Honus Wagner
Honus Wagner
Episode #53
10.06.26
Honus Wagner
“It was speculated his refusal was tied to a dislike of tobacco products. But Wagner was a lifetime chewer and smoker. In later years, he said his reason was simple. He didn’t want young fans spending their money on cigarettes. Some suggested he was merely seeking a bigger check from the tobacco companies. But Wagner’s lack of interest in outside income makes that doubtful. Whatever his reason, he left the American Tobacco Company, which licensed the photos to the various cigarette brands in a bind because the Wagner cards were in production and were being inserted.” – ‘Honus – The Life and Times of a Baseball Hero’
Honus Wagner, the Legend
This passage that I just read is right out of the middle of the book. It’s this moment when Honus Wagner decides to tell a tobacco company that they can’t print a baseball card with his picture on it. He declines the permission that the tobacco company needed to print that card.
And of course, nobody knew it at the time, but that was the moment that created what some collectors call now the holy grail of baseball cards. So what happened is he drastically limited the supply of his card. They’d already started printing a few when Wagner gave the word that he didn’t want any more made, so they had to stop printing.
Now combine that story with one of the best baseball players to ever play the game, one of the first five players inducted into the baseball hall of fame. And today, now everyone knows who Honus Wagner is because of the few dozen of his T206 baseball cards that survived.
Honus Wagner and the T-206 Baseball Cards
And Honus Wagner has this moment in 1909 when he decides to stop the production of his now famous baseball card. What’s known now is the T206.
He declines the permission that the tobacco company is asking for. And of course, nobody knew it at the time, but that was the moment that created what some collectors call the holy grail of baseball cards. And what happens is he drastically limited the supply of his card.
They had already started printing a few when Wagner gave the word that he didn’t want any made. So they had to stop making them. Now combine that story with one of the best ball players to ever play the game and one of the first five players inducted into the Hall of Fame. And today everybody knows who Honus Wagner is because of the few dozen T-206 baseball cards that survived and now valued at millions of dollars for each one.
The most recent sale a few years ago was a Honus Wagner T-206 that sold for over $7 million. The American Tobacco Company, who I was just reading in the opening of the episode, they’re in a bind because Wagner told them they can’t print his card, but the problem is that they already started printing them.
So they had one more idea. American Tobacco Company, or ATC is what they were called back then. So ATC figures they could get a local Pittsburgh sports writer to convince Wagner to give his blessing to the production of the cards.
So they asked this guy, John Gruber, to help him out. And they tell Gruber if he can get Honus Wagner to okay this deal, to create these baseball cards with his picture on them, then ATC will pay Gruber $10 for the effort. And this is from the book I read by William Hagman titled, “Honus,” it’s an excerpt from the book on John Gruber, and a second attempt to get Wagner’s permission for the tobacco cards. The book says this,
“The firm tried an intermediary offering pirate scorer, John Gruber $10 if he could persuade Wagner to sign a contract. Wagner again declined, but not wanting Gruber to lose a chance to make some money, sent him a check with a note. I enclosed my check for the amount promised you by the tobacco company. In case you got my picture and hope you will excuse me if I refuse, Wagner wrote. Gruber kept the note and framed the check, which he displayed proudly in his home for years.” -Honus, Life and Times of a Baseball Hero
Finally, the American Tobacco Company had no alternative but to pull the card from production, but not before several hundred got out. End of quote. And there it is, the moment that created the holy grail of baseball cards, the Hannes Wagner T206.
And I’m reading a few passages from the book titled Honest written by William Hagman published in 1996. The subtitle of the book is, ‘The Life and Times of a Baseball Hero.” And the book is of course, a complete biography of Honus Wagner, one of the greatest baseball players of the dead ball era and one of the greatest players to ever live. His name is not as recognizable as Ty Cobb or a babe Ruth, but in his day, he was a superstar and known as one of the best ever.
And his stats and accomplishments still stand up over a hundred years later. But his playing career and lifetime stats are just part of the story. Like we just said, Honus Wagner became a legend not just from his ability on the field, but for a baseball card featuring his portrait and the story that limited the supply, making the card extremely rare and valuable. And that’s exactly why I started the episode with the excerpt from the book by William Hagman.
It’s just one page out of the entire book, but the author Hageman just briefly mentions the deal that the American Tobacco Company was trying to make with Honus Wagner, which was simply to ask for his approval to print baseball cards with his picture and then insert them into packs of cigarettes.
