Would it be surprising to know that the Pirates may have had the best two shortstops in baseball history? It seemed to be surprising to analyst Bill James, as he noted in his The New Bill James Historical Abstract, “The selection of (Arky) Vaughn as the number two shortstop in baseball history is as much a surprise to me as it is to you.” I would not say it was a surprise, but it was as though he finally emerged from the large shadow of Honus Wagner.Joseph Vaughn, nicknamed Arky for his native Arkansas, broke into the big leagues at the age of 20, the youngest player in the National League at the time. Vaughn had some troubles in the field, but he did not take them with him into the batter’s box, where he batted .318 as a rookie. Vaughn would hit .300 or above in each season he played for the Pirates, a testament to his work with mentor, roommate, and coach Honus Wagner.
As Vaughn got more experience he settled down in the field and became one the more premier all around players, becoming a 9 time all-star. He exhibited excellent range in the field and displayed a patience at the plate that was seemingly out of this world. He had a career .294 strikeout to walk ratio and his highest single season strikeout total was in 1934, with 38 strikeouts in 558 at bats.
Vaughn was inexplicably traded to
Vaughn is without a doubt one of the best offensive shortstops in history. One can only think what may have happened had he not walked away from baseball for three years. Those years were still in prime years and his later years may have been more fruitful as well.
Sadly in 1950 Vaughn drowned while fishing in
Career Stats:
| Teams | Years | G | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | BB | SO | BA |
| PIT-BRK | 1932-43, 47-48 | 1817 | 6622 | 1173 | 2103 | 356 | 128 | 96 | 926 | 118 | 937 | 276 | .318 |
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I just did some research, and all sources agree that Vaughn and a friend were fishing on Lost Lake in California when they drowned. According to what I read, this "lake" is little more than a pond. It has a total surface area of less than 2 acres and an average depth of just over 6 feet. How Vaughn or anyone could drown in a body of water that small and their bodies never be recovered would appear to be a mystery. Even allowing for the "bathtub effect", which causes much bigger waves on lakes than one would expect, it would seem highly unlikely that anyone could drown under anything approaching normal circumstances. (Examples of the "bathtub effect" include observed wave heights of more than 10 feet on the Sea of Galilee, and 35 feet on Lake Superior. But of course Lost Lake is less than a raindrop compared with either of those bodies of water.)
Has anyone considered whether there might have been foul play involved in Vaughn's death? This sure looks suspicious to me.
Now that you bring it up I am finding conflicting reports of his body never being recovered. One site will say it , another won't. What I did find was an obituary that says his body was recovered, and that the lake was the crater of an old inactive volcano, with indeterminate depth.
Apparently as the storm whipped up they got capsized, got tired while swimming in the freezing water and drowned. That is all that I am finding. I admit that it was strange to me, but there seems to be some differing reports about it all.
I'll revise the post with link to the obituary that I found.
Well, just to make it more confusing, there is more than one lake with the name "Lost Lake". The one I looked up is the one that is near Eagleville, California, as that is the one on which Vaughn was fishing, according to several sources I checked---but of course the problem with the internet is that all sources could be using the same erroneous "original" information.
BTW, other "Lost Lakes" include at least seven (7) in Canada, and two (2) in California. It is near Lake Tahoe and is, as you say, a small (VERY small) volcanic lake.
I am no fan of wikipedia for a number of reasons, but this wikipedia page is the only one I could find that gives the basic data in terms of size and depth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Lake_%28California%29
There are a couple of other pages that are much more technical in nature, but they have a lot of "Geologist-speak" and strangely don't give the basic physical data about the Lake.
I too found a bunch of "lost lakes". It seems as though that area of California is "Lost". There is even a Lost Creek Lake near Eagleville, CA. Nevertheless it is a mystery that I am going to look into and maybe post about my findings later on.
Thanks for your help and pointing out the information.
I look forward to your findings, HQ, though of course this story is very sad regardless of the specifics of Vaughn's (and his friend's) death.
One note that may be relevant is that Lost Lake near Eagleville is in a section of northern California called "Desolation Wilderness". From the photos I saw, it is incredibly beautiful, basically a combination of alpine, volcanic, and glacial features. Apparently it is very cold there most of the year. Lost Lake---assuming we have the right one---is frozen most years from November to June. So it is entirely possible that freezing cold water is what killed the two men after their boat capsized. Here again, however, one would think that in a body of water that is 1.7 acres in size, unless you just plain can't swim at all and/or are wearing full winter weather gear, surely it couldn't be more than a 200-300 yard swim to shore.
According to the newspaper article you quoted, someone on shore was an eyewitness to what happened. It says that Vaughn and his friend were "65 yards" from shore, but both died about 20 feet from safety when they were overcome by the cold. It goes on to report that the water was deep almost all the way to the shoreline because of the type of lake that Lost Lake is, ie, an inverted cone volcanic lake.
My guess is that the two men must also have been badly weighed down by clothing and other gear.
So, no foul play, though that doesn't lessen the tragedy one iota. How horrible to be so close to safety and then not make it. Rest in peace, gentlemen.
Note also that the article says the Lake "has never been sounded" as of the early 1950s, though apparently it HAS been sounded in the years since the drownings. It's still awfully shallow in terms of average depth (a shade more than 6 feet), but sadly, all that has to happen is that you're in one of the deeper parts when you're struggling to make it to shore in freezing water.
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