Author: John Racanelli

JOHN RACANELLI is a Chicago lawyer with an insatiable interest in baseball-related litigation. When not rooting for his beloved Cubs (or working), he is probably reading a baseball book or blog, planning his next baseball trip, or enjoying downtime with his wife and family. He is probably the world’s foremost photographer of triple peanuts found at ballgames and likes to think he has one of the most complete collections of vintage handheld electronic baseball games known to exist. John is Vice Chair for the Emil Rothe (Chicago) SABR Chapter, founder and Co-Chair of the SABR Baseball Landmarks Research Committee, and a regular contributor to the SABR Baseball Cards Research Committee blog. His series of articles "Death and Taxes and Baseball Card Litigation” was a 2023 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner and the book he co-authored with Derek Bain - "Hardball Retro’s Compendium of Baseball Video Games and Electronic Handhelds" - was a 2025 Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award recipient. On August 25, 2023 John was honored to deliver the keynote address at a dedication ceremony for the historical marker placed in honor of Lewis Robert “Hack” Wilson in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania.

Grave Hunting Adventure in Oregon (with an Unexpected Surprise)

By: Adam J. Ulrey

Looking for Baseball Graves and there was a surprise I wasn’t expecting…

It was a beautiful 75 degree day in Oregon and a perfect day to go grave hunting. I set out in the morning from Creswell, Oregon to hit four graves starting in Independence and then moving onto the final three that were all in Salem, Oregon.

It was a beautiful drive up to outside the little town of Independence, Oregon looking for the grave of Ed Mensor. The Buena Vista Cemetery was up on a hill overlooking the valley below. Driving up the one-lane gravel road, I knew there would be no map or for that matter a number to call. So it would be looking at every grave until I found Mr. Mensor.

The surprise I found was as I was looking. I completely forgot that my cousin was buried here as I ran across his stone. He was only 36 and died after a battle with cancer. He was a wonderful person and I still miss him.

So I walked from the top to the bottom of the cemetery. There were about 200 plots and of course I found him after walking almost all of the cemetery. Ed Mensor played for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1912-1914 as an outfielder. He batted .221 with one home run and eight RBIs for his brief career. He would play until he was 35 years old mostly in the minor leagues with seven other teams. Read a bit more about him here https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Ed_Mensor.

It was onto Restlawn Memorial Gardens in Salem about 22 miles away. So when I arrived, what a stark difference – I just came from a little cemetery on top of a hill to a place that had thousands of graves over a huge 10-acre parcel of land.

So I went in to the office and got a map and directions to the grave of Wally Flager. He played in the majors for one year but ended up playing for two different teams starting out with Cincinnati for 21 games and then onto the Pittsburgh Pirates for 49 games. He would hit a respectable .241 with two homers and 21 RBIs. He would play just two more seasons in the minors before leaving the game at 26 years old. He was buried on the front row of the section named Prayer. He served in World War II. You can read a bit more on him here https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Wally_Flager.

Onto my last stop which is where the final two players I set out to view would be. At Belcrest Memorial Park in Salem I found an even bigger place with thousands upon thousands of stones and burial sites. Thank God again for the office and the wonderful person who could show me on the map right where to go. I found Howard Maple, who played at Oregon State University before he would move onto the pros. He played only one year for the Washington Senators in 1932 getting into 44 games. He only had 41 at bats with 10 hits and seven RBIs. You can read about him at his BR-Bullpen site https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Howard_Maple.

After finding Howard Maple it was onto Max Marshall. He is interred in a space inside the funeral home with his wife. I found him after searching because the number and place they gave me was wrong – he was on the opposite side of where they told me. So even if they give you the coordinates, if you don’t find them search yourself as they are probably there. I imagine when you have thousands of people buried and entered it could be easy to write down the wrong number where someone is.

