Art Rico

Arthur Ramon Rico (July 23, 1895 – January 3, 1919) was an American professional baseball player whose career spanned two seasons (1916–17), including parts of those seasons in Major League Baseball with the Boston Braves. Over his major league career, Rico, a catcher, compiled a .222 batting average with four hits in 18 at-bats. He also played in the minor leagues with the Class-B Springfield Green Sox.

After a stint aboard a battleship as a member of the United States Navy Reserve during World War I, Rico was deactivated and hoped to rejoin the Braves for the 1919 season. He was stricken by an appendicitis early in January 1919, however, and died at the age of 23 of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix shortly after emergency surgery.

Biography

Early years

Arthur "Art" Rico was born on July 23, 1895, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. His parents were first-generation immigrants to America, with his mother, the former Margaret Monahan, coming from Scotland as an infant and his father, Antonio Fernando Rico, arriving from Spain in 1877. His father, a prosperous tobacco dealer who owned a plantation in Cuba, died when Art was 14, leaving his family a substantial estate. A reserve catcher with two ahead of him on the depth chart, Rico was treated as a project by manager Stallings, who kept Rico next to him on the bench, teaching him the intricacies of the professional game through observation.

At the start of the 1917 season., Rico joined the minor league Springfield Green Sox, who were members of the Class-B Eastern League. This military duty removed Rico from any possible participation in professional baseball during the 1918 season. Rico was deactivated from the military in December 1918, with the war in Europe having concluded. He planned on rejoining the Braves for the 1919 season, which would have been his third.

Death and legacy

In January 1919 Rico was stricken with appendicitis and hospitalized in Boston. Surgery on January 2 discovered a ruptured appendix and an advanced case of peritonitis and Rico's health rapidly failed, ending in death during the night of January 3/4, 1919. Rico was 23 years old and unmarried at the time of his demise.

Rico's body was buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Footnotes