|
"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." - Historian / Author Bill James in The Biographical Encyclopedia (2000)
"Chuck him the ball as hard as you can... and pray." - John McGraw in George Plimpton's Out of My League (2003)
"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." - Historian / Author Bill James
"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." - John McGraw in The Sporting News (December 6, 1955)
"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, new renamed Carnegie." - Author Fred Lieb in Baseball As I Have Known It (1996)
"It is hoped that Louisville didn't throw away very much money on the Wagner deal, as times are had and Wagner won't set the world afire as a third baseman. He is a better outfielder than infielder." - Sporting Life (July 24, 1897)
"Nobody ever saw anything graceful or picturesque about Wagner on the diamond. His movements have been likened to the gambols of a caracoling elephant. He is ungainly and so bowlegged that when he runs his limbs seem to be moving in a circle after the fashion of a propeller. But he can run like the wind." - New York American (November 19, 1907)
"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." - Burleigh Grimes in The Quotable Baseball Fanatic (2004)
"One of Five Immortals elected to Cooperstown in the inaugural-year balloting, Wagner had his lack of flair and extravagant anecdotes to blame for later-day wonder that some early-century spectactors regarded him as superior to Ty Cobb." - Authors Donald Dewey & Nichols Acocella in The Biographical History of Baseball (1995)
"Spike Honus Wagner? It would have taken quite a foolhardy man." - Ty Cobb in My Life in Baseball (1993)
"There is something Lincolnesque about him, his rugged homeliness, his simplicity, his integrity, and his true nobility of character." - Sportswriter Arthur Daley
"The way to get a ball past Honus is to hit it eight feet over his head." - John McGraw inThe Biographical Encyclopedia (2000)
"W, Wagner,
The bowlegged beauty;
Short was closed to all traffic
With Honus on duty." - Writer Ogden Nash in Line Up for Yesterday (01-1949)
"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." - Jonathan Fraser Light in The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (1997)
"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." - John McGraw
|
