Kansas City’s baseball DNA
From Brian Burnes at the Kansas City Star on July 7, 2012, with mention of SABR members Lloyd Johnson, Bill Carle, Harold Dellinger, Larry Lester, Peter Morris, Richard Bogovich and Thomas Busch:
Yesterday was Satchel Paige’s birthday. Not that anybody had to remind Lloyd Johnson.
The Kansas City baseball scholar has spent much of the last few weeks leading tours of the local historical baseball landscape. All conclude at Paige’s grave at Forest Hill Cemetery, 6901 Troost Ave.
“It’s a great place to end,” he says. “There’s shade, and people can get out and walk around.”
It helps that the grave marker is a crowd-pleaser. It lists Paige’s celebrated rules for “How to Stay Young,” the sixth and most familiar of which is “Don’t Look Back, Something Might Be Gaining on You.”
But there is something else to see: the baseballs placed there by the believers who have made pilgrimages to the site since Paige’s death in 1982.
“People have been leaving baseballs there ever since the grave was put there,” Johnson says one recent afternoon.
“But there were more baseballs there today than there were just a couple of weeks ago.”
Read the full article here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/06/3693013/kansas-citys-baseball-dna.html
Originally published: July 7, 2012. Last Updated: July 7, 2012.