Speaker 1: Time now for our community connection right here on K one,
Speaker 1: the one New Trust. And every time we have someone
Speaker 1: in from Oklahoma Wesleyan University, it's always a special vacasion
Speaker 1: here with us. We've got doctor Fred Worth here with us.
Speaker 1: He's a professor of mathematics. And you've got a kind
Speaker 1: of a special presentation coming up, don't you.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Next Tuesday, the twenty first, at six thirty pm in
Speaker 3: Lion Hall, that's the same building as the Chapel. I'll
Speaker 3: be talking about the adventures I've had going to visit
Speaker 3: graves of people associated with Major League Baseball.
Speaker 1: Well, you know that's not something that happens every day.
Speaker 3: I know about twelve other people who do that, and
Speaker 3: one of them is a friend of mine just right
Speaker 3: across the hall, mister Joe.
Speaker 1: He looks at the great He takes great interest in
Speaker 1: that because he says, with every little monument, there's a story.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I've done it. I don't go to local cemeteries.
Speaker 3: That don't go to a cemetery to start walking around. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I find out where the baseball players are buried. And
Speaker 3: I've been to forty eight states and Washington, DC, and
Speaker 3: to this point it visited ten thou and fifty four graves.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is incredible. Now over two hundred of these
Speaker 1: have been Hall of Famers.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, some of them ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 3: which is not dissatisfying.
Speaker 2: Babe, Ruth lou Gerrig larren.
Speaker 3: Spahn, who's in heartsor in Oklahoma, Joe McGinnity who's in McAllister, Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: And there are a couple others in Oklahoma. And then
Speaker 3: there are also ones that even if you're a hardcore
Speaker 3: baseball fan, you've never heard of. One of my favorites
Speaker 3: of that is Bob Mavis and his entire major league career.
Speaker 3: He played for the Tigers back and I think it
Speaker 3: was the nineteen thirties and they were playing in Yankee Stadium.
Speaker 3: The guy reached first base in the ninth inning, Bob
Speaker 3: Mavis went into pinch run, he advanced his second and
Speaker 3: then the game ended. So his entire major league career
Speaker 3: was jogging ninety feet.
Speaker 1: But he got paid that he did more than most
Speaker 1: He got paid to play baseball.
Speaker 3: He had a long minor league career, but that was
Speaker 3: his entire major league career. Another one that a lot
Speaker 3: of people will have heard of would be Moonlight Graham
Speaker 3: if you know the movie Field of Dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's in Rochester, Minnesota. I've been to his grave.
Speaker 1: My goodness. You know, the stories behind these people are
Speaker 1: just incredible. Sometimes pretty funny, other times kind of tragic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but boy, interesting all the same, all the way around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of interesting stories, and I've
Speaker 3: actually gotten to experience it on a different level with
Speaker 3: a few. There have been sometimes in trying to find
Speaker 3: out where the player is buried, I've actually had to
Speaker 3: contact family members. I've had two cases where I met
Speaker 3: family members by chance at the grave. Bill Kelso is
Speaker 3: buried near Kansas City, and about a month after he died,
Speaker 3: I was at the grave and a young woman came
Speaker 3: up to the grave and I felt a little bit offward.
Speaker 3: I said, are you family? It was his daughter. He
Speaker 3: had been just buried for a month and his daughter
Speaker 3: was there visiting. So we chatted for a little while.
Speaker 3: And in all the different times I've talked to family,
Speaker 3: with one exception, one didn't go very pleasantly, but the
Speaker 3: vast majority of the time they've been pleased that somebody
Speaker 3: still remembers their father and grandfather, husband, whatever it may.
Speaker 1: Be the family of Roger Morris lives in Gamesville, Florida,
Speaker 1: and I lived there for about ten years. And the
Speaker 1: thing is is that the boys looked just like dad
Speaker 1: to carry on just like dad. One's a high school
Speaker 1: baseball coach, one's a high school principal. And the thing
Speaker 1: is is that the family keeps the name alive. The
Speaker 1: family keeps Roger alive too. And I was just wondering
Speaker 1: with some of these ballplayers, you know, the gravetone, the
Speaker 1: gravestone sometimes is the only thing that keeps the person,
Speaker 1: you know, top of mind in any kind of circumstance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, for fans, one thing, it's been interesting and
Speaker 3: I never expected this when I first started doing this.