What was probably thought of as just a formality to get the permission from Wagner might have caught the tobacco company by surprise, but they quickly realized they had a bit of a problem.
Honus Wagner was not going to sign off permission for the printing of the cards with his picture. And their problem was that they had already started making the cards, assuming Wagner would be okay with the printing.
And when they found out he was refusing, the tobacco company enlisted Pittsburgh sports writer John Gruber to see if he could convince Wagner to sign off on the baseball card inserts. So they were hoping they could entice Gruber with 10 bucks to go make a deal with Wagner. And of course, like we just talked about, Gruber gets declined, but he also gets a letter back from Wagner with a check for the $10 that he would have made, because Wagner didn’t want Gruber to miss out on a chance to make a few extra bucks.
And then Gruber doesn’t even cash the check, he frames it and hangs it on the wall. And when doing this, John Gruber becomes maybe one of the very first sports memorabilia collectors.
He frames the $10 check from Hannes Wagner and shows it off to visitors when they come by to his house. Now we know a little bit about the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card and why that card is a big deal and worth millions.
But there’s much more to this story as I found out this week by reading a few books on Wagner. It’s not just a story about a rare baseball card, but you have to combine the limited supply of the card with the story of the person and the ballplayer.
Honus Wagner. It’s possible he wouldn’t be a household name today if there wasn’t the T206 baseball card. It’s true, he was one of the great ballplayers who ever played, but people will argue that he didn’t have the charisma or the larger than life personality like a Babe Ruth or even a Ty Cobb. But Wagner had his own style, which we’re going to look at today, and a style that I found totally fascinating. He was more of a folk hero, a gentle giant, and a mostly easy going small town kind of a guy who didn’t need the spotlight on him constantly like a Babe Ruth or like some of the ego maniacs we see nowadays.
Wagner was totally unique and true to his own style. That’s an idea you’ll find over and over again with these baseball legends from back in the day. They marched to the beat of their own drummer. They didn’t follow a certain script or a mold of anyone else.
There’s a few other ideas I found while reading three different books on Honus Wagner over the past week. It wasn’t just this tobacco baseball card deal that he made, or I guess you could say he refused to make, that eventually created the holy grail of collectible sports cards.
Wagner learned the art of the deal. He wasn’t born gifted with a natural ability to negotiate, but year after year, he honed the craft.
And it wasn’t because he enjoyed it, but it was a necessity back in those days. It was a constant battle to stay on top. I’m guessing you wouldn’t think of the word dealmaker when hearing the name Honus Wagner, but as his status on the ball field grew, his interest in making deals grew at the same time.
Like I just said, it was a necessity. First off, baseball players back in those days didn’t have agents to negotiate their pay on their behalf like we see today. They had to fend for themselves for the most part, and convince team owners of their value to try to get the most pay that they could possibly get. Which can be a pretty unfair fight in a lot of cases.
We saw this with the Mickey Mantle episode I did a while back. Because even when “The Mick,” played in the 1950s, there were not many agents who negotiated on behalf of players. So when a young star prospect like Mickey Mantle starts to negotiate, just him and his dad, and they’re going up against a veteran New York Yankee scout.
Mickey signs his first contract for peanuts compared to what other lesser prospects were getting because Mickey just didn’t have the experience in those situations. And it’s the same struggle we saw with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Ty Cobb.
I have episodes on all these baseball greats and they were constantly fighting to get paid what they were worth. So it’s the same thing here with Honus Wagner. He’s leading the National League in batting year after year so he knows he’s the best.
But now it’s an entirely different challenge to actually get paid the highest salary. And I say it’s an unfair fight because the owners of these teams are usually successful businessmen who have a lot more experience negotiating contracts and are much more financially skilled than ball players just because that’s what they do all day every day. They become successful enough to own a sports team, so they’re already financially savvy and ball players are just playing ball all day.
So they’re just out of their element when it comes to negotiating their own pay. And so this is one of the main themes when you study these old baseball legends, they dominate on the field and everybody recognizes them as the best of the best, but then they have to go up against the team ownership and single-handedly try to capture some of that value they’re creating on the ball field and try to get that money into their own pocket.
And just like the other episodes I’ve done, I loved learning about this aspect with Honus Wagner over the last week because it really gives you a good idea of who he was. And it’s a side of Honus Wagner that I knew nothing about.
