A lot of guys come and go in baseball. That explains why even recent players like Marco Scutaro, Paul Bako, Al Reyes and Hiram Bocachica are barely remembered. Imagine the fates of early American Association players who toiled in obscurity on the diamond and left the games not millionaires but almost entirely unknown and often penniless.
Author and baseball historian Rex Hamann thinks of these guys. So, when he discovered that the graves of two of them -- Dan Lally and Dan Marion -- were unmarked to this day, he decided to do what he could to help rectify that.
"I discovered that the grave of Marion was unmarked when I first visited the Mount Olivet cemetery in 2004," says Hamann, who co-authored "The American Association Milwaukee Brewers," published by Arcadia Press, with Bob Koehler, and is publisher of the American Association Almanac Web site.
"At the time I placed a temporary marker there built of wood and glass. After revisiting the cemetery the following year, the marker was still in place but the glass was broken. The following year the marker was gone. In the interim time period I learned that Lally was also buried there, only about 50 yards from the site of Marion's grave, if that."
Donald "Dan" Marion was a Brewers pitcher in 1911 and 1912 and died in 1933, says Hamann, who lives in Andover, Minn. "Bud" Lally, meanwhile, played outfield for Minneapolis but died in 1936 while a resident of the Milwaukee County Insane Asylum on the County Grounds.
Lally, who was born in New Jersey in 1867, played from 1891 until 1897. After he retired, Lally worked briefly as an umpire in the South Atlantic League. In 1910, he was declared insane and committed.
The 6-1 Marion, who must have seemed a giant in his day, was born in Bowling Green, Ohio in 1889 and played for the Brooklyn Tip-Tops of the Federal League in 1914 and 1915.
Discovering the graves and seeing the state of Marion's grave marker -- and the absence of one for Lally -- touched Hamann.
"As a grave hunter dedicated to finding the graves of the players from the original American Association minor league, it is very gratifying to find a grave marker," says Hamann. "When I find what has been described as the location for a particular player's grave and can't find a marker, I wonder if I'm just missing it or if there is, indeed, no marker there. ... I wonder how a person who played professional baseball, a position with a modicum of stature, could have been buried without one.
"It saddens me that something as important as a gravestone should be missing. This somehow implies that the memory of this person no longer exists. My hope for establishing grave markers at the site of each unmarked grave is to permit the memory of each player to be perpetuated in a tangible way."
The discovery led Hamann to begin raising funds to place markers on these ballplayers' final resting places at Mount Olivet, at 35th Street and Morgan Avenue on Milwaukee's South Side.
"Last December I started a fund raising effort through my baseball history journal, the American Association Almanac. Many people came forward within the next few weeks to show their interest in helping preserve the memory of these two early 20th century ballplayers, both of whom wound up in Milwaukee because of their baseball career."
Hamann has raised enough money to purchase the markers and hosts an hour-long ceremony at Mount Olivet Cemetery at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, July 30.
"The markers will be installed in July," says Hamann. "All the details have now been finalized, design for each grave marker selected, paid for, etc. It is a rather unique event for those with such an interest," he says.
The project has been a satisfying one, say Hamann.
"My hope is that other people will visit the grave and contemplate the history of the player, perhaps prompting them to pursue history on some level, as a topic for self improvement or just general enlightenment. It gratifies me to know that two baseball players who may have been forgotten will now be remembered. They weren't Babe Ruths, or Lou Gehrigs or Ty Cobbs, but they had risen to a very elite level of professional achievement, and in my mind, that deserves recognition beyond what we find in books."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
