One of the things that I like best about playing around with the data/information on Baseball-Reference.com is that it sometimes reminds me of things that I already knew...and then either forgot about or hadn't thought of in a while.

For example, today, I was scanning the Players by Place of Birth and Death page and I noticed that one player had France listed as his location of burial.  Seeing this, it rang a bell in my brain - so, I clicked on the link for Eddie Grant's Baseball-Reference.com page and then checked out his BR Bullpen link.   And, that's where I found this on Grant:

"Harvard" Eddie Grant died during deadly fighting in World War I, and is the most prominent major league baseball player to ever die in combat. (Several more prominent Japanese stars died in World War II, most notably Eiji Sawamura.) General John Pershing had ordered the troops to move forward against the Germans in their trenches. On the day in question, Grant's commanding officer had died, and Grant was put in charge of his battalion while searching for a lost battalion. Grant was hit by two shells and died in the Argonne Forest.

I first learned the story of Eddie Grant about seven years ago. And, since that time, I haven't thought much about it - until today. It's a great piece of baseball history - and one that many fans would probably want to know about. It's wonderful that things like this can be learned and/or remembered via Baseball-Reference.com.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 11:45 am and is filed under Site Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.