And the only way to hear about it or to find out about it is to dive into these old biographies page by page. So Wagner became the best on the field. Then he had to quickly learn the skill of watching out for his own bottom line. And if you’re the best on the field, then it was also your job to be sure you were the highest paid player as well and nobody was going to do that for you.
On top of all that, once you did have the money rolling in, now you had to make wise decisions with that money. Who to partner with, what business deals to get involved in, or which ones to turn down.
And it’s a major theme with all these great athletes over the years. The biggest difference in the last few decades is just the amount of support and advisors and agents and lawyers, who might be able to offer services when it comes down to the negotiating tactics.
Back then, there was definitely not as much of that assistance for these great players. So we’re gonna dig into the side of Honus Wagner a little bit more and what his mindset might have been leading up to his 1909 decision to decline the offer from the American Tobacco Company to print baseball cards with his picture.
So to do this we have to roll it back to just before the 1901 season begins. Honus Wegener had already been playing professional baseball for several years, but in the year 1900 he had a monster season. Really a breakout year when he led the national league in almost every hitting category. Led the league in hitting with a 381 batting average, slugging percentage, doubles, triples, total bases.
He led the league in all these categories. So after the 1900 season, he’s approached by Clark Griffith, who was a player and manager in the American league, the rival league. Clark Griffith was also busy recruiting stars from the national league and trying to get them to jump ship and join with the American league. So Clark Griffith went to pay a visit to Honus Wagner in the winter after the 1900 season.
Now, Clark Griffith travels to Wagner’s home in Carnegie, Pennsylvania during a blizzard in the winter of 1900. He shows up in town and starts asking around where he could find Honus Wagner. And this is a story in William Hageman’s book. Wagner is out on the town and notices someone stuck in a snow drift and stops to ask if he needs help. And it was this guy, Clark Griffith. So Griffith says, “Yeah, you can help me out. I’m looking for Hannes Wagner. Do you know where he is?” And Wagner says, “Yeah, that’s me. I’m Honus Wagner.”
And the story goes that Griffith didn’t believe him at first. And then Wagner shows Griffith his bowed legs. Wagner’s trademark bowed-legs. And that’s how Griffith knew the guy who stopped to help him was actually Honus Wagner. So anyway, so they go back to Wagner’s house to have a little chat.
Clark Griffith offers Wagner $20,000 for a one-year contract to switch from the National League to the American League, which was huge money back then. Over 10 times what Wagner was making the previous year in the National League. And to make his point, Griffith pulls out 20 $1,000 bills and lays them out on the table to show Wagner how serious he actually was. But Wagner doesn’t go for it.
He actually takes a day to think it over but ends up declining the big payday and decides to stay with Pittsburgh in the National League for the 1901 season. There’s a few guesses as to why Wagner declined the bag full of money from Griffith to switch leagues. Some say he was concerned if the American League might fail because they were paying these huge salaries. It seemed like it might have been a little too good to be true.
The league might be a little too aggressive in their recruiting tactics and that smelled little risky to some of the players. And then if he switched leagues, he’d have to leave his hometown of Pittsburgh. And of course he would also be ditching out on his current team and leaving them.
So Wagner stays in the national league and ends up signing a new contract and doubling his salary from 1900 to the 1901 season. Now he’s making about $600 a month over the next few seasons,
Rumors swirled around Wagner and the other star players leaving the National League to join up with the American League, but Wagner never made the switch.
His salary grew to $5,000 a year in 1903 and in 1904. This compares to a salary of only about $300 per year for the average American worker back in those days, and that’s a six-day work week year-round, so that’s about a dollar a day people are making.
So $5,000 a year to play baseball in the summer back in 1903 dollars. That’s huge money at the time. What is that? It’s like, that’s like over 15 times the average wage. So Wagner is being treated well, but of course it’s all relative, just like everything. And you have to fight for yourself to stay on top. If you’re the best player and have the best numbers, then you also have to fight to be sure you’re getting paid more than anybody else.
So this is the constant battle you see reading about all these old baseball legends. And Honus Wagner is the best player at this time. He wins the batting title in 1903 and again in 1904. So now he figures he better get himself a raise to keep up with the times. So in 1905, he doesn’t come right out and say it. He doesn’t ask for more money. And he doesn’t complain to the newspapers about his contract because that’s not really his style.
