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Charles Dana Dexter (1876-1934) was a Major League Baseball
outfielder, catcher and third baseman who played
with the Louisville Colonels, Chicago Orphans,
Boston Beaneaters, Des Moines Champions, and
Minneapolis Millers.
On Dec 30, 1903 he was at the Iroquois Theatre with retired
baseball player,
Frank Houseman.
Both escaped and
helped other theatergoers to safety. In later
years it was estimated that their efforts
helped save two to three hundred people.
That's a large exaggeration but the more
realistic several dozen is nothing to sneeze at.
Dexter had graduated from the University of the South in 1894
and gone to work as a society and drama editor at an
Evansville, Indiana newspaper, the Evansville
Blotting Pad.
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In the years after the fire
In 1905 Dexter and a few fellow baseball friends, including Henry Quait
Bateman of the Milwaukee American Association,
enjoyed a drunken night on the town that ended
badly. A quarrel over cab fare resulted in
Dexter's arrest after stabbing Bateman, puncturing
his lung. The prognosis for Bateman's survival
was poor but he outlived Dexter who took his own life in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
in 1934, three years before the death of Henry
Bateman.
Toward the end of his life, Dexter wrote articles about baseball under his own name and ghostwrote for major players.
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