Mel Ott

Ott reached the Giants at about sixteen, sent to a New York tryout in September 1925 by a lumber company owner. John McGraw liked what he saw, predicted a great left-handed hitter, and had him under contract by January 1926. Ott lifted his front foot off the ground as he swung, a hitch that looked odd and gave him power. Across 22 seasons he hit 511 home runs, and he later managed the club. In November 1958 he was hurt in a car accident at Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, and died a week later, aged 49.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 3.0 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 3.9 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 4.0 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• The Cabildo — 4.0 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.

More markers nearby

• Mechanickham — 1.7 mi
• Freret's Folly — 2.9 mi
• Commander's Palace — 2.9 mi
• Touro Infirmary — 3.0 mi