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Honus Wagner

1874-1955

American baseball player

Considered by many baseball experts the greatest shortstop of all time, Honus Wagner was one of the National Baseball Hall of Fame's five original inductees in 1936. Among his fellow inductees were Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. At first glance, Wagner looked somewhat ungainly and awkward. Stocky, barrel-chested, and bow-legged, he nevertheless exhibited great speed, which, in tandem with his heritage, earned him the nickname of "The Flying Dutchman." Wagner compiled a lifetime batting average of .326 and managed to top .300 for an incredible fifteen consecutive seasons. John McGraw, the legendary manager of the New York Giants for more than thirty seasons, said of Wagner: "While Wagner was the greatest shortstop, I believe he could have been the number one player at any position he might have selected. That's why I vote him baseball's foremost all-time player."

Born in Western Pennsylvania

Wagner was born in Mansfield, Pennsylvania, on February 24, 1874, one of nine children born to Peter and Katheryn (Wolf) Wagner, who had immigrated to western Pennsylvania from Germany's Bavaria in 1866. Big, clumsy, and bowlegged from birth, Wagner was called Honus (a German term often applied to awkward children) by his family. He also acquired the nickname "Dutch," a corruption of "Deutsch," the German word for German, and fairly common in this heavily German-settled region of Pennsylvania. Wagner was raised in Chartiers, Pennsylvania, not far from Mansfield. The two towns, close to Pittsburgh, were eventually merged and renamed Carnegie. His father worked in the mines, where twelve-year-old Honus joined him in 1886.

Young Wagner labored in the mines during the day, but most evenings and Sunday afternoons found him playing sandlot baseball with his brothers and neighbors. By the time he entered the mines, Wagner had already acquired star status on his neighborhood team, the Oregons. His older brother, Albert, was thought by many in the area to be the better ballplayer, but Al never

really took the game seriously. He did, however, recognize Honus's potential and encouraged his younger brother to learn every playing position. In time, the brothers graduated from sandlot play to positions on area church and company teams, often earning up to five dollars a week in pay and tips.

Honus and brother Al began playing semiprofessional baseball in 1894 for Mansfield, a member of the Allegheny League. The following year the Wagner brothers jumped to the Carnegie Athletic Club and in 1895 joined the Steubenville, Ohio, team, part of the newly formed Inter-State League. In his first game for Steubenville, Honus hit a home run. Not long thereafter, Honus Wagner was signed by manager Ed Barrow to play for Paterson (New Jersey) in the Atlantic League. Older brother Al meanwhile went north of the border to play for a team in Toronto. So impressive was the younger Wagner's perfomance for Paterson that he soon became the object of a bidding war between a number of major league baseball clubs. Louisville eventually took the prize, paying Paterson $2,100 for the rights to sign Wagner.

Breaks Into Major Leagues

On July 19, 1897, Wagner made his major league debut for the Louisville Nationals, playing center field, and occasionally filling in at second base. In the sixty-one games he played for Louisville in 1897, Wagner compiled a batting average of .338. His batting average slipped a bit in 1898, falling to .299, but Wagner proved his versatility, playing first, second, and third base. His batting average bounced back in 1899, when he hit .336. However, at the end of the season the Louisville team disbanded, and Wagner, along with his close friend Fred Clarke, signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Clarke played left field for the Pirates and also managed. In 1900, Wagner won the first of eight batting championships with an impressive batting average of .381. Happy to be playing near his hometown, Wagner resisted tempting offers from American League teams to lure him away from Pittsburgh.

Wagner in 1901 began playing shortstop, the position for which he became best known. He also led the National League in doubles and runs batted in with an average of.353 and won the first of five stolen-base titles. His ungainly appearance was deceptive, for as awkward as he looked, Wagner could turn on the speed when it was needed. He established a career record of 722 stolen bases, a record that stood until it was eventually broken by Ty Cobb. The Pittsburgh Pirates, thanks in large part to Wagner's superlative batting, was the strongest club in the early days of the National League, finishing first in 1901, 1902, 1903, and 1909. In the very first World Series, a best-of-nine series in 1903, Pittsburgh faced off against Boston of the American League. It was not Wagner's finest moment, however, and he batted only .222 during the series. Boston took the series, five games to three.

