Final Destination

We searched far and wide to find the resting places of some of spoils' most famous names and discovered a range of styles, from the elegantly simple to the grandiose. Of course, all things considered, even the greatest Bronx Bomber of them all would rather be in Philadelphia.

JOE JACKSON
Greenville, S.C.
Shoeless Joe found lasting peace in the town to which he moved after being banned from baseball. His modest plot receives thousands of visitors, who leave balls, bats and, occasionally, shoes.

JAMES NAISMITH
Lawrence, Kans.

You'll find the father of basketball and Kansas's first coach in a part of Lawrence Memorial Park called Acacia A. For a mere $895—below the national average—Jayhawks fans can get a plot nearby and hoop it up for eternity with the doctor.

JACK DEMPSEY
Portland
The middleweight champ is not, as a famed poem says, buried in an anonymous grave "far out in the wilds of Oregon/On a lonely mountain side" but in a well-marked plot in the state's largest city.

JACKIE ROBINSON
Queens, N.Y.
The man who made history in Flatbush rests not in Brooklyn but in the next borough over, at this simple gravesite at Cypress Hill Cemetery.

JIM THORPE
Jim Thorpe, Pa.
In 1953 Mauch Chunk, Pa., renamed itself in honor of Thorpe; his children have worked for years to have their father transferred to a Native American burial site in Oklahoma.

BABE RUTH
Hawthorne, N.Y.
Groundskeepers at the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven could have a pretty good time picking up after the steady stream of supplicants who pay honor to the Bambino's prodigious appetites with tributes of hot dogs, potato chips, beer and cigars.