Visiting T206 Players to say "Hello"

[Tim Kindler]

I was on a website talking about Major Leaguer Grave Sites a few months ago, and then saw a video on Hall Of Famer Addie Joss which mentioned his gravesite. This gave me an idea about visiting a few grave sites just to "visit" players who had T206 cards. I thought about how cool it would have been to talk to them about their playing games like in the book "The Glory of Their Times". Well. since they have all passed, I thought the best next thing would be to visit their gravesites, say hello and thank them for their playing history.

I live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and my oldest daughter is a Nurse in Toledo, Ohio where Joss is buried. So last month when I visited her to take her out to dinner, I brought along his T206 cards that I have and told her that we were going on a baseball adventure. She loves baseball as well, so she was game. We drove downtown Toledo and found Joss's grave from the video and took a few pictures of his grave with my cards next to it.

I decided to kinda make these gravesite adventures part of my collecting hobby. I started doing research, especially on the players from the T206 set in Indiana and the states closest to me such as Ohio and Michigan. I found several players from the T206 set buried in each of these states, including 2 more that I can visit this spring when I visit my daughter in Toledo- Topsy Hartsel is buried in the same cemetery as Joss, and fellow Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan in another Toledo cemetery.

I also just returned from a short trip with my son, Tyrus (yes, named after Cobb) who was on Spring Break from Purdue Engineering, to Florida to New Smyrna Beach to get some ocean time and play disc golf. So before we left, I looked up that area and found 2 gravesites for us to visit and further this adventure. Both of them were in Daytona Beach about a 25 min, drive from the ocean where we were staying. The first one was Hall of Famer Napoleon Lajoie. His headstone is a really nice one, and I believe his children are on it as well.
The other one, at the same cemetery, was of Fred Merkle, but his gravestone is a tragic one. For those unfamiliar with the story, Merkle was blamed for a series of events causing the 1908 New York Giants to lose the pennant to the Cubs. The event was named the "Merkle Boner" or Bone Headed play of Merkle for a bad baserunning decision he made in a crucial game against the Cubs. Even though he was called "Out" under weird circumstances with the Cubs' second baseman Johnny Evers, and the Giants could have overcome this mistake with other wins, he was blamed for the Giants ultimately losing the pennant. I recommend reading up on the whole story of the Merkle Boner for yourself if you don't know it. Anyways, Merkle played 16 seasons in the majors, had a nice career with over 1,500 hits, and is even part of the International Minor League Hall of Fame, he was never able to get past his rookie mistake early on in his career with the Giants. When he died in 1957 at the age of 67, he was buried without a headstone in an unmarked grave with his parents' graves behind him. He didn't want a gravestone because he was afraid vandals would have a chance to put "Bonehead" on his tombstone. You would think that after over 65 years, somebody in the family or some organization would have put up a proper headstone by now, but sadly, it is still unmarked. If one was put up today, hopefully the anger towards him would be long gone, but I guess you never know. So my son and I took a picture of where he is buried in his unmarked place with his 2 T206 cards as a tribute to him.

Enjoy the pics. (Full disclosure: the T206 cards at Joss's site are the real deal, the 3 at Lajoie's and 2 at Merkle's are just copies of my cards.... Didn't want them to come up missing from my vacation motel or anything!)

Please feel free to add to this thread if you have pics of T206 or other deceased players' gravesites.
Tim Kindler