The Biggest Guy in the Room: The Life, Baseball Career and Mysterious Death of Eddie Gaedel

He died too young, passing away before his 40th birthday with enormous untapped potential. When he was found in his mother’s house, unresponsive from a beating suffered during a likely mugging and a subsequent heart attack, he had just turned 36. Despite having had a career in show business, and even a brief stint as a major league baseball player, he never found the comfort or respect most would expect from such opportunities. Insecurity, alcohol and always feeling left out all contributed to his lot in life leading up to his final days. As it turned out, Eddie Gaedel wound up being as overlooked in death as he was in his much too brief life.

Edward Carl Gaedel was born on June 8, 1925 in Chicago; the second of Carl and Helen’s three children. Carl Gaedel had emigrated from Lithuania more than two decades earlier, settling in the Windy City. Helen Janicki was born in either New York or New Jersey to immigrant parents. She and Carl married in 1919, and he supported their young family by selling shoes in a department store.

Eddie weighed a robust eight pounds at birth. While his brother and sister both grew normally, his own progress stunted at a young age, topping out at his adult height of 3’7”. His parents spent hard-to-spare money trying to seek help for him…