There have been over fifty of us
who died of disease during our careers:
from cancers of various kinds,
from heart attacks,
from complications from surgery,
from the destruction of various organs,
from overdoses of alcohol and other drugs,
from diseases that generally don’t kill today, but did then
Two of us had done enough
to be elected to the Hall of Fame posthumously,
and there’s no way of knowing how many of us
were kept out by our premature deaths,
to say nothing of the unlived lives after baseball
The mournful roll:
Harry Agganis
Bernardo Baro
Francisco Barrios
Steve Bechler
Cy Bentley
Henry Blackman
Willie Bobo
Walt Bond
Tiny Bonham
Hal Carlson
Joe Cassidy
King Cole
Hub Collins
Amos Cross
Jake Daubert
Pickles Dillhoefer
Cozy Dolan
Jim Doyle
Charlie Ferguson
Neal Finn
Jim Fogarty
Mark Hall
Clyde Hatter
Charlie Hodes
Bill Hogg
Eddie Holtz
Addie Joss
Joe Kennedy
Darryl Kile
Joe Leonard
John Leroy
Bob McClure
Austin McHenry
Alex McKinnon
Tom Miller
Darby O’Brien
Tom O’Brien
Doc Powers
Pythia Ross
Jimmy Sebring
Urban Shocker
Tyler Skaggs
Chino Smith
Harry Smith
Alan Storke
Sy Sutcliffe
Jack Taylor
Danny Thompson
Jim Umbricht
Dick Wantz
Frank Warfield
Elmer White
Charley Williams
Ross Youngs
THE POETRY OF THE GAME