What did Steve Nicosia know about death? He was a 19-year-old catcher in Low-A ball. John Candelaria, Pablo Cruz and most of their teammates were just young athletes from rural towns and big cities, all trying to gain a foothold on the bottom rung of professional baseball. They were kids, really, and kids always feel invincible.

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What did any of them know?

On Aug. 22, 1974, the players, coaches and fans who gathered at Municipal Field in Salem, Va., for a minor league ballgame saw death. Hushed and some already in tears, players from both teams gathered in shallow right field and looked on helplessly as one of the Pirates’ top prospects lay dying in a pool of blood on the manicured grass.

After that afternoon, those young ballplayers all could say they had seen death. They’d met it up close. Forty-five years later, they have not forgotten it.

They have not forgotten Alfredo Edmead.

The 1974 Salem Pirates went 86-51 and cruised to their third straight Carolina League title. Their strong pitching staff was anchored by Candelaria, a left-hander who two summers later would throw a no-hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers. What Salem did best, though, was hit the ball. Despite having the second-youngest lineup, Salem led the league in hits, runs scored, homers and stolen bases.

Among the six future major leaguers on the roster were Nicosia and Candelaria, who played on the “Fam-a-lee” team that brought the 1979 World Series trophy to Pittsburgh. Outfielder Miguel Dilone spent 12 seasons in the big leagues, including five with the Pirates. Pitcher Rick Langford made his Pirates debut in 1976, then spent 10 years with the Oakland A’s.

Murray Cook is MLB’s field coordinator, a groundskeeper guru who for the past 30 years has advised the commissioner’s office on building and maintaining perfect playing fields. In 1974, he was a 14-year-old ballhawk who hustled his way into gigs as Salem’s bat boy and a helper on the grounds crew.

“That team was just unbelievable with Candelaria, Nicosia, Dilone — no one was going to beat them,” Cook said. “And there was this kid who was just four years older than me out in right field. What a player that kid was. He had a rocket for an arm.”

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That kid was Edmead, who had signed with the Pirates just a few months earlier after he helped the Dominican Republic team win the silver medal in the 1974 Central American and Caribbean Games. He was quiet, maybe even a bit shy, in the Salem clubhouse, but Edmead was never hard to notice on the field.

“He was just a shining star,” Nicosia said. “Probably one of the top two or three players in the whole organization that year. That kid was incredible. He probably at some point was going to be the right fielder in Pittsburgh.”

Legendary scout Howie Haak discovered Edmead with the help of Cruz, who in 1974 was a 27-year-old infielder. A few years before his death in 1999, Haak — who had watched Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Dave Parker develop as minor leaguers — told long-time ball writer Peter Gammons that Edmead “was the best prospect I ever saw play.”

Tall, wiry and blessed with great instincts, Edmead was given his first assignment with Salem. Over 119 games, he put up a .318 average with seven home runs and 61 stolen bases. In June, Edmead and Dilone were featured in a story in The Sporting News entitled,“Salem Swings with its .400 Dominican Duo.”

On Aug. 20, manager Johnny Lipon told Edmead that the young outfielder had been selected as a Carolina League all-star. Edmead was opening eyes in Pirates’ front office and a promotion to Double A seemed likely in 1975.

“He had all the talent in the world,” Candelaria said.

Although it was a Saturday and Candelaria was on the mound, fewer than 1,000 fans turned out for Salem’s game against the Rocky Mount Phillies on Aug. 22. Edmead reached base, stole second and third and scored the game’s first run. A grainy, black-and-white photo preserves a moment from that game: Edmead about to connect with a pitch while Cruz looks on from the on-deck circle.

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Salem was ahead 6-0 in the sixth inning when Rocky Mount’s Murray Gage-Cole hit a looper toward shallow right field. Trailing the play, Salem first baseman Tom Prazych saw Edmead and second baseman Cruz converge on the ball. Prazych gasped when he realized they were on a collision course.

“Oh, my God. It was a tragic accident,” Prazych recalled over the phone from his home in Clarks Summit, Pa. “As Alfredo went down to catch it, he was bending over. Cruz hit him in the forehead with his knee.”

Prazych paused, then added softly, “It wasn’t a good sight.”

