Man Honoring Late Friend By Flushing His Ashes In Ballparks Around The Country

If you’ve used the men’s room at a baseball stadium in the past eight years, you may unwittingly have visited one of the many sites where a late fan’s ashes were mingled with the waters.

The New York Times has the story of a man from Flushing, Queens (no — seriously), who has been sending his childhood friend and fellow Mets fan’s ashes down the pipes in ballpark restrooms since 2009.

He’d tried tossing the ashes the regular way, but that proved a bit awkward in windy situations. Dumping them indoors also wasn’t quite appropriate, leading him to decide against scattering ashes at a Minnesota Twins game in the Metrodome. But later, when he went to the bathroom at a nearby pub afterward, he had a flash of inspiration, and flushed the ashes.

“Right there, it hit me,” he said of his newfound two-birds-one-stone approach. “After that, it just took on a life of its own.”

Since then, he’s been carrying ashes to games in an Advil bottle, and flushing them when nature calls. He doesn’t perform the ritual at every stadium he visits, however: For example, he flushed some at a White Sox game, but not while attending a Cubs game, because they’re an old Mets rival.

“It’s funny — not in a joke way — but funny that it was exactly like Roy would have wanted it,” the man says of his friend.

He has enough ashes for one final trip and one last scattering: His plan is to flush the ashes at Durham Athletic Park, the former minor league ballpark in North Carolina where the 1988 movie Bull Durham was filmed.