CEMETERY WINS ABOVE REPLACEMENT, Vol. 10

NEW JERSEY, GEORGIA, & NORTH CAROLINA

We’re gonna whizz through three states today. Important, historical places where venerable baseball players are laid to rest. But this project— cataloging every cemetery in the US by Baseball Reference WAR– has maybe stretched beyond the attention span of even the most ardent of baseball purists (and people I know personally who read this to be nice).

So we shall endeavor. Endeavor to whizz.

We’ll start in New Jersey. Yogi Berra (59.5 WAR, Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery, East Hanover), Leon “Goose” Goslin (66.2 WAR, Baptist Cemetery, Salem), George “Mule” Suttles (36.6 WAR, Glendale Cemetery, Bloomberg), John Henry “Pop” Lloyd (13.8 WAR, Atlantic City Cemetery, Pleasantville), and Ulysses Frank Grant (East Ridgelawn Cemetery, Clifton, NJ) are the five Hall of Famers permanently residing in the Garden State. Each is worthy of entire books recounting their careers.

New Jersey Hall of Famers

Celebrating the already celebrated is not necessarily what we do here at TTSS, so we’re going to look at the NJ cemetery WAR leader, the Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Montclair (71.65 WARpC), for its inhabitants’ unusual black ink.

Pitcher “Big Ed” Reulbach (35.7 WAR) dominated for the turn of the century Chicago Cubs (career 2.28 ERA). He led the NL in winning percentage from 1906-1908, going 79-25. George “Mule” Haas (11.9 WAR) led the league in sacrifice hits six times in ten years (1928-1938) with the Philadelphia A’s and Chisox.

New Jersey side note #1. Four players in MLB history have had the nickname “Mule”. Two are the aforementioned New Jerseyites. John “Mule” Watson (.4 WAR, Arlington Cemetery, Homer, LA) and Earnest “Mule” Shirley (-.6 WAR, Willow Dale Cemetery, Goldsboro, NC) are the non-George Mules.

Back to Montclair. Yankees outfielder Bert Daniels (8.6 WAR) led the league in hit-by-pitch in three of his four years in MLB (1910-1914). Ouch. Infielder Danny O’Connell somehow racked up 17.1 WAR from 1950 to 1962 with the least memorable career I’ve ever found. His SABR bio is extensive, but the only interesting tidbit is that he pulled off a hidden ball trick in an old-timers game in 1968 on Don Drysdale! Yankee fans know that when you come to a fork in the road, take it… to the Yogi Berra Museum, also in Montclair.

The men of Immaculate Conception Cemetery and NJ WAR leader Jim McCormick

Jersey side note #2: The WAR leader among NJ dead players is actually Jim McCormick (76.2 WAR, Laurel Grove Memorial Park, Totowa). From 1878 to 1887, McCormick pitched an average of 298 innings per year, topping out with 657 innings in 1880. Compiling pitcher WAR clearly different back then and HoF voters have discounted McCormick’s accomplishments correspondingly, but then again he pitched BEFORE ELECTRICITY.

For Minor League baseball while you’re in North Jersey, you have three options. The Somerset Patriots are 45 minutes south of Montclair. An hour north is the Hudson Valley Renegades. A third option is to skirt around NYC to Coney Island to see the Brooklyn Cyclones.

To Georgia. The Peach State has five Hall of Famers, three of them interred across the northern part of the state. Start 45 minutes north of Athens where Ty Cobb (151.5 WAR, Rosehill Cemetery, Royston) rests in a mausoleum. Three minutes away is the Ty Cobb Museum. We’ll let you muse on the complicated, often cited as racist, legacy of “The Georgia Peach” in your own time.

One hour west is a second cousin of Ty Cobb, Johnny Mize (70.6 WAR, Yonah View Memorial Gardens, Demorest). Mize was also related (by marriage) to Babe Ruth! Among Mize’s many stunning stats, this one caught my eye: a career .562 slugging (fourteenth all-time), ahead of Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Hank Aaron, despite missing three full seasons serving in WWII. His grave marker lists his career numbers and his nickname, “The Big Cat” and there is a historical marker at his Demorest home. For more Mize, check out Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize.

