Join us for Negro Leaguer Ted Page’s grave marker installation ceremony on August 17
The public is invited to a grave marker dedication that will be held on Saturday, August 17 at Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh in honor of Negro Leagues baseball player Theodore Page.
“Terrible Ted” played on 12 teams in the Negro Leagues during his 14-season career. A solid hitter and tough competitor, it has been said that Page “could beat you at the plate, on the bases or in the field.” As one of the fastest, most feared and intense base runners in the Negro Leagues, he played for two of the greatest teams of all time: the 1931 Homestead Grays and the 1932-34 Pittsburgh Crawfords.
After an injury forced his retirement in 1935, he eventually became an owner of Hillview Lanes and later a partner in Meadow Lanes in Pittsburgh. For years, he wrote a bowling column for the Pittsburgh Courier. He later worked as a public relations consultant for the Gulf Oil Corporation. Page was inducted to the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 1977. Retired, he was brutally beaten to death by a handyman in his home, at age 81, in 1984. He was interred at Allegheny Cemetery in an unmarked location — not far from Hall of Famer Josh Gibson’s final resting place in the same cemetery. In 1975, Page and Pedrin “Pete” Zorrilla located Gibson’s unmarked burial plot at Allegheny Cemetery and, with help from Pirates star Willie Stargell and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, purchased a red granite headstone that reads “Josh Gibson, 1911-1947, Legendary Baseball Player.”
Since 2004, the Negro Leagues Grave Marker Project has worked to identify the graves of Negro Leagues Baseball players, and raise funds to place markers on those discovered unmarked. As a section of the Negro Leagues Committee of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), this marker is the fourth placed in the Pittsburgh area.
Attendees should gather at 10:30 a.m. on August 17 at the Allegheny Cemetery office, 4734 Butler Street in Pittsburgh, and will be directed to Page’s grave by cemetery staff.
Any questions can be directed to project leader Jeremy L. Krock. For more information on the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, visit LarryLester42.com.
To make a tax-deductible donation to help the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, click here.
Originally published: August 7, 2013. Last Updated: August 7, 2013.