But before the 1905 season starts, he just sort of lets his contract for $5,000 a year. He just lets it sit there in the mailbox or on the kitchen counter or wherever. He just doesn’t sign it right away and return it to the team owner. Sending a little message to the owner of the team that he’s in no hurry to sign off on this next deal. And then also Wagner’s Dad was sick at the time. So he was busy taking care of his dad, Peter Wagner.
And so he doesn’t really get around to signing this new contract right away. But eventually he signs the 1905 contract for $5,000 a year and returns it to the team owner, Barney Dreyfus. After the 1905 season, superstar ball player Honus Wagner makes history by becoming the very first athlete to officially endorse a commercial product when he signs a contract with the Louisville Slugger Bat Company.
These bats were the very first to feature the signature of the player right on the barrel of the bat. That’s a tradition that would continue for the next hundred years. Each player would have their own trademark Louisville Slugger bat with their signature on it and this all started with the great Honus Wagner in 1905. Now I searched for little more info on how this deal was arranged but there’s not much detail on who initiated this endorsement.
It would make perfect sense for the young up and coming bat company to approach Wagner, the best hitter in the league, and then try to convince him to use their bats. So I was digging and digging, but couldn’t really find much more on this historic first product endorsement. But Wagner is clearly at superstar status already. At this point, he’s heading into the 1906 season. Now he has his own bat deal and a contract for $5,000 a year.
Then Wagner would have another huge season in 1906, winning his fourth batting title and racking up his 10th straight season hitting over 300. It didn’t stop after 1906. Another batting title in 1907, his fifth, and then another batting title in 1908, number six. What would be his third batting title in a row?
But in 1908, he was not the highest paid player in the league. Like I was saying earlier, it’s so tough to stay on top, not just as the best hitter in the league, but you have to also relentlessly fight to get paid what you’re worth. And other players are doing the same thing, trying to get as much pay as they possibly can negotiate from their team owners. And suddenly Honus Wagner looks around and he sees other players making more money than he is.
So back to work for Wagner, trying to figure out a way to get some leverage and make his case. He’s got the best stats, but he needs an angle to play with ownership. How is he going to get paid what he thinks he’s worth in 1908? And this is the strategy he comes up with. He’s just going to retire. Wagner tells Pirate’s owner Barney Dreyfus, he says, thanks for everything. It’s been great.
I’m out, I’m done, I’m going to retire. In December of 1907, Wagner wrote a letter to Dreyfuss and the book by William Hageman includes this entire letter. Wagner writes this, quote,
“I will not be with your team this season, but I wish you a pennant winner and will always be plug in for Cap and the boys to win. It is certainly hard for me to lay aside the uniform I have worn since 1897. But every dog has his day and this sport has become too strenuous for me. I wish to thank you for your treatment of me while a member of your club and assure you that I highly appreciate the same.” – Honus Wagner letter to Pirates Owner Barney Dreyfuss
And then the letter is leaked to the local newspapers. And the team owner Barney Dreyfuss, he knew exactly what Wagner wanted. Even though Wagner maintained he was just wore out and it wasn’t about the money, I’m not sure if anyone believed that.
And when you read these books, it’s this dance that the players have to go through every year to negotiate. And Wagner was only 10 years into his career, and he would end up playing 9 more years after this episode. So I’m thinking he really didn’t want to retire, but he wanted a pay raise. Because I’m sure Dreyfuss knew he was getting a deal by not paying him the highest salary in the league the year before, even though Wagner was winning the batting title year after year.
So Wagner plays out this entire saga over the winter, leading up to the 1908 season. And it’s back and forth. Barney Dreyfuss, the owner, trying to find out where Wagner stands and what exactly he wants to come back from his retirement and play for the Pirates again. There’s even a dinner in New York City that they throw in honor of Wagner and they give him some awards to honor his seven batting titles.
They’re trying to butter him up and stroke his ego a little bit. So drama ensues and team owner Barney Dreyfuss has a problem to solve. How’s he going to get Wagner to sign another contract without looking like the bad guy in the press and without insulting the best player in baseball who just wants to be paid what he’s worth. But it goes on and on. The book covers this in detail for a few pages back and forth. Dreyfuss makes comments in the press.
The press runs it back to Wagner. Wagner says he insists he won’t play anymore. On and on. Then Wagner actually starts to take job offers. Carnegie Tech offers him a coaching job and Honus actually visits the campus to check it out. Then there’s a team in Chicago that throws out an offer for $10,000 a year plus a chicken farm. If Honus agrees to come and play for the team in Chicago, they’ll give him an entire chicken farm, because they know he’s a small town kind of a guy.
