Baseball's Best

Year after year the fights rage around the hot stove: who were the greatest baseball players of all? Every fan has his favorites; naming an all-star team* is one sure way to start an argument. Should Collins be put ahead of Lajoie at second? Was Gehrig better than Sisler on first? Only at one position is there no competition. The tallest tales oldtimers tell ring true when they talk about Shortstop John Peter Wagner.

A bowlegged, ham-handed lad whose arms hung down to his knees, "Hans" Wagner was a Pennsylvania coal miner at twelve, a barber a few years later, when he came up to the light and air. Then in 1895 he tried semipro baseball. Big League managers who looked him over were scared off by his clumsy walking gait. Only Ed Barrow, who later built up the New York Yankees, stuck around to watch popeyed as the fleet-footed Wagner covered ground in tremendous toadlike leaps, smothered the ball in his huge hands. Barrow wasted no time signing the youngster to play for his Paterson, N.J. team.

One-Handed Clown. Hans was eager, a quiet workhorse and an immediate hit.

While they marveled at his growth as a ballplayer, his teammates corrupted his nickname to "Honus" and made him the butt of their jokes. Without half trying, Honus added to his reputation as a clown.

Once, playing first base, he shoved his big right paw into his hip pocket for a plug of chewing tobacco. Sam McMackin, the Paterson pitcher, went into his windup. Honus shouted for time; he waved his gloved hand and jumped wildly to attract Mc-Mackin's attention. McMackin pitched anyway. The batter grounded to short.

Honus covered the bag, reached out to make a one-handed catch and came running to the dugout for help. His right fist was still stuck fast, curled around the tobacco in his hip pocket. Ed Barrow had to cut him loose with a penknife.

Honus played every position but catcher, and played them all well. In 1897, he moved up to the Louisville Colonels; later he switched to the Pittsburgh Pirates where he settled down at shortstop.

If he still looked awkward, his huge hands dug grounders out of the dirt with flawless ease. Those long arms could whip a ball across the infield too fast for the fastest runner. His lifetime fielding average was .946. At the plate Honus was a serious, spread-legged terror. For 17 consecutive seasons he hit better than .300 for a lifetime average of .329. In each of eight separate seasons he stole more than 40 bases. Before he quit as an active player in 1917, he had set a National League record of 3,430 hits, played in a record 2,785 games.

Mild-Mannered Dutchman. Among his tough-talking contemporaries, Honus was a quiet competitor. But men who tried to take advantage of him learned a hard lesson. In a game against the high-riding Baltimore Orioles, famed as the roughest of them all, Honus was done out of a triple when the first baseman hit him with his hip, the shortstop forced him to circle wide around second and John McGraw on third had time to tag him in the teeth with the ball. "Are you going to take that?" snarled Honus' manager, Fred Clarke. Honus bided his time, hit another triple, ran right over the first baseman, scared the shortstop out of his path and tore into third so hard he almost belted McGraw back into the grandstand.

In a 1909 World Series game with Detroit, tiger-tempered Ty Cobb hit a single and yelled across the diamond to Honus: "I'm coming down on the next pitch, you left-footed clown. Watch out for your shins." Honus answered calmly, "The Dutchman'll be there, sonny." The Dutchman was. Cobb tried to steal on the next pitch; Honus covered second, neatly sidestepped the flying spikes and tagged Ty in the mouth.

For 19 years after he stopped playing, the old Dutchman stuck with the game as a Pirate coach. Until Honus died last week in Carnegie, Pa. at 81, the Wagner legend kept growing in the memories of men who had seen him at his best. Their fondest fiction was no better than the truth.

* A representative roster: Pitchers Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson, Catchers Bill Dickey and Roger Bresnahan, First Basemen Lou Gehrig and George Sisler, Second Basemen Eddie Collins and Napoleon Lajoie, Third Basemen Pie Traynor and Jimmy Collins, Outfielders Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Mel Ott.

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