Another hour’s drive west is Luke Appling (77.6 WAR, Sawnee View Memorial Gardens, Cumming). From 1930 to 1950, Appling was a stalwart White Sox shortstop. He won batting titles at age 29 & 36, then retired with the American League records for games played, assists, and putouts for a shortstop. His excellent play and fantastic nickname “Old Aches and Pains” were not rewarded. The Pale Hose never finished higher than third in his twenty-year Hall of Fame career.

Braves legends Phil Niekro (95.9 WAR, Memorial Park South Cemetery, Flowery Branch) and Henry Aaron (143.1 WAR, Southview Cemetery, Atlanta) joined this list in late 2020 and early 2021. I’ll throw out a statistic oddity for each, as their careers are well-covered. Through his age 35 season, Aaron was worth 119.7 WAR, but impressively accrued 1.7 defensive WAR, and had 224 stolen bases (eighth best over that time). Niekro’s pitching prime was epic. From 1967 to 1984, he had a 3.18 ERA (a 120 ERA+) and averaged 261 innings per season.

Georgia Hall of Famers

Road trip recommendation: if you start with Hank Aaron in South Atlanta, you could hit Appling, Niekro, Mize, and Cobb in about three hours of driving. Maybe even fit in a Gwinnett Stripers game.

Without a singular cemetery or any realistic road trip to focus on in North Carolina, here are stopover suggestions for Cackalacky’s five Hall of Famers.

If you’re in Wilmington, maybe Instagramming locations for Blue Velvet (1986) or Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003), add a baseball superstar to your itinerary, Pirates legend Willie “Pops” Stargell (57.5 WAR, Oleander Memorial Gardens). In 1979, the 39-year-old won the National League MVP and a World Series MVP (after hitting the go-ahead home run in game seven to overcome a three-games-to-one deficit). This writer listened to that World Series on a transistor radio under the covers well-past his bedtime, just like any 10-year old worth their salt would. And I can still name the starting nine.

If you’re on a Wright Brothers aviation history tour in Kitty Hawk, you’re damn close to James “Catfish” Hunter (40.9 WAR, Cedarwood Cemetery, Hertford) and his baseball shaped headstone. A’s owner Charlie Finley made up the nickname when signing Hunter to his first contract, then created baseball’s first free agent by not paying a portion of Catfish’s contract years later. Catfish pitched for fifteen seasons, in eight All-Star games, in twenty-two World Series games, and, in 1975, pitched thirty(!) complete games. Most importantly for us at TTSS, Catfish had two songs written about him!

If your MiLB vacation takes you to Durham to see the famous Bulls, just 40 minutes north is hustling Hall of Fame outfielder Enos Slaughter’s gravestone (57 WAR, Allensville United Methodist Church Cemetery, Roxboro). A Cardinals-flanked bat is on one side and his swing is engraved on the other. His twenty-year career is marked by accusations of racism during Jackie Robinson’s rookie season (which he refutes) and the series-winning “Mad Dash” in game seven of the 1947 World Series. The latter (and maybe a bit of the former) is memorialized by a statue outside Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

Greensboro, NC, has the High-A Pirates affiliate Grasshoppers and Hall of Fame catcher Rick Ferrell (31.1 WAR, New Garden Cemetery). He played eighteen seasons (1929-1945, 1947) and at age 38 and 39, he caught the Washington Senator’s rotation of four(!) knuckleballers. He retired in 1947 with the American League record of 1,806 games caught. Respect.

His big league brother Wes Ferrell, however, got no respect. Wes leads North Carolina in dead player value (60.1 WAR, twice his HoF Brother’s total) after being a work-horse pitcher from 1927 to 1941. For three years, 1935-1937, he led baseball in complete games, innings pitched, and batters faced. And Wes was an excellent batter (even for a pitcher). He still holds the record for most home runs hit while pitching (37, plus one more as a pinch hitter). What about Shohei Ohtani? What about Babe Ruth you ask? Ohtani has only hit nine homers while pitching; Ruth only 14.

