Nash: Not too late for SABR to honor pioneer Davis
From SABR member Peter J. Nash at Hauls of Shame on June 29, 2015:
“Too Late” Davis will finally get his dying wish and have a fitting headstone placed above his unmarked grave at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. The pending fulfillment of the wish is 115 years late, but that’s all the more fitting for the baseball pioneer nicknamed “Too Late” by his Knickerbocker Base Ball Club colleagues. Over the weekend at the SABR45 conference in Chicago it was announced that a newly formed committee devoted to placing grave markers over 19th century players buried in unmarked graves would make Davis their first official project.
Bob Gregory, the Chairman of the newly formed 19th Century Baseball Grave Marker Committee, distributed a flyer to SABR members revealing the plans to erect a monument over Davis’ gravesite and detailed how members could contribute to the project. Gregory said, “Donations may be made in any amount, large or small, but to help initiate the project, a $25 donation is suggested; approximately the equivalent of one dollar at the time of Davis’ passing in 1899.” The announcement was a long time coming as plans for the monument date all the way back to the 19th century when Davis was still living and as recent as 2004 when it was first discovered that Davis was, in fact, buried in an unmarked grave.
James Whyte Davis, whose career in baseball spanned from the 1850’s to the 1870s, wrote a letter in 1893 to New York Giants owner Edward B. Talcott which was published in the New York Sun and included the manner in which he saw fit to be honored by the baseball fraternity
Read the full article here: http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=39094
Originally published: July 1, 2015. Last Updated: July 1, 2015.