Max played for Wake Forest before moving onto the pros and playing for the Cincinnati Reds from 1942-44. He played mostly right field but ended up playing all three outfield positions. He started for the reds in both 1942 and 1943. He had 311 hits for his career with a .245 batting average. He hit 15 homers for his career. He played 12 years total and after playing his last game for Tulsa at the age 33 he would come back and play for Salem at 39 years old in the Western International League. Here’s a little bit of info on Max from the BR-Bullpen page https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Max_Marshall.

After nearly three hours listening to an old baseball game and driving over 100 miles I found all four, took the pictures, and marked the coordinates for all to find.

What a great fun day as I love to drive, and to help with the Landmarks Committee Project is icing on the cake.

Landmarks Committee Votes to Add Sites to SABR Baseball Map

The Landmarks Committee held its inaugural election in 2023 to select three new sites to be added to the SABR Baseball Map. SABR members nominated over 30 sites that were not otherwise eligible for the Map, such as:

Locations of former ballparks or other sites where there is no physical structure remaining or historical marker;
Graves of individuals who are not in the Baseball Hall of Fame;
Former ball players’ homes or businesses; and
Baseball-themed restaurants.

Committee member, Sean Kolodziej, even wrote an article for the Hardball Voyager blog in support of recognizing the grave of Eddie Gaedel on the Map.

A vote was conducted, and 70 ballots were counted. The top three vote-getters were:

West Field in Munhall, PA (now the site of Chatham University’s athletic fields, this was the location of the Homestead Grays home field in the 1930s and 1940s).
Shoeless Joe Jackson grave in Greenville, SC
Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe grave in Chicago, IL

The remainder of the top ten will be included on the 2024 ballot, which can be accessed here:

Harry Caray grave in Des Plaines, IL
Ray Chapman grave in Cleveland, OH
Former location of Giants Park in St. Louis, MO
Eddie Gaedel grave in Evergreen Park, IL
Luke Easter grave in Cleveland, OH
Abner Doubleday grave in Arlington, VA
Former location of Fitton Field in Worcester, MA

Complete voting results are shown below:

Rank	Type	Site	Address	City	State	Points
1	Ballpark	West Field	1848 West St.	Munhall	PA	76
2	Grave	Shoeless Joe Jackson	1901 Wade Hampton Boulevard (Plot located in Section V)	Greenville	SC	70
3	Grave	Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe	Oak Woods Cemetery	Chicago	IL	35
4	Grave	Harry Caray	All Saints Catholic Cemetery and Mausoleum	Des Plaines	IL	33
5	Grave	Ray Chapman	Lake View Cemetery 12316 Euclid Ave	Cleveland	OH	33
6	Ballpark	Giants Park	6000 N. Broadway, bounded by Broadway, Clarence, Ave, Carrie Ave, and Bulwer Ave	St. Louis	MO	32
7	Grave	Eddie Gaedel	Saint Mary Catholic Cemetery	Evergreen Park	IL	26
8	Grave	Luke Easter	Highland Park Cemetery 21400 Chagrin Blvd	Cleveland	OH	20
9	Grave	Abner Doubleday	321 Sherman Dr.	Arlington	VA	20
10	Ballpark	Fitton Field	1 College St.	Worcester	MA	16
	Grave	Louis Sockalexis	Old Town Cemetery 59 Down St.	Old Town	ME	10
	Grave	Chick Stahl	Lindenwood Cemetery 2324 Main Street	Fort Wayne	IN	7
	Grave	Louis Heilbroner	Lindenwood Cemetery 2324 Main Street	Fort Wayne	IN	6
	Marker	Pittsburg Public Library	308 N Walnut	Pittsburg	KS	5
	Grave	A. Bartlett Giamatti	Grove Street Cemetery	New Haven	CT	4
	Grave	Andy Leonard	New Calvary Cemetery 800 Harvard St.	Mattapan	MA	3
	Grave	George Gore	Masonic Care Community Cemetery	Utica	NY	3
	House	Smoky Joe Wood	90 Marvel Rd	Westville (New Haven)	CT	3
	Grave	Duffy Lewis	Holy Cross Cemetery Gilchreast Rd	Londonderry	NH	2
	Grave	Jim Delahanty	Calvary Cemetery 10000 Miles Ave	Cleveland	OH	2
	Grave	Everett Scott	Elm Grove Cemetery 3500 IN -124	Bluffton	IN	1
	Grave	Jim Konstanty	Maple Grove Cemetery	Worcester	NY	1
	Grave	Americus McKim	Elmwood Cemetery, 4900 East Truman Road	Kansas City	MO	0
	Grave	Frank Delahanty	Calvary Cemetery 10000 Miles Ave	Cleveland	OH	0
	Grave	Joe Delahanty	Calvary Cemetery 10000 Miles Ave	Cleveland	OH	0
	Grave	Jimmy McAleer	344 Oak Hill Ave.	Youngstown	OH	0
	Grave	Ed McKean	Calvary Cemetery 10000 Miles Ave	Cleveland	OH	0
	Grave	Bonesetter Reese	344 Oak Hill Ave.	Youngstown	OH	0
	Grave	Patsy Tebeau	Calvary Cemetery 10000 Miles Ave	Cleveland	OH	0
	Grave	Bill Wambsganss	Calvary Cemetery 10000 Miles Ave	Cleveland	OH	0
	Grave	Jack Barry	Sacred Heart Cemetery 250 Gypsy Ln	Meriden	CT	0
	Grave	Jumping Jack Jones	East Lawn Cemetery	East Haven	CT	0
	Grocery Store	Jim Lemon	3811 Hamilton St	Hyattsville	MD	0
	Ballpark	Don Gutteridge Sports Complex	702 Memorial Dr	Pittsburg	KS	0

