Opening Day doesn’t merely kick off the baseball season. It
alerts us, without fail every spring, to the season of rebirth.
This most hallowed day in sports (rivaled perhaps by the Kentucky
Derby on the first Saturday in May, but by nothing else) starts the
cycle that is as sure as the seasons it follows.
Green hues covering an expanse of outfield, sun dripping on the
lengthening days, a chill in the air to remind us that winter is
not so far behind — all of these combine to hold out the promise
of a long and healthy and leisurely campaign, much like life
itself. But it is a campaign that surely fades, along with most
teams’ pennant hopes, in what Dave Shiflett so beautifully
described last week as the
dying season (which, Shiflett notes, is the proper preserve of
football).
For more than a century this has been the pattern of the game —
Life, Death, Rebirth. And while most fans this week are caught up
in the rebirth signified by Opening Day, New Jersey’s Frank Russo
focuses his attentions on the macabre middle infielder in that
double-play combo.
Russo is an amateur baseball historian who has given over his
research to making the final resting places of big league
ballplayers a bit more comfortable, at least in our memory, which
is where the ghosts of baseball past truly reside.
A bearded, overweight New York Yankees fan, Russo created and
runs my favorite sports website, The Deadball
Era. Its motto is, “Where Every Player is Safe at Home.” It is
a comprehensive site devoted to the passing from this earthly vale
of big leaguers great and not-so-great.
Among the wonderful services rendered by The Deadball Era is an
attempt to collect the New York Times obituaries for as many
deceased former big leaguers as possible. Too many people in and
around the game today are shortsighted when it comes to the game’s
history. Despite the fact that baseball builds on the
accomplishments of previous generations, there are many today to
whom the past and its precedents are just an inconvenience. So
those with a passion for the past must fight a never-ending battle
to ensure that the grand deeds of Cap Anson and Nap Lajoie, or even
Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, are not lost to the ages.
Luckily for those of us with historical sensibilities, there is
Russo, private citizen, whose love for the game has led him to
carry the banner (or funeral shroud) for many a player. See how the
majestic Babe Ruth was sent off, for instance, or read about the
tragedy of Lou Gehrig, cut down on the base paths of life at just
37.
For all the emphasis on death, there is nothing morbid about The
Deadball Era. Rather, it sweetly shows baseball as a game for the
living to be played and revered and passed down seamlessly over the
generations.
By virtue of their public lives and the fact they play a kids’
game, ballplayers are often colorful characters. All of this color
is revealed in the grainy black and white of these gentlemen’s
death notices. Take Rabbit Maranville, whose 1954 obituary
recalled, “In St. Louis they still point out the fountain in a
hotel courtyard into which he dived, fully dressed, on a sultry
summer evening. However, he always denied, as an utter fabrication,
that he came out of the water holding a goldfish in his mouth.” Who
knows what to make of that, or whether they still recall it some 48
years later.
I do have to note one great sin of omission on this site, which
owes (as many sins do) to an over-reliance on the New York Times.
The obit for Roger Maris is treated thusly,
which is fine as far as it goes. But we would be better served if
Russo provided the legendary back page of the New York Post that
absolutely nailed it on that sad day when we lost the gentlemanly
Maris. Said the Post in its World War III-sized type: TRADED TO THE
ANGELS.
Along with players’ obits, Russo has catalogued the burial
places of dozens upon dozens of the game’s foot soldiers, as well
as most members of the Hall of Fame. It is fascinating to see how
baseball’s “immortals” are treated in their deathly repose. With
few exceptions, the gravestones of the greats are modest and
unprepossessing. One would be hard-pressed, for instance, to know
that the great broadcaster Mel Allen was anything other than a
“Beloved Son, Brother [&] Uncle.” Or that the Christopher
Mathewson who lies beneath a small stone marker in a Pennsylvania
cemetery is the same legendary New York Giants hurler Christy “Big
Six” Mathewson, who won 373 career games. His marker only
identifies him as having been a Captain in the 128th Pennsylvania
Division.
A few gravestones give clues to the residents’ former lives.
Casey Stengel’s provides this quote: “There comes a time in every
man’s life and I’ve had plenty of them.” And Satchel Paige’s has
chiseled his famous Rules to Stay Young, such as “Keep the juices
flowing by jangling around gently as you move,” or “Don’t look
back, something might be gaining on you.” And whatever you do,
never forget to “avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.”
Ultimately none of these gents — not sportswriter Grantland
Rice nor Pirates co-owner (and occasional crooner) Bing Crosby, not
Hall-of-Famer Mordechai “Three Finger” Brown nor the forgettable
Cliff Mapes — could stay young enough to escape the summons of, as
Rice famously put it, the One Great Scorer.
But thanks to the efforts of Frank Russo, they will all live on
enough so that the rest of us will be able to note not only whether
they won or lost, but how they played the game.
