Time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one New Trust. And every time we have someone in from Oklahoma Wesleyan University, it's always a special vacasion here with us. We've got doctor Fred Worth here with us. He's a professor of mathematics. And you've got a kind of a special presentation coming up, don't you.
Yes.
Next Tuesday, the twenty first, at six thirty pm in Lion Hall, that's the same building as the Chapel. I'll be talking about the adventures I've had going to visit graves of people associated with Major League Baseball.
Well, you know that's not something that happens every day.
I know about twelve other people who do that, and one of them is a friend of mine just right across the hall, mister Joe.
He looks at the great He takes great interest in that because he says, with every little monument, there's a story.
Absolutely, I've done it. I don't go to local cemeteries. That don't go to a cemetery to start walking around. Yeah, I find out where the baseball players are buried. And I've been to forty eight states and Washington, DC, and to this point it visited ten thou and fifty four graves.
Wow, that is incredible. Now over two hundred of these have been Hall of Famers.
Yes, yes, some of them ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean, which is not dissatisfying.
Babe, Ruth lou Gerrig larren.
Spahn, who's in heartsor in Oklahoma, Joe McGinnity who's in McAllister, Oklahoma. And there are a couple others in Oklahoma. And then there are also ones that even if you're a hardcore baseball fan, you've never heard of. One of my favorites of that is Bob Mavis and his entire major league career. He played for the Tigers back and I think it was the nineteen thirties and they were playing in Yankee Stadium.
The guy reached first base in the ninth inning, Bob Mavis went into pinch run, he advanced his second and then the game ended. So his entire major league career was jogging ninety feet.
But he got paid that he did more than most He got paid to play baseball.
He had a long minor league career, but that was his entire major league career. Another one that a lot of people will have heard of would be Moonlight Graham if you know the movie Field of Dreams.
Yeah, he's in Rochester, Minnesota. I've been to his grave.
My goodness. You know, the stories behind these people are just incredible. Sometimes pretty funny, other times kind of tragic. Yeah, but boy, interesting all the same, all the way around.
Yeah, there are a lot of interesting stories, and I've actually gotten to experience it on a different level with a few. There have been sometimes in trying to find out where the player is buried, I've actually had to contact family members. I've had two cases where I met family members by chance at the grave. Bill Kelso is buried near Kansas City, and about a month after he died, I was at the grave and a young woman came up to the grave and I felt a little bit offward.
I said, are you family? It was his daughter. He had been just buried for a month and his daughter was there visiting. So we chatted for a little while. And in all the different times I've talked to family, with one exception, one didn't go very pleasantly, but the vast majority of the time they've been pleased that somebody still remembers their father and grandfather, husband, whatever it may.
Be the family of Roger Morris lives in Gamesville, Florida, and I lived there for about ten years. And the thing is is that the boys looked just like dad to carry on just like dad. One's a high school baseball coach, one's a high school principal. And the thing is is that the family keeps the name alive. The
family keeps Roger alive too. And I was just wondering with some of these ballplayers, you know, the gravetone, the gravestone sometimes is the only thing that keeps the person, you know, top of mind in any kind of circumstance.
Yeah, well, for fans, one thing, it's been interesting and I never expected this when I first started doing this. A lot of times fans will lead memorabilia behind will and Roger Maris is an interesting one.
When I visited his he's in.
Fargo, North Dakota, about six feet from Ken Hunt, who also played Major League baseball, and a lot of the memorabilia there was golf balls because apparently he sponsored a golf tournament and so the people involved with that. But Babe Bruth's grave, you'll see bats, you'll see balls. A friend of mine went to Baby Bruth's grave and it was raining. So he wrote a note to Baby Bruth, Baby, you were the greatest, and he put it in a ziploc bag and he left.
It on the grave.
And a month later a friend of his was at the Babruth Museum in Baltimore, and that guy's note was at the Baby Ruth Museum.
Oh wow.
So they would occasionally go to the grave, any interesting memorabilia they would take.
Put it into the museum. My goodness, say, so what kind of spawned this interest?
I've been a baseball fan since I was little, or pretty much when I was in first grade, I got upset when I got home, and I was upset because they hadn't taught us how to do long division yet, which isn't till fourth grade. Yeah, but I had found out that if I could do long division, I could do baseball batting averages. And so my mother taught me how to do long division when I was in first grade, so I could do that. But I've loved baseball, I've
loved mathematics. In two thousand and four, I was teaching at the University in Arkansas and I found out that there was a Hall of Famer who was buried about an hour away in Waldo, Arkansas.
