Remembering the fallen

Harry O’Neill with the Philadelphia Athletics

Onetime Philadelphia Athletics catcher Harry O’Neill dies 81 years ago today, becoming the second of two former major league baseball players to die in World War II.

The 27-year-old O’Neill is a first lieutenant with the Marines when he is killed in 1945 on Iwo Jima.

He plays one game for the A’s in 1939 before batting .238 in 16 games in the minors for the Class B Harrisburg Senators in 1940.

Less than 10 months before O’Neill’s death, former Washington Senators outfielder Elmer Gedeon, also 27, dies when the B-26 bomber he is piloting is shot down over France.

Coincidentally, in the fall of 1940, one of O’Neill's Harrisburg teammates – outfielder William Embick – becomes the first pro player selected in the United States’ initial peacetime draft.

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