Despite his less-than-stellar performance in the first World Series, Wagner led the National League as its best player for the next eight seasons, his batting average never dipping below .320. He acquired a reputation as one of the game's best bad-ball hitters, and this in an era when the rules allowed pitchers to hurl spitballs and battered, muddy balls usually stayed in the game for lack of replacements. In the World Series of 1909, the thirty-five-year-old Wagner and the Pirates faced off against the Detroit Tigers and their twenty-two-year-old wunderkind, Ty Cobb. The Pirates took the series, and Wagner outbatted Cobb .333 to .231.

Retires from the Pirates in 1917

Wagner played for the Pirates until 1917, when he was forty-three years old. In the latter years of his baseball career, he struggled against the effects of aging and multiple injuries but still managed to perform impressively. He last compiled a batting average of .300 or better during the 1913 season, although his average never dropped lower than .252 in his remaining years of play. In 1916, Wagner married Bessie Baine Smith, the daughter of another professional baseball player. The couple had two daughters, Betty and Virginia. After his retirement from the Pirates, Wagner continued to play semiprofessional ball in the Pittsburgh area until he was well past fifty. His one run for political office—the sheriff of Allegheny County—in 1928 ended in failure, but in 1942 he was appointed deputy county sheriff. In between, he served briefly as sergeant-at-arms in the Pennsylvania legislature. He also returned to professional baseball in 1933, this time as a coach for the Pirates.

In 1936, Wagner, along with Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Babe Ruth, were the first players to be inducted into the newly opened National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1955 Wagner, by then eighty-one years old, attended the unveiling of a statue in his honor at the Pirates' Forbes Field. (The statue was later relocated to Three Rivers Stadium.) Later that year, on December 6, he died at his home in Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

One of the most dynamic forces in baseball, Wagner was active in professional ball for nearly forty years, more than thirty-five of which were spent with the Pittsburgh Pirates, first as a player and later as a coach and manager. One of his greatest admirers throughout his baseball career was John J. McGraw, the longtime manager of the New York Giants. According to McGraw, Wagner had a "sixth sense of baseball" when it came to defense, knowing just where to play certain batters on certain pitches. In perhaps his highest tribute to Wagner, McGraw once observed: "Wagner is a whole team in himself."

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

American Decades CD-ROM. Detroit: Gale Group, 1998.

Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 5: 1951-1955. American Council of Learned Societies, 1977.

Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement. Volume 20. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000.

Hageman, William. Honus: The Life and Times of a Baseball Hero. Champaign, IL: Sagamore Publishing, 1996.

Hittner, Arthur D. Honus Wagner: The Life of Baseball's "Flying Dutchman." Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1996.

Periodicals

Neff, Craig. "Scorecard: Honus or Bogus." Sports Illustrated (June 4, 1990): 15.

"Saga." Bulletin Index (September 7, 1939).

Weir, Tom. "Top Shortstops Brought More Than Glove to Work: Honus Wagner Established Standard with Success at Plate, on Basepaths." USA Today (August 27, 1999): 6C.

Other

"Clarke, Fred C." HickockSports.com. http://www.hickocksports.com/biograph/clarkefr.shtml (October 15, 2002).

"Fred Clarke." National Baseball Hall of Fame. http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/Clarke_Fred.htm (October 15, 2002).

"Honus Wagner." Baseball Almanac. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/p_wagner0.shtml (October 15, 2002).

"Honus Wagner: Career Batting Statistics." CNN/Sports Illustrated. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/stats/alltime/player/batting/12792.html (October 14, 2002).

"Honus Wagner." http://members.aol.com/stealth792/wagner/wagner.html (October 14, 2002).

"Honus Wagner." National Baseball Hall of Fame. http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/wagner_honus.htm (October 14, 2002).

"Player Pages: Honus Wagner." The Baseball Page.com. http://www.thebaseballpage.com/past/pp/wagnershonus/default.htm (October 15, 2002).

Sketch by Don Amerman