yarn. James Creighton, however, is a secondary focus, not the primary subject. There's very little info available about Creighton, I get that, but this biography of Creighton is 25% Creighton, 75% other stuff. That doesn't make for a bad book, this is in fact quite at the level of good, but it does make for an uneven effort with the sections on Creighton often feeling like they are being forced into a different book.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baseball. History. Mystery. This book has it all. If you are a baseball fan, you will love this book about the player who should have gone down in history as the inventor of the curveball, as well as get credit for setting the course for what modern-day pitchers look like today. His name, James Creighton, will be better remembered and his achievements better recognized as a result of this book.
Full review here: https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/...

[Spiros · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid, entertaining view into the world of amateur Base Ball (before it became baseball) at the time of the Civil War, as the game was on the cusp of becoming professional. Partly a medical investigation, partly the examination of a gambling scandal (and yes, gambling scandals anteceded professionalism in Base Ball, as they did in college sports), but mostly a well constructed account of how the game was played.

[Vincent T. Ciaramella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. However, the title is somewhat misleading. I expected more of a biography of Creighton but that’s only about 1/4 of the book. It’s more of a history of amateur baseball in Brooklyn with Creighton as a secondary character. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the book. I just think people might be expecting more of a mystery less a history of amateur baseball. If I am being honest, Joe Leggett was the most interesting person in the book.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death in the Strike Zone is an excellent companion to Gilbert’s earlier book, How Baseball Happened. While this book’s focus is James Creighton, Gilbert places the ballplayer’s short life and brief career in the context of the amateur game then thriving in Brooklyn and New York City. As a bonus, the reader is treated to another mystery surrounding Joe Leggett, Creighton’s catcher. This book is a valuable look at the early days of baseball.