So this is a real deal and it goes on for months all the way up to April of 1908 when just before the season was to start Wagner’s quoted again as saying, you can say positively I will not play ball this year he says. I am firmly convinced that I need a year’s rest and am determined to have it. Then just two days later sports writers ask Wagner again about his retirement.
They wrote this in the papers. “While not declaring outright that he would be in the game, he hinted so broadly that matters would be fixed up between Clark and him when the two men meet in Kansas.”
Now Wagner hooks up with the Pirates team on April 7th and actually plays in an exhibition game and gets three hits, but he’s still officially a holdout. He heads back to Pennsylvania after the game.
And a few days later, a local reporter tracks him down while he’s out fishing. The reporter asks him if he’s going to play ball again. And Wagner says, this is in the book. The reporter quotes Wagner telling him –
“I don’t know whether I will or not. Perhaps I will. Perhaps I won’t. And then Wagner says, Holy smoke. I came up here to get away from you fellows. I thought I was safe here. I’ll tell you the truth. As I said before, I don’t know what I will do this summer. Now I’m going to go get a string of fish.” – Honus Wagner responding to reporters on his early retirement
And that was Wagner quoted in the newspapers. So just a few days later, the Pirates are ready to meet the demands. so Wagner finally signs his new contract for $10,000 for the season. And that’s double what he was making the year before. He joins up with the team for his first game on April 19th, 1908. And Wagner tears it up at the plate.
By August he was leading the National League in home runs. Stolen bases, triples, doubles, and runs scored and would go on to win his third batting title in a row with a .354 average. So the Pirates missed the postseason in 1908, but the team was having financial success. The team was drawing a big crowd to the game, so owner Barney Dreyfus purchases land for the new Pirates ballpark.
It wasn’t just the team that was making new investments. While construction on the new ballpark was underway, Honus Wagner was making moves of his own. Having now just completed a season where he made $10,000, double his previous salary. This was the start of Wagner stepping up his game and starting a few new business ventures under his own name. And the book goes through each one of these investments. The first one was the ‘Wagner Brothers Circus.’
Then there was an investment in oil wells and just two months later in the off season of 1908, he announced ‘Wagner and Felsch Auto Company’ to sell cars. So these didn’t end up becoming huge successful investments for Honus, but there’s an interesting pattern you can start to see. Wagner was using his name and his popularity in these ventures and it shows he was well aware of what it meant to be and what it could be worth to be a popular baseball figure.
As we head into the 1909 season, one of the most memorable seasons for Wagner for several reasons, it’s important to remember that by this time, Honus Wagner was already a highly paid baseball superstar and had been fine tuning his negotiation skills with the baseball contracts every season, and also thinking about his business life and how he could use his recognizable name for his investments off the field.
So Wagner signs another contract for the 1909 season for the same $10,000 and halfway through the season, the Pirates opened their new ballpark, Forbes Field. Popularity of baseball is at an all time high in Pittsburgh at this point and 30,000 fans packed the new field.
They called it the finest baseball field in the world. So excitement is buzzing around Pittsburgh and the team makes it to the World Series to play the Detroit Tigers of the American League. But it’s not really the Pirates versus the Tigers. This World Series is more about Wagner versus Cobb. After hitting 377 and leading the American League in almost everything, Ty Cobb is launching onto the baseball stage as a 22 year old.
And he’s already controversial for his hard-nosed style of play and his feisty attitude. If you listened to my episode on Ty Cobb I did a while back, let me just say this. Ty Cobb does not suffer fools. That’s my favorite way to think about Cobb. And he’s just 22 years old at this point and Honus Wagner’s getting up there. He’s 35. So it’s like this clash of the older gentlemen, the beloved Honus Wagner from Pittsburgh against this young brash, and super talented phenom Ty Cobb from Detroit.
This is where the historic meeting took place. Before game one, Cobb and Wagner meet on the field for the first time. Reporters swarm around waiting to see what will happen. There’s a few iconic photos of this meeting that you can look up. They’re amazing. Just do a search for Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, 1909 World Series, and you can see the photos from this meeting. It’s really cool, but…
The reporters say that Cobb is super respectful and Wagner is of course pleasant back to Cobb and the two superstars talk about their bad grips and then they compliment each other over and over when asked about each other by the reporters.
