Whirty: A mass grave for a beisbol legend?
From SABR member Ryan Whirty at Home Plate Don’t Move on January 7, 2016:
The gentleman above is Cristobal Torriente, a Cuba native and African-American baseball — or beisbol — legend who was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 2006, the after which the Hall once again officially and unjustly its doors to segregation-era African-American players.
As I discussed in this previous blog post, in 2016 I’m going to try to sharpen Home Plate Don’t Move’s focus to advocating for two goals: one, to, with your help, get the BHOF to acknowledge its ignorance bigotry and once again allow Negro Leaguers into its hallowed halls; and two, try, again with help, to bring attention to the possibility that Cristobal Torriente, the “Cuban Babe Ruth,” is now the only Hall of Famer buried in an unmarked grave.
What’s worse, said burial location could be a mass grave in which Torriente — who, by the time of his death in 1938, was in all likelihood a penniless pauper (which was tragically the fate of many former Negro League stars — was unceremoniously laid to rest (if you could call it rest) with 16 other anonymous souls at the prestigious Calvary Cemetery in the New York City borough of Queens.
Read the full article here: https://homeplatedontmove.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/a-mass-grave-for-a-beisbol-legend/
Originally published: January 11, 2016. Last Updated: January 11, 2016.