Why is baseball America’s best sport? That’s not a riddle or rhetorical question, more us waxing philosophical mere days before the season kicks off. If we had to answer it though, we’d probably go with the sport’s history and it’s deep, deep old-timey roots. It goes back so far that soldiers were playing it in the Civil War when they weren’t killing each other.
And the records are so good that we know about guys with incredible names like Cannonball Titcomb, Old Hoss Radbourn and Ducky “Dead Legs” Cronin. Hell, there was a dude named Oil Can Boyd pitching in 1986. So to celebrate Opening Day (SUNDAY!) and salute America’s weird and glorious baseball history, Green-Wood Cemetery is giving a tour on Saturday of its famous dead baseball players and figures interred there.
Like who? Well, no one that modern, since no matter how many times the phrase has been repeated in my house, Roger Clemens has not been hit by a garbage truck. But one of baseball’s first stars ever and hurler of the first shutout in recorded history James Creighton, for one. Who, it should be noted, played in Brooklyn and allegedly died because he hit a home run too hard. Also Harry Chadwick, the man who invented baseball’s first scoring system, and also the guy responsible for ruining your evening if you go on a date at a baseball game (people do that, right?) with someone who likes to keep score. Plus Brooklyn Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets, who built Ebbets Field and didn’t move the Dodgers to LA, like some other owners, who can rot.
So if you want to visit these and other baseball luminaries graves, head to Green-Wood Cemetery at 1pm on Saturday, which is supposed to be a beautiful day, whistling a famous baseball tune.