*Ned Hanlon’s gravesite was inadvertently listed on the initial ballot despite it having already been included on the SABR Baseball Map due to his Hall of Fame status. Any votes for this site were not counted.

Since We’ve No Place to Go

There is a famous quote attributed to Rogers Hornsby, “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” As a Chicagoan, this sentiment seems a bit disingenuous considering Hornsby lived in Texas. Nonetheless, I really hate winter, too. Snow is a hassle and messy and annoying.

Looks like someone waited too long to stow the patio furniture

It was somewhat quaint this morning to wake up to a surprise snowstorm in the smartphone age, (especially in mid-November before someone had put the patio furniture away for the winter). Regardless, snow has at least one redeeming quality—it often creates magical, though fleeting, moments of serenity.

Billy Sunday – Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, IL

Cemeteries are typically tranquil places, but they take on a whole new level of quiet peacefulness under a fresh blanket of snow.

Pretzels Getzien – Concordia Cemetery, Forest Park, IL

This winter, don’t let a little snow prevent you from paying your respects at the graves of departed ball players.

Billy Pierce – Chapel Hill Gardens South Cemetery, Oak Lawn, IL

We would love to see hear your stories.

Dick Hyde – Grandview Memorial Gardens, Champaign, IL

Exploring Cleveland Baseball

Ichiro Suzuki famously slandered Cleveland when having to return there to make up a snowed-out game, “To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to. If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”

Frankly, I was ambivalent about the city having visited twice before my youngest put a school there at the top of his college list. In the intervening trips for campus tours and moving him in and out of dorms, there has been some opportunity to explore the city, dine at some amazing restaurants, and better formulate my thoughts on what Cleveland has to offer.

“To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to. If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”
Ichiro Suzuki

Moreover, there is an awful lot of baseball history in the Cleveland area to experience. Most of my landmark hunting to date has been in the early morning hours while everyone else sleeps in, often by way of a roundabout bagel run. Spanning several trips I have lingered at League Park, admired the statues of Elmer Flick and Rocky Colavito erected in town parks, paid my respects at the (purported) grave of Ed Delahanty, and attended games played by the Guardians and Lake Erie Crushers of the Frontier League.

