BUCKET LIST UPDATE No. 185: Visit the grave of Ottis Johnson

Ottis Johnson is arguably the most famous baseball player to ever come out of Conecuh County, and I’ve wanted to pay my respects to him by visiting his grave for some time. I placed this trip on my “bucket list” a couple of years ago and officially scratched it off on Sunday.

For those of you unfamiliar with Johnson, he was the last pro player to die after getting hit in the head by a baseball pitch, according to researchers at Sports Illustrated and “Death at the Ballpark” by Bob Gorman and David Weeks. Johnson, who played for Troy State Teachers College and two seasons of minor league professional baseball for the Dothan Browns, died in June 1951 after getting hit in the temple by a pitch delivered by Headland Dixie Runners pitcher Jack Clifton. Johnson, age 25, died eight days later from the resulting skull fracture.

Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is the only major league player in history to be killed by beaning, and that incident occurred in 1920. Nine minor league batters, including Johnson, have been killed in similar incidents, going all the way back to 1906.

Johnson ended his career with a .336 lifetime batting average and with 17 career home runs. He was hitting .394 and slugging .697 after 38 games during his shortened 1951 season.

Johnson, who’d never played football before college, also played defensive tackle for Troy State in the late 1940s. Also in the late 1940s, Johnson played outfield for the Evergreen Greenies, where he took the field alongside such other local greats as his brother, Edsel Johnson, and Wendell Hart. His first season of baseball at Troy was in 1949.

A few weeks ago, I located Ottis Johnson’s grave on the popular “Find a Grave” Web site, www.findagrave.com, which told me that he was buried in Evergreen’s Magnolia Cemetery, which is a large cemetery on the end of Magnolia Avenue in Evergreen. On Sunday, my young son and I made the drive to Evergreen and began searching for Johnson’s grave. After about 30 minutes of looking, we found it.

His grave is simple and gives no indication of his baseball career or his outstanding achievements on the playing field. His grave marker simply states his full name, “John Ottis Johnson,” and gives his date of birth (April 5, 1923) and his date of death (June 10, 1951). We did take a few moments to clear his marker of dead pine straw before returning to our truck.

If you’d like to visit it for yourself, I suggest parking at the top of the hill just after you enter Magnolia Cemetery. Once parked, get out and look to your left for a white flag pole. As you walk toward the flag pole, turn to face Magnolia Avenue, and Johnson’s grave should be in front of you on your right.

In the end, how many of you have ever visited the grave of Ottis Johnson? How many other graves of this type do you know about? Let us know in the comments section below.