Frank Russo sees dead people.

Well, dead ballplayers, actually. He lives, breathes, dreams, researches and writes about the unlikely and implausible demises of men who have played Major League ball. His Web site, http://www.thedeadballera.com, has gained much notoriety as a shrine to ballplayers that have met their maker.

In the past month, the hits to Frank Russo's site have quadrupled. Why? Well, Frank and journalist Gene Racz have teamed up on a new book: Bury My Heart at Cooperstown: Salacious, Sad, and Surreal Deaths in the History of Baseball.

There is no other baseball book remotely like this one. (That's no small feat given the plethora of baseball books on the market.)

When I received my copy in the mail, I sat down and read...and read...and read. One story flowed into the next. From an outfielder dying on the field from a snake bite, to a crusty catcher's unfortunate last act of checking his gas level with a lighted match. Written in an engaging style, the book also contains numerous offbeat facts, trivia, and the specific locations of where many ballplayers are buried, including Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

Sure, Russo know some people think the information he collects is strange. But Russo has a ready answer to his doubters: "Many people don't understand what I do. But it's simply saying, 'I remember.'"

I recently caught up with Frank and asked him some questions about his pioneering new book:

Frank, walk me through your area of interest here. Why dead ballplayers?

I have always been fascinated with baseball history, and also genealogy, and have always had an interest in research. So to me, it seemed logical that I could mix all three together. I have a curiosity about why and how people pass away, no matter what age. So to me, it seems that the more things I dig up on players, pardon the pun, the more I am amazed. If at all possible, my job with both the website and the book is to bring to life the memory of players who are often long forgotten.  

How did you become interested in the subject?

It all started in 1968. I was at military school in Toms River, N.J., right down the street from where Al Leiter grew up! Here I am, a 10-year old kid, and I had just gotten done pulling guard duty on a late August afternoon. Instead of going to wash up and head to the mess hall to eat, I went to the school library. Normally, I would read this gigantic book about World War I. The book was nowhere to be found. Fortunately for me, at the same table at which I usually found that book was a copy of The Baseball Encyclopedia. I went over and opened it up, and the first page I came upon was Eddie Plank's, the old Philadelphia Athletic Hall of Fame pitcher. I immediately noticed that he was only 50 years old when he died in 1926. The thought of someone that famous passing away, and not knowing how he had passed got me wondering, so I guess you could say that it was from that moment on that my interest in the players took on a life of its own. 

What death do you find the most interesting and which the most tragic?

As far as interesting, there is the profile on Hugh McLoon, the former mascot for the Philadelphia A's. His murder was the catalyst for an investigation that brought the city of Philadelphia to its knees. There was so much graft and corruption going on in that city; it could have rivaled New York and Chicago. And it all came to light because a hunchback and former mascot for Connie Mack got gunned down in a Philadelphia street.

As far as tragic goes, well there was, of course, Thurman Munson and Billy Martin, but maybe the saddest one that most people do not know about is that of Snuffy Stirnweiss in a 1958 train wreck. Snuffy was a second baseman who won the AL batting title in 1945. It was a freak accident that caused his death. The conductor of a train suffered a heart attack as the train approached an open lift bridge that connected Elizabethport, NJ and Bayonne, NJ. There was nothing anyone could do and the train plunged into Raritan Bay. It was a huge story at the time. The ironic part of the story is that Stirnweiss almost missed the train that morning. Instead, he left a wife and six children. To this day, Jerry Coleman and Phil Rizzuto, both pallbearers at his funeral, have a hard time talking about their old friend. They both loved him as a friend.  

You mentioned that the death of Thurman Munson affected you. Tell me what he meant to you.

Thurman was my hero growing up. My late father, Frank, told me that if there was a player I should emulate, it should be Thurman. He was absolutely my hero. I wore his number when I played the game and to this day, he is still my favorite all-time Yankee. I still have a hard time talking about him without crying. He was everything that was good about baseball. He was tough, aggressive, a leader of men. His teammates loved him and he was well-liked throughout baseball. If he had played a few more years he definitely would have made the Hall Of Fame. As it is, he has the stats to make it in to the Hall, but don't tell that to any Yankee Haters.  But I don't want to digress here. His bio was the one that I had the hardest time finishing. I must have started crying about 25 times during the time I worked on it, but I am glad I finished it and included in the book.

