Honus & Me

by Dan Gutman

  “Y’know, you ain’t half bad, Stosh,” he said. “You got a nice stroke. Who taught you to play, your dad?”

  “Nah. I don’t see my dad very much.”

  I told Honus about my parents splitting up, and how they used to argue about money all the time.

  “At least you got two parents,” Honus said. “My ma died when I was young. There were nine of us—five boys and four girls. There was no money to fight over. We were poor as dirt. By the time I was your age I was workin’ in the coal mines along with my dad.”

  “They let kids work in coal mines?”

  “Let ’em?!” he laughed. “Made ’em! During the winter we hardly saw daylight. We’d go in the mines before sunrise and didn’t come out until night. There were rats all over the place, and they could sense when a cave-in was coming. When they ran for their lives, we ran for ours too.”

  “I bet it didn’t pay a lot.”

  “Seventy cents a ton. It wasn’t much, but it made me strong up here.” He pounded his chest with his hand.

  “So if you worked in the mines all the time, how did you become a ballplayer?”

  “In the summer we brought our gloves with us, and at lunchtime we’d play a game. My brothers poked fun at me because I was clumsy. But I got better and grew bigger, and soon I was as good as any of ’em.”

  “Did any of your brothers make it to the majors?”

  “Well Butts did for a year. But then he banged up his knee, and he was finished.”

  “Your brother’s name is Butts?!”

  “His real name’s Albert, but everybody calls him Butts. It was Butts who got me into professional baseball. He was with Steubenville in 1895, and he told his manager that my other brother, Will, was a pretty good ballplayer. Will wasn’t interested in playing ball professionally, but I was. Anything to get out of the mines. So when they offered Will a tryout, I hopped a freight train to Steubenville and took his place.”

  “They didn’t know the difference?”

  “Nah. Me and my brothers used to switch places all the time. We all pretty much look alike. Anyway, the manager didn’t want to sign me, but Butts said he’d quit the team if I wasn’t on it. So I joined the Steubenville team. I even signed the contract with Will’s name. We played against teams like the Kalamazoo Kazoos. I hit about .400, stole a few bases, and played every position on the field.”

  “How did you get from Steubenville to the Pittsburgh Pirates?”

  “Word got around about me, I guess. One day a bunch of us were chuckin’ lumps of coal at an empty hopper across the Monongahela River. We spotted a guy watchin’ us. We thought he was a cop, so we ran like the dickens. Turned out he was Ed Barrow, a scout.”

  “He signed you?”

  “Not right away. I played cute, pretendin’ I wasn’t interested. Finally, Barrow says to me, ‘Isn’t there somethin’ I can do for you? Isn’t there somethin’ you’d like to have?’ I told him I’d like to have a bag of bananas. So he ran out, bought a bag of bananas, and gave it to me. How could I refuse him? I signed for thirty-five dollars a month and a bag of bananas. Next thing I knew I was in the big leagues playing for the Louisville Colonels.

  “You played right here in Louisville?”

  “For three years. They sold me to Pittsburgh in 1900, and I’ve been there ever since.”

  “What’s it like playing in the big leagues, Honus?”

  “Like bein’ on the highest mountain, Stosh. It’s all I ever dreamed of. I’d rather be shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates than President of the United States.”

  “That’s my dream, too,” I confided. “To play in the big leagues. Even if it was just for one at-bat. I just want to know what it feels like.

  “You got the tools, Stosh.”

  “Do you have a dream now, Honus? Is there anything you want that you don’t have?”

  “To win the World Series,” he said right away. “I played in the first one, in 1903. We won three of the first four games. But then our pitchin’ gave out, and I couldn’t hit a beach ball. Made six errors. Boston whupped us.”

  My brother Will was a pretty good ballplayer. Will wasn’t interested in playing professionally, but I was. So when they gave Will a tryout, I hopped a freight train to Steubenville and showed up in his place.

  His face suddenly looked serious.