But this 1909 series belonged to Honus Wagner. The Pirates won in seven games and Wagner hit .333 in this series compared to Cobb’s .231 batting average.
Cobb would go on to absolutely dominate baseball in the American league. The 1909 season was already Cobb’s third batting title in a row. So it’s not like Wagner was going way out on a limb saying how great Cobb was. But after those remarks that Honus Wagner had about the young Ty Cobb, Cobb would go on to win the batting title nine out of the next 10 seasons and completely dominate in almost every hitting category.
So very fitting words by Hannes Wagner after his pirates just beat Cobb and the Tigers on October 16th, in game seven to win the 1909 World Series.
The Real Reasons Honus Wagner Said No
Now we get to the big moment right here, the moment we started the episode out with. When I read that excerpt in the book Honus by William Hagman, it was October 16th, 1909, game seven of the World Series, a victory for Honus Wagner. But just about a month earlier, September 18th, 1909, the American Tobacco Company runs an advertisement in sporting life.
And the ad was promoting tobacco baseball cards that would be inserted into packs of cigarettes. On this advertisement, there were 10 different player cards featured on the ad. And one of those 10 players featured on the ad was the Honus Wagner card. And this is it right here. The beginning of that epic T206 tobacco baseball card. So soon after that ad begins to pop up, Honus Wagner famously declines the permission to be featured on those cards.
And Wagner didn’t just decline it, he also threatened legal action if they proceeded to use his picture. Just like we read at the beginning of the episode, this was when the American Tobacco Company realized they had a bit of a problem here. They just assumed that players would give the okay to be featured on the cards. Because they went ahead and started printing them even before they had the permission of each player. So once they found out Wagner insisted that his portrait is not to be used on the cards, they had already printed several hundred of these cards. So of course the tobacco company stopped the printing. Because this is Honus Wagner we’re talking about. He’s the biggest thing in baseball at this point in time. He just won the 1909 World Series. He defeated the great Ty Cobb, and now he’s at the top of the baseball world.
So ATC halts all printing of the Wagner card. And this is the moment when the holy grail of baseball cards is created right here. So why did Wagner decline? I love this debate. It’s one of the great debates for sports card collectors. Either he didn’t want tobacco companies marketing their cigarettes to kids, using these baseball cards to lure them in, or he wanted to be paid for his photo appearing on the card. Or both. And I would have to say yes, it makes perfect sense that it’s a combination of both.
After learning all about this now, the guy, Honus Wagner, and the era, the early 1900s, it’s almost a no-brainer that Wagner would say no.
For somebody like Wagner, who we just talked about, he represented himself and he had to fight every single year for that pay raise as he became the greatest hitter in the game year after year. He fought just as hard every offseason to be sure he would get his fair share of pay for the next season. At this point in 1909, he’s at the very top of his game and he knew his value. It’s like Wagner finally realized he didn’t need to go along with anything that he didn’t feel was a good business deal for himself. That’s completely understandable.
But there’s the bigger factor here though. He didn’t want his picture associated with cigarettes. Not tobacco, cigarettes. He said all along he didn’t want young fans spending their money on cigarettes, trying to collect these cards. Wagner had a reputation for always looking out for the young fans. He would stay late after games to say hello to the kids and design autographs. He’d even help them sneak into the stadium to see games. So both of these arguments make perfect sense.
Then I stumbled on this little nugget, and I gotta read this because sometimes I just hear the lazy argument out there that since Honus Wagner himself, he chewed tobacco. So why would he have a problem with ATC marketing cigarettes with his baseball card? And that lazy argument is that if Wagner chewed, then he likes tobacco. And therefore, it was just a money decision to not let ATC print his cards.
And it didn’t have anything to do with ATC marketing their cigarettes to kids using baseball cards because he chewed tobacco. I just hate to hear that argument. So, like, yeah, Wagner chewed tobacco, so he must be okay with everyone, even kids smoking cigarettes. That just makes no sense.
When Cigarettes Felt Dangerous
So anyway, I stumbled on another book written by a vintage baseball card collector, Scott Reader. He wrote an entire book about the T206 series. It’s titled Inside T206. So in that book, Scott Reeder, he cites an article that appeared in the sporting news in 1914, where one of Honus Wagner’s teammates, he was actually an old roommate, Irv Canneller. And this is what Wagner’s old teammate said about this exact idea right here. He says, quote,
“Wagner’s only bad habit is his love of chewing tobacco, but he detests cigarettes and does not smoke in any form. I have seen him refuse several checks of $1,000 by cigarette companies who want to use his name.”
