Chris Hartje was one of nine players killed as a result of the Spokane Indians’ bus accident on June 24, 1946. Seven years earlier, he had played briefly with the Brooklyn Dodgers. During World War II, he served in the United States Coast Guard. Hartje was attempting a postwar comeback with Spokane when the crash occurred.

I wrote Hartje’s bio for the SABR BioProject and a story about his major-league debut for the SABR Games Project. He came off the bench and delivered a go-ahead, two-run double to help lift the Dodgers over the rival New York Giants. The article can be found here. You can read more about Chris’s story in Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash That Changed Everything, which will be published by Rowman and Littlefield in April 2024.