Speaker 3: A lot of times fans will lead memorabilia behind will
Speaker 3: and Roger Maris is an interesting one.
Speaker 2: When I visited his he's in.
Speaker 3: Fargo, North Dakota, about six feet from Ken Hunt, who
Speaker 3: also played Major League baseball, and a lot of the
Speaker 3: memorabilia there was golf balls because apparently he sponsored a
Speaker 3: golf tournament and so the people involved with that. But
Speaker 3: Babe Bruth's grave, you'll see bats, you'll see balls. A
Speaker 3: friend of mine went to Baby Bruth's grave and it
Speaker 3: was raining. So he wrote a note to Baby Bruth, Baby,
Speaker 3: you were the greatest, and he put it in a
Speaker 3: ziploc bag and he left.
Speaker 2: It on the grave.
Speaker 3: And a month later a friend of his was at
Speaker 3: the Babruth Museum in Baltimore, and that guy's note was
Speaker 3: at the Baby Ruth Museum.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So they would occasionally go to the grave, any interesting
Speaker 3: memorabilia they would take.
Speaker 1: Put it into the museum. My goodness, say, so what
Speaker 1: kind of spawned this interest?
Speaker 3: I've been a baseball fan since I was little, or
Speaker 3: pretty much when I was in first grade, I got
Speaker 3: upset when I got home, and I was upset because
Speaker 3: they hadn't taught us how to do long division yet,
Speaker 3: which isn't till fourth grade. Yeah, but I had found
Speaker 3: out that if I could do long division, I could
Speaker 3: do baseball batting averages. And so my mother taught me
Speaker 3: how to do long division when I was in first grade,
Speaker 3: so I could do that. But I've loved baseball, I've
Speaker 3: loved mathematics. In two thousand and four, I was teaching
Speaker 3: at the University in Arkansas and I found out that
Speaker 3: there was a Hall of Famer who was buried about
Speaker 3: an hour away in Waldo, Arkansas.
Speaker 2: Which leads to the obvious joke, where's Waldo?
Speaker 3: But it's about an hour south of Arkadelphia, which is
Speaker 3: where I lived, And so we drove down there naively
Speaker 3: thinking we'd just go to a cemetery and find a grave.
Speaker 3: And it was small enough cemetery that it worked. Been
Speaker 3: to other cemeteries. Spring Grove he in Cincinnati, is seven
Speaker 3: hundred acres. You're not gonna just walk around and find anybody, oh,
Speaker 3: especially since a lot of them about nine percent of
Speaker 3: the graves have been to have been unmarked graves.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Most of those are in cities, bigger cities. There are
Speaker 3: a few more rural areas. But sometimes the players end
Speaker 3: up being destitute. There was one in New York in Queens,
Speaker 3: Cristabal Torriente.
Speaker 2: He's Cuban.
Speaker 3: He's actually in the Hall of Fame and he's in
Speaker 3: an unmarked grave because at the end of his life
Speaker 3: he was very ill, had no money and the cemetery
Speaker 3: provided a spot. But it's actually a non titled grave,
Speaker 3: is what they call it. You're not allowed to put
Speaker 3: a marker somebody wanted to put when you would not
Speaker 3: be allowed to but one thing about this talk next
Speaker 3: Tuesday night. Some people think, no baseball, I don't like baseball.
Speaker 3: It really doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: It's a history.
Speaker 3: You can enjoy the stories. I've got some stories, at
Speaker 3: least I think are hilarious. Some I would call providential,
Speaker 3: some a little bit weird. Ted Williams will be one of.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that one, that one's the most unusual.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they really don't have to like anything about baseball
Speaker 3: at all to enjoy the talk. There are just a
Speaker 3: lot of interesting stories because like you said, it is history.
Speaker 1: Oh it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is going to be at six point thirty.
Speaker 1: It's going to be on the twenty first Lion Hall.
Speaker 1: It's right there with the big chapel. And what's the
Speaker 1: admission to get in.