How did your being a Yankee fan influence the book?

As anyone who knows me realizes, I love the Yankees more than anything, but, I didn't want to make the book into a Yankees' book, although we easily could have done a book of this type using just Yankee players. Due to my knowledge of baseball history, and because the Yankees are the most famous team in baseball and sports history in general, it couldn't be helped that my favorite team would be well represented in the book, much to the chagrin of Yankee Haters everywhere. Our book is extremely well balanced, with players from almost every team in the majors. Due to my knowledge of the Yankees, I was able to add a little more insight into the bios for the Yankees included in the book such as Munson, Martin and Stirnweiss. 

Your book is divided into chapters by type of death -- such as suicide, murder, sexual disease, alcohol abuse, TB and more. You even have one chapter dedicated to the deaths of the 1927 Yankees. How did the organization of the book come about for you?

Well first off, a lot of the categories are on my Webssite, www.thedeadballera.com. I had an idea of what categories would be interesting and what wouldn't work in the book. Plus, we were limited by space, since the book is under 300 pages. There were some categories from the Web site that we just had to use though, such as the 27 Yankees. There were others I was working on, such as the alcoholics section, which would have also been integrated into the website eventually, but we decided to use it in the book instead.

My co/author and partner, Gene Racz, wanted us to write the book using restaurant-quality material. Meaning, we wanted to make the bios as readable and as good overall as possible. We also wanted to set the book up in a way as to mimic a great restaurant menu, putting each player in his proper category. In this way, the average person can easily find players from a particular category: accidents, suicides, TB. So, the book is not only an enjoyable read, but it is also easy to find players by category.
 
What was the biggest surprise in doing all your research?

Nothing really surprises me anymore, although the way a few of the players died surprised me. Gus Sandberg blowing himself up was maybe the craziest of all of them. He looked in the gas tank of his car with a lit match. Sounds like a Three Stooges Episode if you ask me. 

I guess what struck me was how far we have come with medical technology. Players died from common colds and flu. If you had cancer you were doomed. Things are so different now. Sometimes I would look at the bio of a player and think, man he was born at the wrong time in history.  I was also surprised how people tend to forget that baseball players are nothing more than human beings when you get right down to it. We look at them as heroes. When they fall through the cracks of society and find themselves down on there luck, where are the fans then? Another thing I noticed, one common denominator: A lot of players just had really bad luck and wound up at the wrong end of the scale, so to speak.

How many graves of former players have you visited?

I have visited about 1,000. Not bad for a kid from New Jersey. There are still many that I want to visit though. Christy Mathewson's is one that comes to mind. I would say that my Holy Grail would be to visit Thurman's grave in Ohio. I have never been to Sunset Memorial Park, but would love to go there just once and say a prayer at the grave of my favorite player.

How many trips to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

I made about 50 over a five-year period. The majority were day trips. Five hours of driving up, the eight hours of research, with just a bathroom break here and there, and then five hours back. I know, that sounds crazy, but I did it, and I am very proud of the work I put into it. 

Did you meet a lot of family members of the ballplayers you researched? Any good stories there?

Interestingly, I have not met a lot of family members in person. I did meet the wife of Danny O'Connell, Veronica, at of all places, his grave in Montclair, N.J. I was also contacted by the estranged daughter of Leon Wagner, after he died. As a whole though, relatives contact me through letters or e-mails.

Tell me about your collaboration with Gene Racz.

Gene and I met in 2002. He did a story on me that ran in the Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, N.J. I mentioned to him that I was thinking of writing a book. I had requests from visitors to my Web site to put the info in book form. Gene was interested, so we decided to test the waters. He actually went on a grave hunt with me later that summer, which is a story in itself.

After that, he was hooked. We decided to collaborate on the book. We also became good friends along the way. We have different personalities; he is a bit more reserved than I am, so the differences actually helped the book. We would often meet around midnight at a local diner, after Gene got out of work. We'd go over the progress of our work. All in all, we have a great working relationship.

Where do you go from here?

Well, with a little luck, the book will be a real success, and we will have another book ready to go sometime next year. We are already to go with a second edition. Remember, I have enough material for 10 books.

Bury My Heart at Cooperstown: Salacious, Sad, and Surreal Deaths in the History of Baseball is available at Amazon.com and at most bookstores.