Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, Chevrolet. . . and digging graves

July 19, 2024/Business, Products/

According to this article from Mac’s Motor City Garage “Chevrolet truly was working to be all things to all Americans. If the carmaker had its way, every American would be driving a Chevy. And in 1974, James Hartzell, a copywriter for Campbell Ewald, the division’s longtime ad agency, created a slogan that united the brand with the very soul of the nation, if you will: “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet.” Chevrolet was America, in essence.” .

If you are too young to have seen these commercials that were seared into our minds in the 1970’s here’s a short video of Chevrolet’s America.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

I’ve been a follower of the All-American sport, baseball, my entire life — serving as a batboy in my youth, playing (not very well as a young person), and coaching Little League for years. The Major League All-Star game was on Tuesday night and this weekend Baseball’s Hall of Fame will induct the class of 2024 which includes Minnesota native Joe Mauer along with Todd Helton, Adrian Beltre, and Jim Leyland.

Over the years I’ve touched on some aspects of Death Care and the Baseball Hall of Fame. . . . and with the hope that I’m not boring you with some of these stories and connections, I will again tie the two together with some human interest stories.

Matthews International — First of all, as you may know from reading Funeral Director Daily, funeral, cemetery, and cremation supplier Matthews International has a connection with the Baseball Hall of Fame that goes back 30 years. They have been commissioned to design and produce the bronze plaques for each of the players enshrined in the Hall of Fame. So, if you tour the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, take notice of those plaques and their connection to the Death Care community.

Here is a short video put out by the Baseball Hall of Fame titled “Creating the Hall of Fame plaques with Matthews International”.

Hall of Fame Member Andre Dawson — This article from ESPN is titled “The baseball Hall of Famer who runs a funeral home“. It’s a 2020 article about Andre Dawson and his funeral home, Paradise Memorial Funeral Home of Miami. According to the current website of that funeral home, which you can access here, Dawson is still the owner/operator.

Pittsburgh Pirate and Detroit Tiger star Richie Hebner and his off-season job — Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s when I really followed baseball closely, Richie Hebner was a solid player who had an 18-year career in Major League Baseball. I remember him well and one of the things I remember about him, probably because it stuck out to me as I was a funeral director’s child, is that he “dug graves” in the off-season. In those days professional baseball did not pay so well and most players had off-season jobs. . . .Hebner’s was as a grave digger.

Here’s what he said about that off-season employment in this 2020 article from The Detroit Free Press titled “Ex-Detroit Tiger Richie Hebner dug graves for 35 years: ‘Guess I liked working with stiffs'”:

“I started digging graves as a high school sophomore for my father, who managed a couple of cemeteries. He started paying me $35 a grave and I did it for 35 years. It was pocket money and was good exercise, but we also did it when the ground was frozen and it was snowing and sleeting. Let me tell you, I buried a lot of people over the years. I’d go back to spring training and guys would ask, ‘You really bury people?’ Some guys got the heebie jeebies. I said, ‘Yeah, they don’t move. You dig a hole, you put ‘em in, fill it back up, and go home.’ This one time a grieving widow fell into the hole and she got stuck. My brother Dennis says to the rabbi, ‘Let’s leave her there and give the family a two-for-one special.’ I don’t think that went over too big.”

So there you have it. . . a few connections with America’s National Pastime. . . . and I might suggest that over time America’s local funeral homes are intertwined with the American Experience by being a staple of a community. . . . in making his case for Chevrolet as America’s automobile in the 1970’s advertising copywriter Hartzell could have just as easily lengthened the ad jingle to say: “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, funeral homes, and Chevrolet”. . . . because the local community funeral home has traditionally been just as much a staple of “the soul of the nation” as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.

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