Okay, so that’s Irv Canneller, an old teammate and roommate of Wagner’s. Cigarettes were very different. Listen to how they talk about smoking cigarettes back in this time. And I had no idea there was this big difference until I started reading some of these old newspaper articles. So listen to some of these quotes about cigarettes back in the early 1900s. This is what they said. They said cigarettes were, quote,
“The vilest and most destructive instrument in the fingers of the human race.”
Henry Ford back in the day, he wrote a book and he would pass out these books. And the book was all about warning the youth that cigarettes led to unemployment and physical ruin.
There’s even an anti-cigarette League of America that’s formed. And the founder of that group, they were quoted, and I read this, it says,
“I am no defender of tobacco in any form, but the cigarette is in a class by itself.”
So what’s the difference here? This is the big difference. People were very skeptical of these new cigarettes because they were mass-produced by cigarette rolling machines. And I covered the story a little bit in my Ty Cobb episode that I did. They were cheap and easily accessible to kids because they were made, they were mass-produced by cigarette rolling machines. There’s another reason too. Cigarettes were milder tobacco. So you inhaled into the lungs rather than just smoking a pipe and puffing it into your mouth and then exhaling. There’s a big difference here. The people noticed this. It was like, no, this is way, this is way worse than smoking a pipe or just chewing tobacco.
One more thing that I found that was pretty funny, too. Smoking cigarettes was also tied to European aristocrats or the weak. Tough Americans. They did not smoke cigarettes like the weak aristocratic Europeans. That was out of an article that I read.
It wasn’t until World War I the military started to include cigarettes in the soldiers’ daily rations because they were cheap and they were much more convenient to smoke when you’re fighting a war. Obviously, you’re in the trenches and you can smoke cigarettes rather than a pipe. So once those soldiers came home after the war, that’s when smoking cigarettes really started to become more and more accepted. Another thing, right here, I have another book on the T206 Wagner. This book is by Michael O’Keefe. It’s titled The Card, and I read this book too. Listen to this, it’s more evidence on this big decision by Honus Wagner. Right here it says, quote,
“Wagner, in other words, was a respectable man. And in 1909, respectable people did not smoke cigarettes. Decades later, a butt would dangle from the mouth of every movie hero, every rock star, every rebel without a cause. But before World War I, cigarettes, especially the nickel packs, popular with laborers, were considered low class and even then a threat to public health. The cigar was a symbol of prosperity and accomplishment. Chew and pipe tobacco were safe and traditional. But in 1900, cigarettes were illegal in 14 states. The Supreme Court called them a noxious product.”
So this book, The Card by Michael O’Keefe, it keeps going on. It says, in addition, the two men most responsible for Wagner’s on-field and off-field success, Pirates manager Fred Clark and owner Barney Dreyfus, both despised cigarettes. Dreyfus even passed on a chance to sign a young Triss Speaker because Speaker smoked. So it seemed likely that the ambitious Wagner would have wanted to avoid associating with something that made reputable people uneasy.
A Folk Hero Creates A Holy Grail
I love this story. It’s like timing is everything when I go through some of these stories. My last episode on the 1933 Double Eagle, Gold Coin. Certain events playing out all at the same time. And they create these great stories, and then they leave behind a really cool collectible object that captures these certain points in history and kind of tie all these stories together. That’s the Honus Wagner card, too.
He’s the biggest thing in baseball in 1909. Even the mighty tobacco company doesn’t want to go head to head with Honus Wagner. So they stop printing the card. Once Wagner throws down the orders that he doesn’t want to be involved in the cigarette racket, it’s over. They stop.
Of course, they already started printing the card, but they stop. And then right there, instant legendary baseball card is created. If you need more proof, here’s one more passage from the book by Michael O’Keeffe, The Card. He quotes Wagner’s granddaughter on the humble legend, the original baseball hero. It says,
“Wagner, moreover, respected his fans, especially the young ones. He had a reputation in Pittsburgh as a star who would hold the player gate open a tad longer than necessary so kids could slip into the ballpark behind him for free. He loved children, granddaughter Blair said. “He wanted to teach the kids good sportsmanship. When it came time for that card to come out, it wasn’t that he wasn’t paid. He didn’t want the kids to have to buy tobacco to get his card.”
