And he knew talent when he truly saw it... when after coaching he got into scouting for the Pirates. In 1935-36, he went to an unknown sandlot game where he saw, and he quoted; "This fella is one of the best shortstops besides myself..." That talented Shortstop was none other than my Grandfather, Chas Fatur, which I am Chaz Fatur. We have a letter handwritten and signed as well as a postcard signed by Honus himself on his own company's stationary, inviting my Grandfather to come play for the the Pittsburgh Pirates! It was an actual contract, according to Honus. The postcard was just a reminder that he hadn't heard back from him. Well, cause that's the other side of this story, he was engaged to my soon to be Grandmother, and she gave him an ultimatum, 'Play ball or marry me!' And that was the end of my Grandfather's ball playing days... He went on to work in the Pittsburgh Steel mills, under the foremanship of Madonna's Grandfather. He died at the age of 60 due to complication of a foundry accident in 1970. One of two regrets my Grandmother had lived with, to a ripe age of 94! They are resting beside one another for eternity...
Different era but Ron Blackburn was my grandfather’s uncle. Cool pirates pitcher. He had a brother Gerald that played for the reds. North Carolina blue ridge parkway hillbillies.
My Great Great Grandmother was Honus Wagner’s godmother. According to my Great Grandmothers journal, he came to visit her mom on her deathbed in 1935 and said he was extremely kind to the family. What a great man.
My friend lived his house in carnegie.they wanted to make it a bed and breakfast.the community worried about parking.never happened it was sold then sadly burned shortly after.i miss staying there.god bless
Bill James considers Wagner’s 1908 season the greatest single season in MLB history. Based on his production vs the league output. The greatest season ever.
Wonderful video! Disagree about Cobb, though. He may not have been a sweetheart, though his villainy is greatly exaggerated, but the voters knew their stuff.
These videos about Wagner, Traynor, Big & Little Poison, Vaughn, Clemente, Stargell and all the other Pirate greats really keep a fan going in the middle of a (probably) 110-loss season. This team was once great, it once had amazing stories. Now we get a playoff appearance run once a generation.
For those of us who are too young to have seen him play, he represents one of those legends that we can only imagine. For those of us who are interested in baseball history, we have a little more of an appreciation for his place. To me, he was the shortstop who towered above all his cohorts in his ability to hit and hit for power. Most shortstops of his era were the good field, no hit version much like in the fifties when Ernie Banks towered over all other shortstops. Wagner, unlike Banks, had no injuries that forced him to another position. The only other players who could hit and run like Wagner were outfielders.
Wow. That's quite a tribute to Wagner. One thing that particularly drew my attention, he was severely bow-legged, yet he led the National League in stolen bases 5 times. I mean, how is it even possible to be so fast with legs like that. So I did a search and came up with this: "Being bowlegged means that your knees are further apart than your ankles. When you run, you land on one foot and then your knees swing inward as you step off to the other foot. This pulls your body forward and inward to help you run faster. People who are bowlegged, flat footed, and pigeon toed are usually the fastest runners." I had no idea.
I remember in Ken Burns' 'Baseball' that Wagner could hold his own against the antics of Ty Cobb. Cobb was on base and kept calling out to Wagner "Hey Kraut!" and deriding him. Wagner caught in infield ground ball and fired it directly into Cobb's nose, drawing blood. Cobb was silent the rest of the game.
One of the most interesting videos I've watched ! Very well said and great material. Thanks. I'll have to show my 93yr old father this who saw that the Pirates we're holding open tryouts and went. It was in 1938 and he was 9yrs old ! Lol. He told me a coach patted him on the head and said "Come back in a couple years son". Love that story.
Steve, I LOVED this look at the great Honus Wagner. Since reading The Glory of Their Times back in 1991, I've been obsessed with "old time" baseball. My two favorite players from the early days are Wagner and Christy Mathewson, both of them SUPERB ballplayers as well as role models and gentlemen on and off the field. Listening to your narrative, I know you "get it" about Wagner and other legendary players. Wagner played and batted Cobb under the rug in the 1909 World Series and swatted him across his racist puss in a play at second base just to put the icing on the cake: Love It! Thanks for this thoughtful video. I look forward to watching more of your productions. (And if you haven't read The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter, well, you've got one heck of a treat waiting for you!)
The story about splitting Cobb's lip is not true. Scorecards show that Wagner never tagged him out on a stolen base attempt. Cobb and Wagner were clearly not enemies.
