If you want to be great — not just good, mind you, but great, an all-time legend — my advice to any ambitious young man is this: Drop out of school at age 12 and go to work in a coal mine.
Such was the decisive career move of a young fellow named Johannes, one of nine children born to an immigrant family near Pittsburgh. One of the great things about being born poor — and immigrant coal miners in the late 1800s were certainly poor — is that, when you start at the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up. For amusement, in between mining coal, young Johannes enjoyed playing baseball on local sandlots with his brothers, who were quite talented. Three of his brothers went on to play baseball professionally, but none of them were as great as Johannes. He was middling height, but stoutly built, with a barrel chest and massive hands. Despite being bowlegged, he was also astonishingly fast.
When Johannes was 21, his older brother Albert recruited him to play on a minor league team and, in his first season of pro ball, Johannes played for five different teams. He made his major league debut in 1897 at age 23, joining the Louisville Colonels in mid-season and hitting for a .338 average. During his time in the minors, Johannes had played every position in the infield and outfield, but by his second season in Louisville, he settled in at third base, where one new teammate later testified:
I’m sitting on the bench the first day I reported, and along about the third inning an opposing batter smacks a line drive down the third-base line that looked like at least a sure double. Well, this big Louisville third baseman jumped over after it like he was on steel springs, slapped it down with his bare hand, scrambled after it at least ten feet, and fired a bullet over to first base. The runner was out by two or three steps.
I’m sitting on the bench and my eyes are popping out. So I poked the guy sitting next to me, and asked him who the devil that big fellow was on third base.
“Why, that’s Wagner,” he says. “He’s the best third baseman in the league.”
And it also turned out that while Honus was the best third baseman in the league, he was also the best first baseman, the best second baseman, the best shortstop, and the best outfielder. That was in fielding. And since he led the league in batting eight times between 1900 and 1911, you know that he was the best hitter, too. As well as the best base runner.
Yes, Honus Wagner — the name “Honus” pronounced HAW-nus, being short for Johannes — was a baseball phenomenon, the most popular player of his era. He eventually settled in at shortstop and, to this day, is still recognized as the greatest shortstop ever to play the game.
After the 1899 season, the National League reduced its number of teams from 12 to eight, eliminating Louisville, and Honus Wagner became a Pittsburgh Pirate. Any fan attending a Pirates home game will pass by the statue of Wagner outside the stadium. Among other distinctions, Honus Wagner was the first player to lend his name to a signature bat, and he played in the very first World Series in 1903. He continued playing into his 40s, becoming the second player to record more than 3,000 hits, and at age 41 in 1915 became the oldest player ever to hit a grand slam home run, a record which stood for 70 years until Tony Pérez did it at age 43.
When the Baseball Hall of Fame began in 1936, Honus Wagner was one of five players — along with Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson — inducted as inaugural members. Babe Ruth called Wagner “immortal” and said he “was perhaps the greatest right-handed hitter of all time” (Ruth and Cobb both batted left-handed).
See that baseball card? If you should happen to be digging through great-grandpa’s memorabilia and find one like that, don’t throw it away — it’s a rarity worth millions of dollars. When one of those 1909 Honus Wagner cards sold at auction for $6.6 million in 2021, it was the most expensive item of sports memorabilia ever sold (although exceeded a year later by a 1952 Mickey Mantle card that went for $12.6 million).
What’s weird is that I woke up this morning after having had a dream about Honus Wagner — or rather, a dream in which somebody cited Wagner as a rival to Ty Cobb as the greatest hitter of all time. When I woke up, I grabbed my phone and checked the Wikipedia page: Johannes Peter “Honus” Wagner, born February 24, 1874.
Monday was his birthday, and I missed it! Hopefully, this belated tribute will compensate for my oversight, and I commend the example of Honus Wagner to any young fellow who hopes to achieve something in life. However far down you may start your climb to greatness, you’re not starting any lower than Honus did. Now, off to the coal mine, boy.