Our most recent visit was for parent’s weekend, a delightful departure from past visits free of the “is this the right place for him?” quandary or the stress of packing and moving and making sure we brought enough ramen. We enjoyed an afternoon of hiking at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, had an amazing dinner downtown, and toured the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) after a late breakfast the following morning.

But of course I had some time to see a few baseball things. I headed first to the marker at Brookside Stadium and found the park quite easily with turn-by-turn directions from the SABR Baseball Map on my phone. It was a bit of a walk down a paved path the marker, but it was worth it.

Built in a natural amphitheater, a baseball diamond still occupies the former site of Brookside Stadium, which was razed in the 1980s. According to the marker, Brookside hosted the largest crowd ever recorded for an amateur baseball game, some 115,000 people in 1915. What a contrast to the park I found, serene and lovely on a crisp fall morning.

Part of exploring baseball history is finding new landmarks, so I was thrilled to look over and see another marker detailing the history of Brookside Stadium that we did not yet have on our list. I learned that the ballpark was built in 1909 in an effort to have the 1912 Olympics awarded to Cleveland.

I then headed over to Highland Park Cemetery to pay my respects at the grave of Luke Easter, a fascinating player who seemingly came out of nowhere and met a tragic end. [Do not miss the chapter on Easter in Outsider Baseball by Scott Simkus.]

And perhaps most surprisingly, I happened upon some baseball-related art at the CMA. The oversized Standing Mitt and Ball by Claes Oldenburg was a fitting companion piece to his Batcolumn erected in Chicago, just blocks from my office.

I also happened upon this centuries-old headgear displayed in the armor gallery, which most certainly qualifies as the earliest known baseball helmet, right?

There are several more trips to Cleveland in my future and I cannot wait to continue exploring the area. That I might get to see some baseball-related sites along the way is just a bonus.

Ichiro was wrong.

Sources:

Larry Stone, “Ichiro unlike any player we’ve seen or will see again,” Longview (Washington) Daily News, March 23, 2019: B7.

Welcome to Marengo or: How I Accidentally Visited My First Ballplayer’s Grave

Several years ago I was in Rockford, Illinois for work so (of course) I planned a slight detour on the way home to check out the Carl Lundgren historical marker in Marengo. After a bit of detective work (the SABR Baseball Map did not exist yet!) I was able to locate the marker, placed on the west side of North East Street.

Carl Lundgren was a terrific twirler for the Chicago Cubs from 1902-09. During the three consecutive seasons in which the Cubs appeared in the World Series (1906-08), Lundgren posted a regular season record of 41-22, with an ERA of 2.33 and 13 shutouts. Yet he was the odd man out and tossed not a single World Series pitch in any of those three years.

After a pair of ineffective outings for Chicago in 1909, Lundgren bounced around the minors for a few seasons before retiring from the game as a player. He went on to an amazing career as manager for Princeton, the University of Michigan and (alma mater) University of Illinois baseball teams, piloting his Wolverine and Illini squads to eight total Big Ten championships.

As I took a moment to read the inscription and snap a couple of photographs on an overcast morning, a man approached on a bicycle and let me know the sign had been purposely placed near the field where Lundgren played ball as a child. Wonderfully, a youth-sized diamond still existed at the site.

Lundgren died suddenly of a heart attack at his childhood home in 1934 and, as the gentleman on the bike advised, was buried right across the street from where his baseball career began. The man rode off after directing me to Lundgren’s grave, certainly unaware he had just sent me down a path that would lead to innumerable future ballplayer gravesite visits. Somewhat reluctantly at the time, however, I drove slowly through the cemetery and found Lundgren’s marker, lovingly adorned with Cubs mementos.

Unsure what to do, I silently paid my respects and snapped a quick photo. As I drove away, I was struck by the weighty realization that although Lundgren threw his final pitch for the Cubs in 1909, he was not forgotten. Although baseball is not the most important thing in the world, these individuals were the most important people in the world to the people who loved them.

That’s comforting.