The new Davis gravestone. The epitaph was written by James Whyte Davis more than a century ago. Davis had a reputation for showing up at games after the action had already started; hence his nickname, “Too Late to the Home Plate.” Davis denied habitual lateness.

The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) recently created its 19th Century Baseball Grave Marker Project. Its first task: marking James Whyte Davis’s grave.

So, this past Saturday, on a lovely spring morning, a crowd gathered at James Whyte Davis’s grave. John Thorn, major league baseball’s official historian, and Peter Nash, spoke about Davis. Two great granddaughters of Doc Adams, a member of the Knickerbockers who had played with Davis on the Knickerbockers and had written out the early rules of baseball–a document that sold just days earlier for $3.26 million, read a letter that Adams wrote…

Read more: Grave of Baseball Pioneer Finally Marked – Jeff Richman/Greenwood Historian Blog (17 May 2016)