Speaker 3: The admission to get in is being able to get
Speaker 3: in the room. Okay, it's free, Yeah, completely free, open
Speaker 3: to the public. We'd be happy to have anybody who
Speaker 3: wants to come by you join us.
Speaker 1: This is going to be a very interesting evening on
Speaker 1: a lot of different levels. It really is because knowing
Speaker 1: the game I played a little bit, the players have
Speaker 1: a different kind of oblique look on life, and that
Speaker 1: kind of carried through it with the stories after their
Speaker 1: death too. I mean, some of these guys, they were
Speaker 1: just different, some more unusual people, very unusual. Even the
Speaker 1: ones that were somewhat normal were just a little bit
Speaker 1: odd to the to the folks outside the game. But
Speaker 1: you know, when you told me you learned long division.
Speaker 1: There were a handful of guys that I had played
Speaker 1: with in college and the miners, they had their batting
Speaker 1: average figured out by the time they round the first base.
Speaker 1: They mean, even if they had batted, you know, hundred
Speaker 1: and some odd times that that season, they had it.
Speaker 1: They had it, and they used that too. Oh you
Speaker 1: mentioned me, you really, you mentioned me. I'm hitting three eleven.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One thing is a little frustrating a little more and
Speaker 3: more players being cremated. Oh yeah, Sometimes after they've been cremated,
Speaker 3: they will be buried. Sometimes they're waiting till the wife
Speaker 3: has away as well. I talked to one fellow to
Speaker 3: find out where his father was, and he said, well,
Speaker 3: we've got his ashes, but we're gonna wait until my
Speaker 3: mom passes away. So I thought about paulin the next
Speaker 3: year to say, hey, how's mom doing.
Speaker 1: But I decided that probably would be a good idea,
Speaker 1: and that's a little too ear.
Speaker 3: But Willie Mays is one we don't know where he
Speaker 3: is and he is my all time favorite guy.
Speaker 1: And he didn't pass away but recently. Yeah, and nobody
Speaker 1: knows where his grave is.
Speaker 3: As far as we know, he could be sitting in
Speaker 3: an urn. I had one. It was actually in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: The woman who I asked where the guy was buried,
Speaker 3: his widow said, oh, he's in the here. He's here
Speaker 3: in the den with me, which caught me off guard
Speaker 3: at first. The urn in which his ashes were was sitting.
Speaker 2: In the den. So then it made sense.
Speaker 1: You know, you hear about some of these grades you talk.
Speaker 1: Ernie Banks was one of them. I don't even know
Speaker 1: if he what happened to him after he passed away,
Speaker 1: but he died broke.
Speaker 3: There were a couple of different family members, caretaker and
Speaker 3: an ex wife who were fighting over what to do
Speaker 3: with him. He is in I think it's Evergreen Cemetery
Speaker 3: in Chicago suburb in Chicago. He's had two different markers,
Speaker 3: but it's real nice grave.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: He was not doing well financially, but somebody funded a
Speaker 3: really nice marker.
Speaker 1: I'm certain several families who were familiar with the banks
Speaker 1: related to the Cup family.
Speaker 2: Took care of There are a lot of Cup fans
Speaker 2: who pay for a gray for banks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is gonna be an exciting presentation. This is
Speaker 1: going to be great again. Six point thirty. This will
Speaker 1: be on the twenty first at Oklahoma Wesleyan University Lion Hall,
Speaker 1: same building as the Chapel. And like you said, this
Speaker 1: is something that's not necessarily for baseball fans, but if
Speaker 1: you're a baseball fan, it's icing on the cake.
Speaker 2: They'll recognize a lot of names.
Speaker 1: You will, And it's kind of funny that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's our national pastime and people will mark eras sometime
Speaker 1: with basement Oh yeah, you know, that's that's when so
Speaker 1: and so played, That's when Mantle played, Oh that's when
Speaker 1: Kofax was pitched or something, and they kind of draws
Speaker 1: them back in there. Then all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: rest of the history starts to pop in. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you very much, Fred for coming in here
Speaker 1: and telling us about this. And folks, make sure you
Speaker 1: don't have to have a pencil or scorecard. You just
Speaker 1: got to show up and let's have some fun. With
Speaker 1: us Fred Worth.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, sir alrighty