It's my understanding that Wagner had a religious dispute with his first baseman. As the story goes, Wagner would purposely hold ground balls hit to him at shortstop until the last second, then fire the ball to first for the out. Since padding was minimal in the baseball gloves at the time, and the ball was heavier, the first baseman's hand took a beating, which was apparently Wagner's intent. If I'm not mistaken it reportedly led to the player's career ending prematurely.
As a Mets fan listening to the great Ralph Kiner's commentary (on TV by the time I became a fan), I remember his reminiscences about Wagner coming to spring training when Kiner was just beginning his career. A link back to the dead-ball era. My favorite and priceless story about Honus Wagner was one I read in a history of early baseball--possibly "The Glory of Their Times." It would have been in the 1909 WS, Pittsburgh vs. Detroit. Cobb go on first base, and in his usual friendly style, yelled down to Wagner at short, "Look out, Krauthead, I'm coming down." Wagner did not respond, but when Cobb tried to steal second, Wagner tagged him out in the head or face so hard he knocked some of Cobb's teeth loose. Way to treat a bully!
If you understand the Poetry of baseball, then you understand you're thoughts in why you're team Has this in every stadium throughout the World. And for me it is still in the Pittsburgh Pirate's BASEBALL. The Heritage and the boys playing in Summer, until the crisp Air in October comes. As to those cold April songs that are easily swung by each Batsmen. It is there, in my Younger life, I regale the 1970 ' s Pirates. Listing to " The Gunner " and how I learned my first lingo to PITTSBURGHESE. So thank you Honus Wagner, for the Man you are. Wonderchek ///.
Steve thank you so much for cheering me up and inspiring me. I lost my baby twin brother RIP Randy who had open a baseball card shop in Orange County dealing with the the immortal Wagner Tobbacco cards/. We once broker a deal for a 1910 card. In bad shape but still worth about 8k. Thank You For This! CJ
Nicely done Steve, didn't realize you were a ball fan. Tough call on who was better (Cobb or Wagner), alot of the advanced metrics point to Cobb (OPS, OPS+, WAR). But Wagner's defence was an intangible and Cobb was known as being a pretty pedestrian fielder. relative to how good he was at the plate. I guess it comes down to personal preference. Cobb was complicated and Al Stump's book really did a dis-service to Cobb's reputation. That reputation is finally being revisited after so many years.
His best year, 1908, was arguably the best year of the 20th Century. He hit as well as any outfielder in either league, he ran the bases as well as anyone, and he was a Shortstop equal defensively to the best glove-first Shortstop, guys like Tinker and Maranville.
you got to be kidding? against all white pitching? you must be white. Ichiro had the most hits in a single season and he did it against all types of skin tone and he had to break an old white record back over 100 years in George Sisler.
Thank you for this. Wagner played in an era when you did it for next to nothing and proved yourself on the field. He was & is the greatest as far as I'm concerned.
As a kid growing up in the Burgh in the 1960’s, if you needed any sporting good equipment, then there was only one place to go and that was the Honus Wagner store downtown. I believe (but can’t recall for certain) that it was located on Forbes Avenue. I remember being in grade school and taking a streetcar into town to buy football spikes.
The man saw a lot during his time.....born during reconstruction and lived long enough to watch "I Love Lucy" on TV. Wagner was a natural athlete. He would have been a star today
I have a photo of mr Wagner. He was a coach at that time and in pirates uniform. My uncle bob, then probly 8 years old is in the photo. Honus had massive hands! They are on my uncles shoulders. My uncle bill played with Honus.
Michelle Anderson my uncle later as a scout, signed Willie Mays. It was always kinda known in my family but I read two entries in willies autobiography. On two pages he mentions my uncle. His name was William Melton Harris. He was my grandmothers brother.
That picture of Al Wagner in a Montreal uniform shows you just how long of a tradition that city has had with Baseball. It's a shame they don't have a pro team.
Very awesome stuff!! Clemente and Stargell were both great, but for what they did on the field, Honus gets my vote as best Pirate ever. And he also gets my vote as #1 short stop ever. However I especially appreciate the part about his character. As a Pirate's fan since the late 60's, I think it's really neat that the 3 best Pirates ever also had great character.
Nothing against Wagner but look at his "errors committed" stat...it's kind of high. Maybe just because he played everyday and got a lot of chances. But it seems out of place for a superstar.