Initial newspaper and magazine reports said Edmead’s head slammed into Cruz’s gimpy left knee, which was protected by a large, metal brace.  Some of the players who witnessed the accident gave the same account. “That damned steel had been like an axe to Edmead’s head,” Rocky Mount Phillies pitcher Anthony Meerpohl said in the Sept. 7, 1974 issue of The Sporting News. However, Cruz years later insisted that Edmead struck his unbraced right knee.

Either way, the damage was done. Edmead collapsed and did not move.

“When you play in the minor leagues, you see a lot of things happen,” Prazych said. “Players get hurt all the time. I’ve seen some terrible, terrible accidents. My one buddy had his jaw broken by a pitch. Another guy ran into the catcher and almost swallowed his tongue. There were a lot of things that went on that people didn’t normally hear about.”

Nicosia saw the whole thing unfold from his perch behind home plate. He looked at Candelaria and together they ran to right field.

“We looked down … I was 19 years old. I had no idea,” Nicosia said. “We didn’t even have a trainer back then. The other team had a trainer who came out onto the field. When they turned his head, the whole side of his head was caved in. He had blue and yellow (material) coming out of his nose. I said, ‘What is that?’ They told me, ‘That’s his brains.’ We knew he was dead right then.”

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Somebody called the police. Cook sprinted to the right field wall to open a gate so an ambulance could drive onto the field. It took 10 or 15 minutes for paramedics to arrive. Edmead was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital.

“I had to find towels to clean up the blood in right field,” Cook said. “I just ran out with a handful of towels, cleaned it up as best as I could and poured a bucket of water on it. The next day, we turned on the (sprinkler system). That was it. I had never seen anyone die before. Later, you think about it like, ‘Did that really happen?’ It was almost like a dream.”

Then a remarkable, terrible thing happened.

“We finished the game,” Candelaria said sadly. “A lot of people didn’t know he died right there in right field. Never mind some of the people in the stands who were yelling, ‘Get him off! Let’s play!’ That’s true. I was there. It was horrible.”

It wasn’t until after the game that players on both teams were told that Edmead had died. Lipon delivered the news with tears in his eyes.

The next day’s game was canceled. Many of Edmead’s teammates went to his memorial service in town.

“We had one day off and then we played again,” Nicosia said with a shrug. “It was a different time.”

When their season resumed the day after the service, some of the players found it difficult to shake the image from two days earlier.

“The first game after, I was still kind of distraught,” Prazych said. “I think I made one or two errors at first base — you know, the ball going through my legs. It was terrible.”

The Pirates had an on-again, off-again affiliation with Salem until 1995. Since 2009, Salem has been affiliated with the Boston Red Sox. The team no longer plays at Municipal Field, having moved in 1995 into Haley Toyota Field at Salem Memorial Ballpark. 

But there are reminders.

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Municipal Field still stands, though it is now named Kiwanis Field. High school and American Legion teams play there. Outside the Salem-Roanoke Valley Baseball Hall of Fame, near the new minor league ballpark, a small plaque was erected in Edmead’s honor.

Edmead is one of at least eight players in the history of the Pirates to have died while their careers were active, a list that includes Roberto Clemente, who was killed in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1972, and minor leaguer Evan Chambers, who died in his sleep in December 2013. Edmead, though, is the only one who was killed during a game. Those who were there will never forget it.

“To this day,” Nicosia said, “whether I’m watching (a game) on TV or if I’m watching my grandsons play in a Little League game, if I see a Texas-leaguer and two players converging, I can’t watch. I have to close my eyes.”

Cruz played four more seasons with Salem, then retired as a player. He was a scout for more than 20 years with the Pirates and a half-dozen other teams. Moisés Alou, Tony Peña, Aramis Ramirez and José Lind are among the 40-plus players Cruz signed who reached the majors. Cruz went on to manage the Toronto Blue Jays’ operations in the Dominican Republic and in 2016 was honored as a scout of the year during the MLB Winter Meetings.

When reached by phone at his home in the Dominican, Cruz politely declined to speak about Edmead.

“He was such a great ballplayer,” Cruz said through translator Mike González. “I still it carry it with me after all these years. I feel very uncomfortable every time I have to share the story. I respect the family and I respect Alfredo Edmead. I’d rather not talk about it anymore.

“If I did, I’d be left hurting after we hung up the phone.”

(Photo of Alfredo Edmead at bat with Pablo Cruz on deck: Salem (Va.) Museum)