Scroll Down to Read Today’s Essay
Subscribe to Baseball History Comes Alive for automatic updates. As a Free Bonus, you’ll get instant access to my Special Report: Gary’s Handy Dandy World Series Reference Guide!
Black Sox Scandal Photo Gallery
Click on any image below to see photos in full size and to start Photo Gallery:
Peter Wilt’s Journey to Find the “Eight Men Out”
Part Two
Today, we continue with Part Two of Peter Wilt’s quest to visit the gravesites of the “Eight Men Out.” In Part One, Peter described his visits to the graves of Joe Jackson, Hap Felsch, and Buck Weaver. He continues his story with visits to the graves of Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, and the ringleader, Chick Gandil. As I mentioned in Part One, Peter may be the only person alive to have accomplished this. I hope you’ll find Peter’s story as interesting as I did. -GL
(In the featured photo we see Chick Gandil, a tough guy once described as having “a mug only a mother could love.”)
#4: EDDIE CICOTTE, JULY, 2016
The search for Eddie Cicotte’s grave in Livonia, Michigan was included in a wild two-day adventure that included attending four soccer matches and three famous graves in three Midwest cities in three different states, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Cincinnati, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana.
Early the next morning, I began the epic day by visiting the Grand Rapids graves of Dick York, the
original (and better) Darrin Stephens actor from Bewitched, and Lou Gehrig’s predecessor Wally Pipp. York is in Plainfield Cemetery and Pipp is in Woodlawn Cemetery. A little-known fact about Pipp is that he scouted Gehrig at Columbia University and recommended his eventual replacement to New York Yankees Manager Miller Huggins. From there I was off to Livonia to visit the grave of Eddie Cicotte, the Black Sox great knuckler and ball doctor (shine, emery and spitter).
Livonia is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Grand Rapids. Find A Grave directed me to Section 79 of Parkview Memorial Cemetery for Eddie’s final resting place. It didn’t take long to find his grass level flat grave marker. I took pictures with the yellow Wiffle Ball bat and, in this case, a 2005 White Sox World Series hat.
I slept well that night knowing I was half-way through my search for the Eight Men Out.
#5: CLAUDE “LEFTY” WILLIAMS: November, 2016
A new work assignment put me in southern California often in late 2016 which allowed me opportunities to seek out two more Black Sox graves. One is the grave of the most minor of the excommunicated Black Sox players, Fred McMullin. And the other is the holy grail of Black Sox graves, the unmarked grave of Claude “Lefty” Williams. As far as I know, the exact location of Williams’ ashes has been unknown to the general public until my revelation below.
In November, I made my first visit to Melrose Abbey Memorial Park in Anaheim to find, or at least be near, the unmarked grave of Williams, the Black Sox great left hander. In April, 2012, I had exchanged emails with the cemetery sales manager Dee Zrinski, who politely refused my impassioned plea for her to disclose the location of Lefty’s grave, which was left unmarked at the family’s request when he died and was cremated in 1959.
I assumed I would have no more luck in person and just intended to drive around the cemetery, so I could say I was close to Lefty’s grave. When I arrived, I went to the cemetery office and spoke with the administrator on duty. I sheepishly told her about my quest and that I understood that she may not be able to disclose the location of Lefty’s resting place. When she apologized for not being able to disclose the location I didn’t press the issue. Instead, I thanked her for hearing me out and asked her about the location of Addams Family and King Creole actress Carolyn Jones’ crypt.
The woman directed me to the nearby North Patio Mausoleum and told me Carolyn’s crypt was in the bottom row (46 gg) with a picture of her leaning against the crypt. I thanked her, turned and began to walk away when she called me back. She paused and then in a stage whisper said “When you’re at Carolyn Jones’ crypt, you will be VERY, VERY close to Mr. Williams.” There was only one unmarked crypt near Carolyn Jones’ crypt, so I assume that this is Lefty Williams final resting place.
#6: FRED McMULLIN, December, 2016
The following month I was back in the Los Angeles area for work and made plans to find the grave of Fred McMullin, the least known Black Sox, a reserve infielder who was only included in the bribery, because he overheard the plot and insisted on being cut in on the deal.
Fred is in Inglewood Park Cemetery just a few miles east of Los Angeles International Airport. Like Fred’s career, his grave is unremarkable, a simple, grass level marker with his name, birth and death years and mention that he was a husband and a father. Like many Los Angeles area cemeteries, Inglewood Park is the burial place of many, many celebrities. Baseball players buried there include Earl Battey, Wally Berger, Lyman Bostock, Al Cowens, Doc Crandall, “Wahoo Sam” Crawford, Dock Ellis, Curt Flood, Junior Gilliam, Lee Maye and Irish Meusel.
I was on a tight schedule, so the only other celebrity grave I visited there was Minnesota Twins and California Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock who was murdered in Gary, Indiana just hours after playing a game against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park.
#7 SWEDE RISBERG, May, 2023:
As Joe Jackson said, “The Swede is a hard guy”. And he was a hard guy to visit. The youngest of the Black Sox, just 24 in 1919, Risberg is buried in Mount Shasta, California near the Oregon border. Mount Shasta isn’t near any place I would normally be traveling, so it was six years and six months after discovering Lefty Williams’ crypt before I checked off the next Black Sox player. Besides being a long time, it was a long detour off a business trip I scheduled to the Sacramento area where I am helping launch men’s and women’s semi-pro soccer teams.
The four-hour drive north was repaid with spectacular views of Mount Shasta. None of the views were as breathtaking, however, as Swede’s grave itself with the 14,179-foot potentially active volcano looming in the background.
On my return south towards the final check on my bucket list, I came across a truly historic baseball landmark – the site of a 1924 Babe Ruth barnstorming tour stop. The quaint Dunsmuir, California ballpark still stands along with a plaque commemorating the Babe’s stop with Yankee teammate Bob Meusel. I recreated the Babe’s home run from that site nearly a century earlier then headed back towards Napa and the final stop.
#8 CHICK GANDIL, May, 2023:
The Black Sox ringleader Chick Gandil was indeed my final stop. Chick’s grave is in St. Helena, California in the Napa Valley. Jacob Pomrenke, chairman and newsletter editor of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee, and his wife Tracy Greer joined me for this climactic final chapter. Jacob spotted Chick’s grave first and excitedly called Tracy and me over. Jacob is the world’s foremost expert on the Black Sox scandal and he was able to share information on Gandil’s anonymous later years as a plumber in rural California. He then presented me with a 1919 first-edition copy of the Charles Comiskey biography “Commy”.
I could not have wished for a better way to complete my journey.
Peter Wilt
Subscribe to our website, “Baseball History Comes Alive!” with over 1200 fully categorized baseball essays and photo galleries, now rapidly closing in on the one million hits mark with 997K hits and over 800 subscribers