Which leads to the obvious joke, where's Waldo?
But it's about an hour south of Arkadelphia, which is where I lived, And so we drove down there naively thinking we'd just go to a cemetery and find a grave. And it was small enough cemetery that it worked. Been to other cemeteries. Spring Grove he in Cincinnati, is seven hundred acres. You're not gonna just walk around and find anybody, oh, especially since a lot of them about nine percent of the graves have been to have been unmarked graves.
Oh.
Most of those are in cities, bigger cities. There are a few more rural areas. But sometimes the players end up being destitute. There was one in New York in Queens, Cristabal Torriente.
He's Cuban.
He's actually in the Hall of Fame and he's in an unmarked grave because at the end of his life he was very ill, had no money and the cemetery provided a spot. But it's actually a non titled grave, is what they call it. You're not allowed to put a marker somebody wanted to put when you would not be allowed to but one thing about this talk next Tuesday night. Some people think, no baseball, I don't like baseball. It really doesn't matter.
It's a history.
You can enjoy the stories. I've got some stories, at least I think are hilarious. Some I would call providential, some a little bit weird. Ted Williams will be one of.
Oh yeah, yeah, that one, that one's the most unusual.
Yeah.
So they really don't have to like anything about baseball at all to enjoy the talk. There are just a lot of interesting stories because like you said, it is history.
Oh it is.
Yeah.
And this is going to be at six point thirty. It's going to be on the twenty first Lion Hall. It's right there with the big chapel. And what's the admission to get in.
The admission to get in is being able to get in the room. Okay, it's free, Yeah, completely free, open to the public. We'd be happy to have anybody who wants to come by you join us.
This is going to be a very interesting evening on a lot of different levels. It really is because knowing the game I played a little bit, the players have a different kind of oblique look on life, and that kind of carried through it with the stories after their death too. I mean, some of these guys, they were just different, some more unusual people, very unusual. Even the ones that were somewhat normal were just a little bit
odd to the to the folks outside the game. But you know, when you told me you learned long division. There were a handful of guys that I had played with in college and the miners, they had their batting average figured out by the time they round the first base. They mean, even if they had batted, you know, hundred and some odd times that that season, they had it. They had it, and they used that too. Oh you mentioned me, you really, you mentioned me. I'm hitting three eleven.
Yeah.
One thing is a little frustrating a little more and more players being cremated. Oh yeah, Sometimes after they've been cremated, they will be buried. Sometimes they're waiting till the wife has away as well. I talked to one fellow to find out where his father was, and he said, well, we've got his ashes, but we're gonna wait until my mom passes away. So I thought about paulin the next year to say, hey, how's mom doing.
But I decided that probably would be a good idea, and that's a little too ear.
But Willie Mays is one we don't know where he is and he is my all time favorite guy.
And he didn't pass away but recently. Yeah, and nobody knows where his grave is.
As far as we know, he could be sitting in an urn. I had one. It was actually in Oklahoma. The woman who I asked where the guy was buried, his widow said, oh, he's in the here. He's here in the den with me, which caught me off guard at first. The urn in which his ashes were was sitting.
In the den. So then it made sense.
You know, you hear about some of these grades you talk. Ernie Banks was one of them. I don't even know if he what happened to him after he passed away, but he died broke.
There were a couple of different family members, caretaker and an ex wife who were fighting over what to do with him. He is in I think it's Evergreen Cemetery in Chicago suburb in Chicago. He's had two different markers, but it's real nice grave.
I don't know.
He was not doing well financially, but somebody funded a really nice marker.
I'm certain several families who were familiar with the banks related to the Cup family.
Took care of There are a lot of Cup fans who pay for a gray for banks.
Yeah, this is gonna be an exciting presentation. This is going to be great again. Six point thirty. This will be on the twenty first at Oklahoma Wesleyan University Lion Hall, same building as the Chapel. And like you said, this is something that's not necessarily for baseball fans, but if you're a baseball fan, it's icing on the cake.
They'll recognize a lot of names.
You will, And it's kind of funny that, you know, it's our national pastime and people will mark eras sometime with basement Oh yeah, you know, that's that's when so and so played, That's when Mantle played, Oh that's when Kofax was pitched or something, and they kind of draws them back in there. Then all of a sudden, the rest of the history starts to pop in. I want to thank you very much, Fred for coming in here and telling us about this. And folks, make sure you
don't have to have a pencil or scorecard. You just got to show up and let's have some fun. With us Fred Worth.
Thank you, thank you, sir alrighty