Background

Honus Wagner was born in the borough of Chartiers (now Carnegie), Pennsylvania, United States, on February 24, 1874, one of nine children of Peter Wagner, a coal miner, and Katheryn (Wolf) Wagner, a homemaker, who had immigrated to western Pennsylvania from Germany's Bavaria in 1866.

Education

Called "Honus," a mangled form of the German Johannes, Wagner attended a parochial school for six years until the age of twelve, when he followed his father and older brother into the coalfields in the Pittsburgh area, and earned $3.50 a week for loading coal.

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.

Career

On July 19, 1897, Wagner made his major league debut for the Louisville Nationals, playing center field and occasionally filling in at the 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.

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.

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.

Wagner also coached baseball and basketball at Carnegie Institute of Technology, which is now part of Carnegie Mellon University.

Honus was one of the earliest athletes to make the crossover into pop culture film. He starred as a sports hero in 1919's Spring Fever with Moe Howard and Shemp Howard.

Achievements

• 

  Some contemporaries regarded Wagner as the best all-around player, and most baseball historians consider Wagner to be the greatest shortstop ever.
  
  Wagner won eight batting titles, tied for the most in National League history with Tony Gwynn. He also led the league in slugging six times and in stolen bases five times. In 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame inducted Wagner as one of the first five members. He received the second-highest vote total, behind Ty Cobb's 222, and tied with Babe Ruth at 215.
  
  Honus Wagner is also the featured player of one of the rarest and most valuable baseball cards in existence.
  
  In 1999, Wagner was voted Number 13 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Players, where he was the highest-ranking shortstop. In 2000, Wagner was honored with a United States postage stamp. The stamp was issued as part of a "Legends of Baseball" series that honored 20 all-time greats.

Politics

Wagner was interested in politics but lost his only political race, for Allegheny County sheriff in 1928. For a short time, he was sergeant-at-arms in the Pennsylvania legislature. In 1942, he was appointed deputy county sheriff.

Views

Quotations: "I don't make speeches. I just let my bat speak for me in the summertime."

"I never have been sick. I don't even know what it means to be sick. I hear other players say they have a cold. I just don't know what it would feel like to have a cold - I never had one."

"I won't play for a penny less than fifteen hundred dollars."

"In all my years of play, I never saw an ump deliberately make an unfair decision. They really called them as they saw 'em."

"I am honored to have John Lloyd called the Black Wagner. It is a privilege to have been compared with him."

"I don't want my picture in any cigarettes, but I also don't want you to lose the ten dollars, so I'm enclosing my check for that sum."

Personality

Honus loved telling stories. He was a modest, kind and funny man who cared little for money and a lot for the game of baseball.

Physical Characteristics: Standing five feet, eleven inches tall and weighing, in his prime, between 190 and 200 pounds, Wagner had broad, sloping shoulders and immense hands that made him appear ungainly or even clumsy - until he went into action.

Quotes from others about the person

• Bill James: "Acknowledging that there may have been one or two whose talents were greater, there is no one who has ever played the game that I would be more anxious to have on a baseball team."
  
  John McGraw: "Chuck him the ball as hard as you can... and pray."
  
  Bill James: "He was a gentle, kind man, a storyteller, supportive of rookies, patient with the fans, cheerful in hard times, careful of the example he set for youth, a hard worker, a man who had no enemies and who never forgot his friends. He was the most beloved man in baseball before Ruth."
  
  John McGraw: "He was the nearest thing to a perfect player no matter where his manager chose to play him."
  
  John McGraw: "I name Wagner first on my list, not only because he was a great batting champion and base-runner, and also baseball's foremost shortstop - but because Honus could have been first at any other position, with the possible exception of pitcher. In all my career, I never saw such a versatile player."
  
  Fred Lieb: "I think he was so well put together and his system so well adjusted that his bodily functions were near to perfection. This is especially remarkable because for several years, starting at age twelve, he worked in a mine near his hometown of Mansfield, Pennsylvania, now renamed Carnegie."
  
  Burleigh Grimes: "One day he was batting against a young pitcher who had just come into the league. The catcher was a kid, too. A rookie battery. The pitcher threw Honus a curveball, and he swung at it and missed and fell down on one knee. Looked helpless as a robin. I was kind of surprised, but the guy sitting next to me on the bench poked me in the ribs and said, 'Watch this next one.' Those kids figured they had the old man's weaknesses, you see, and served him up the same dish - as he knew they would. Well, Honus hit a line drive so hard the fence in left field went back and forth for five minutes."
  
  Ty Cobb: "Spike Honus Wagner? It would have taken quite a foolhardy man."
  
  Arthur Daley: "There is something Lincolnesque about him, his rugged homeliness, his simplicity, his integrity, and his true nobility of character."
  
  John McGraw: "The way to get a ball past Honus is to hit it eight feet over his head."
  
  Jonathan Fraser Light: "With his huge hands and quick moves he was considered the premier shortstop of the era and probably the best of all time given the size of the gloves and player surfaces."
  
  John McGraw: "You can have your Cobbs, your Lajoies, your Chases, your Bakers, but I'll take Wagner as my pick of the greatest. He is not only a marvelous mechanical player, but he has the quickest baseball brain I have ever observed."

Interests

• hunting, card playing, reading sports pages of newspapers

• Sport & Clubs

  baseball

Connections

Honus Wagner married Bessie Baine Smith, the daughter of a professional baseball player, on December 30, 1916. They had three daughters.

Father:

Peter Wagner

(June 5, 1838 - November 12, 1913)

Mother:

Katrina (Wolf) Wagner

(1839 - 1900)

Spouse:

Bessie Baine Smith

(May 18, 1890 - June 30, 1971)

Daughter:

Elva Katrina Wagner

(January 9, 1918, stillborn)

Daughter:

Betty Baine Blair

(December 5, 1919 - October 31, 1992)

Daughter:

Virginia Mae Wagner

(May 3, 1922 - April 23, 1985)

Friend:

Fred Clarke

(October 3, 1872 - August 14, 1960)

Fred Clarke was an American Major League Baseball player from 1894 to 1915 and manager from 1897 to 1915. A Hall of Famer, Clarke played for and managed both the Louisville Colonels and Pittsburgh Pirates.

References

• Honus Wagner: The Life of Baseball's "Flying Dutchman" A book by Arthur D. Hittner.
  1996
• The Comic Book Story of Baseball: The Heroes, Hustlers, and History-Making Swings (and Misses) of America's National Pastime A graphic novel-style history of baseball, providing an illustrated look at the major games, players, and rule changes that shaped the sport.
  2018
• Honus Wagner: On His Life & Baseball Written more than seventy-five years ago and never published in book form, Wagner's stories of the game are intriguing and entertaining - a unique baseball education for any true fan!
  2006
• The Story of Honus Wagner A book by Jack Sher.
  2016
• Honus Wagner: A Biography The first full-scale biography of baseball's greatest shortstop, the first American sports superstar of the twentieth century, recounts Wagner's youth in Pittsburgh, his reputation for cool-headed wisdom, and his unparalleled career with the Pirates.
  1996