In the dead ball era, the most prized accomplishment was the league batting title. When you consider how bad the ball was back then, and what pitchers could do to it, you wonder how anybody could have hit .300. But men like Honus and Cobb did, repeatedly (although those old batting averages have been recalculated). That's how good they were at the plate.
His limbs may have looked like "spinning propellers" when he ran, but he ended his career third on the all time stolen base list and remains number ten to this day.
I love honus Wagner but ty cobb is and was the most impressive player of all time. In my opinion they're 1 and 2. Wagner definitely gets the edge for being a better man though Cobb wasn't as bad as he's made out to be.
What do you have against Ty Cobb. He hit the ball, got on base and scored runs. That's what you want in a ball player, right. I think he is the 3rd best baseball player of all time because of his aggressive base running. 1st and 2nd are Shohei Ohtani and Babe Ruth.
Cobb had the edge in all of the offensive stats, but Wagner gets bonus points for playing shortstop at a level nobody else came close to. (Talking overall, not defensively). Consider: if you had, say George Davis and Tris Speaker on your team, and you had the choice of trading Davis for Wagner, or Speaker for Cobb, which deal would be the bigger upgrade?
You don't have to denigrate Cobb to elevate Wagner. It's become a bit of a cliche cursing Cobb, usually by those who never knew him. It's time to put that little practice to bed...probably should never have started to begin with...
Goodness, Cobb was a great player but a terrible person who had more than one documented attack on black people, including a hotel maid. Most of his fellow players, including many of his teammates, despised him. Sports fans spend a lot of time arguing which player was best, or which one was better than some other guy, and it’s all subjective.
There are probably about five hundred traits a fellow can have that are worse than sentimentality. But declaring a player who one never saw, and who retired over a century ago, the GOAT...there's some sentimentality going on there.
There's a common but still very nice story to compliment his character. At the conclusion to the 1903 season, with the Pirates losing to the Boston Americans in the 9 game series. Honus himself hit a paltry .222 and committed an unheard of by his standards 6 errors. Honus was requested to send a portrait of himself to a "Hall of Fame" for Batting champions (having lead the NL in BA in the regular season). In response to the request, Honus wrote that "I was a joke in that Boston-Pittsburgh Series. What does it profit a man to hammer along and make a few hits when they are not needed only to fall down when it comes to a pinch? I would be ashamed to have my picture up now."
proven fact. disney took honus' nickname "the flying dutchman" for the name of the ship in their movies. do you live in western pa? unless youre a die hard baseball fan, honus is really only regionally notable these days
When Cobb begins his Hall of Fame pitching career like Ruth's then maybe he'd be a candidate. Otherwise, there's no competition at all: Babe Ruth was a Hall of Fame pitcher AND a Hall of Fame batter. He as, as Daniel Okrent said, Beethoven AND Cezanne in one person.
Nice video while Wagner was great Ty Cobb was wayyy better! Wagner never hit 400 in season Cobb still the best at having 4 seasons above 400 not to mention tons more records and better career stats
Cob was a despicable human being, a hyper-racist who once waded into the stands in 1912 to beat a crippled man senseless (he was suspended and fined--he should've been given a good beating like the one he doled out.) Cobb was and is the terrible black mark on baseball, a superb player but an utter and absolute scumbag.
My dads cousin , Sonny Wagner is, he is the son of Charlie Wagner. Charlie had the bat at the baseball hall of fame in a closet in his house for years.
oldcomic1 he wasn't that bad. Al Stump made him out to be a vile person but his contemporary players and media didn't agree. I recommend reading "Ty Cobb, A Terrible Beauty" by Charles Leerhsen a terrific book that exposes the myths that Stump created.
Lol, yep! Had some funny names for teams back then. And in how many sports do you have teams named after the color of their sox like the Red Sox and White Sox?
babe Ruth is The greatest baseball player of all time I don't even feel like there's an argument... My dream was to always own a Honus Wagner card. That way I would be so Rich I would give $1K to every like I got from this comment... I really would to lol (btw I collect baseball cards)
No, Babe Ruth was, without argument, because he was two players in one: a Hall of Fame pitcher AND a Hall of Fame Hitter. There's Ruth and then there's everyone else. Mays was magnificent, but until he throws 26 and a third consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play, he'll have to settle for 2nd best.
