Travis Reed / AP

Baseball cards depicting major league player Bill Henry are shown next to an undated photograph of a man with the same name, Bill Henry, and his wife Elizabeth Jean at their home in Lakeland, Fla., on Wednesday. The Bill Henry, of Lakeland, claimed to be the baseball player with the same name. The Bill Henry in Florida recently died.

There were differences, however. The pitcher’s middle name is Rodman, while the Florida man’s middle name was Clarence. The two also had different dates and cities of birth. The Lakeland man had explained to family and friends that the different birth dates were a deliberate deception when he was a prospect to make scouts think he was younger — something that does happen occasionally, even today.

“It’s kind of like Antique Road Show. You get this story that’s been handed down and told to you,” Hill-Cole said. “We’re still kind of all in shock.”

Some of Henry’s old golf buddies, like 64-year-old Bruce Brandt, still didn’t want to accept the news — Henry always talked with old pros who pile into town each spring when the Detroit Tigers train here.

“The guy I knew was a ballplayer,” Brandt said. “He had to be, because everybody knew him.”

He would not read The Ledger sitting a few feet away documenting his friend’s apparent lie. The newspaper said it should have done a better job confirming whether the local’s tales were true.

“There had been some discussion over the years about doing a story about him,” Ledger executive editor Skip Perez said. “One of our staff writers I think was a member of the same church. You know, in a way I wish we had done the darn story 10 years ago or whatever, because hopefully we would have checked or made a call or something.”

Elizabeth Henry said her husband’s health had declined since an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis about three years ago. He lost his driver’s license and used a golf cart to wheel around his retirement community.

The six-handicap couldn’t even play 18 holes anymore.

“When he passed it was a relief to know he wasn’t suffering anymore,” she said. “He didn’t have to go to a nursing home. So with that I just felt at peace, and I’d like to get on with my life.”

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“It doesn’t bother me at all,” he said.

The dead man’s friends and family in Florida insist it doesn’t matter if he played pro ball, because he was a good man anyway.

“That just was not a big or significant part of the person we all knew and loved and still hold in high regard,” Henry’s pastor Bryan Mickle said.

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