Wes’ bad luck (and, potentially, his bad temper) put him on bad teams and he is now mostly forgotten, so be sure to visit him in the same cemetery as his Hall of Fame brother. In fact, you can visit most of the Ferrell family, as four out of seven of the Ferrell brothers went on to play professional baseball.

North Carolina Hall of Famers and one that might-should be.

NC side note #1: Rick and Wes are part of an exclusive MLB club. Only eleven sets of brothers have played on the same team, twice. The Ferrells were a pitcher-catcher battery for the Red Sox (1934-37) and Senators (1937-38). Two sets of brothers did it thrice: Roberto and Sandy Alomar [Padres (1988-89), Indians (1999-2000), and White Sox (2003-04)]; Lloyd and Paul Waner [Pirates (1927-40), Braves (1941), and Dodgers (1944)].

Our final North Carolina stop. If you’re visiting the Carolina Mudcats in Zebulon, the Down East Wood Ducks in Kinston, or even the Coast Plain League Wilson Tobs (college wood bat), then you’d better plan a visit to Rocky Mount to see Hall of Famer Buck Leonard (30 WAR, Garden of Gethsemane Cemetery). Leonard was born in Rocky Mount and lived there after his playing days, leaving quite the legacy. He didn’t start his professional career until he was 25. His father’s death and the lack of a high school that took black students forced Leonard to start working at 14 as a cotton mill hand, then a shoe shine boy, and finally as a railroad shop worker. When those jobs dried-up in the Great Depression, baseball became his best option, one he had not really considered. Leonard became perhaps the best first baseman in Negro League history, appearing in 12 All-Star games. He and his Homestead Grays teammate Josh Gibson were known as “The Thunder Twins.”

"You could put a fastball in a shotgun and you couldn't shoot it by Buck."

-Dave Barnhill, All-Star Negro League pitcher

From 1937 through 1945, the Grays, with Leonard as their captain, won nine consecutive Negro National League Championships. They won again in 40-year-old Leonard’s final season, 1948. Jackie Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier in 1947, but Leonard never got his chance in the white Major Leagues.

"I was talking about Robinson, Campy and Newk making it with Brooklyn. I'll never forget Buck's eyes filling with tears when he said, 'But it's too late for me'."

-Elwood Parsons, Los Angeles Dodgers scout

In Rocky Mount, his legacy is everywhere nonetheless. The Buck Leonard Association preserves history and supports children in education and sports. Leonard’s home from 1934 until his death in 1997 has been preserved as a Historic Landmark. A portion of US 64 was renamed Buck Leonard Boulevard in 2004. His birthplace has a historical marker, which is just steps from Buck Leonard Park. Leonard is a member of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and the Twin County Hall of Fame, along with jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, born in Rocky Mount, and Jack Kerouac, who had family there and spent long stretches writing there in the 1950s. In 2022, the North Carolina State College of Design created an Augmented Reality exhibit around the life of Buck Leonard.

Buck Leonard, the baseball king of Rocky Mount

Upon retiring from baseball, Leonard promptly returned to Rocky Mount and to school, earning his much-delayed high school diploma. By all accounts, Leonard was an avid church-goer, a community leader, and a great ballplayer, deserving of these accolades and more.

NC side note #2. Rocky Mount has its own notable baseball history. Football legend Jim Thorpe was stripped of his two gold medals in the 1912 Olympic games for violating amateurism rules. Thorpe had previously played two seasons of semi-pro baseball for the Rocky Mount Railroaders. Thorpe went on to have a remarkable life. He is in the College Football & Pro Football Halls of Fame, has a town named after him in Pennsylvania, has over 70 credits on IMDB plus his own biopic (starring Burt Lancaster!), and, of course, has a historical marker in Rocky Mount.

Well, so much for whizzing. That was another extravagant pilgrimage through the walking (and hitting and pitching) dead. When one is memorializing legends, one dives deep. One meanders. One indulges the odyssey. One lets the journey itself win out. Pops, Mule, Catfish, the Big Cat, Buck and the rest deserve no less. Thanks for coming along.