Negro Leagues great Ted Page to get overdue respect
From Jason Cato at the Pittsburgh Tribune on August 11, 2013, with mention of SABR member Jeremy Krock:
Nearly three decades of quiet obscurity will end soon for a former outfielder on arguably some of the greatest baseball teams ever to kick up dust on a diamond, though their skin color prevented them from proving it in the World Series.
A ceremony on Saturday at Allegheny Cemetery is planned to place a marker on the fresh grave of Theodore Roosevelt “Ted” Page, a member of the storied Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays who was bludgeoned to death in 1984 in his Hill District home.
Until recently, his cremated remains waited unclaimed in a community vault at the Lawrenceville cemetery where he once raised money to mark the grave of former teammate and baseball legend Josh Gibson.
“I’m glad to know his ashes were found,” Leslie Davis, 53, of the Hill District said of the great uncle who treated her late father like a son. “I was ashamed of that. Now this mystery is solved.”
Page becomes the latest recipient of generosity from the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, an initiative started in 2004 by Dr. Jeremy Krock of Peoria, Ill., with help from the Society for American Baseball Research. The project has provided granite markers for 27 players, most of them installed without ceremony.
Krock, who will attend with his family, hopes to have a minister give a eulogy, read Page’s biography, allow family members and the public to speak, and perhaps finish with a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
Read the full article here: http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/4388112-74/baseball-grave-negro
Originally published: August 12, 2013. Last Updated: August 12, 2013.