  “Y’know Stosh,” he said, “as much as I enjoy your company, I can’t stay here forever. We ain’t figured out how to get me back. And I’ve got a game to play tomorrow.”

  “Well, I used the baseball card to bring you here,” I said, “I should be able to send you back the same way.”

  “I was thinkin’ about that Stosh. Can you go through time yourself, or just bring people back from the past?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m still kinda new at this. Why?”

  “Oh, I just had this crazy idea that I’d like to show you my time, if you could find a way to get there—and if you wanted to visit, of course.”

  “Me, go back to 1909?” I marvelled. “That would be cool! Let’s try it.”

  “When?” he asked.

  “Tonight, at my house. My mom will be asleep by ten o’clock.”

  “Ten it is.” Honus stuck out his big hand and I shook it.

  “Hey, what are you going to do until ten, Honus?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “Go see a movie show or something.”

  “Do you have any money?”

  He fished a few dimes out of his pocket and showed them to me.

  “You can’t buy a pack of gum with that, Honus!” I stuffed some bills in his hand, and he thanked me. Before he walked away I pulled my notebook out of my backpack and handed it to him with a pen.

  “How much do you charge for autographs?” I asked.

  “Charge?” said Honus, wrinkling his nose. “I figure kids should charge us ’cause they’re nice enough to come watch us play.”

  He took the pen and wrote, “To my friend Stosh, Here’s hoping both our dreams come true.” And then he signed it…

  Honus turned to walk away again, but I called out to him.

  “Hey Honus, is it true that once you hit a ball that went under the pitcher’s arm and then it sailed over the centerfield fence for a home run?”

  “You like that story?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it’s true. But that’s nothin’. I was playin’ in Steubenville and this mutt would hang around the ballpark. I felt sorry for him, so I’d play fetch with him from time to time. One game I’m at short and a grounder trickled through my legs. The batter was roundin’ first and headin’ for second, when the mutt runs across the field. He snatched up the ball in his mouth and ran over to me. So I picked him up and tagged the runner with the dog. Ump called him out, too. How about that!”

  “You made that up!”

  “Did I ever lie to you?” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “There was this other time,” he continued. “A guy hit a grounder right at me. But just as the ball was about to reach my glove, a rabbit ran across my path.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Well, in the confusion, I picked up the rabbit and threw it to first.”

  “What happened?” I asked, incredulously.

  “The ump called the runner out,” Honus replied, pausing. “I got him by a hare.”

  With that, Honus slapped his knee and laughed uproariously.

  “I’ll see you at ten, Stosh,” he said as he walked away.

  THE ARGUMENT

  9

  THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I GOT HOME WAS TO OPEN my Baseball Encyclopedia and turn to “Wagner.” I slid my finger up from “Honus” to “Heinie” to “Hal,” and there it was…

  Butts Wagner

  WAGNER, ALBERT

  Brother of Honus Wagner

  B. Sept. 17, 1869, Mansfield, Pa D. Nov. 26, 1928, Pittsburg, Pa.

  BR TR 5'10", 170 lbs.

  Year

  1898

&n
bsp; Team

  2 teams

  WAS N (63G-.224)

  BKN N (11G-.237)

  total 74

  BA

  .226

  SA

  .307

  AB

  261

  H

  59

  2B

  12

  3B

  3

  HR

  1

  HR%

  0.4

  R

  22

  RBI

  34

  BB

  16

  SO

  4

  SB

  1

  Pinch Hit

  AB

  0

  H

  97

  PO

  A

  126

  E

  46

  DP

  9

  TC/G

  3.6

  FA

  .829

  G by Pos

  3B-50

  OF-10

  SS-8

  EB-5

  I was reviewing the short career of Butts Wagner when Mom called me downstairs for dinner. I told her about the game, and then she dropped a bombshell.

  “A Mr. Farrell called today, honey,” she said. “From some baseball-card store. He says he wants to talk with you. What’s going on?”

  Uh-oh. Birdie Farrell. He wants the Honus Wagner card really badly. I could have simply lied and told Mom I didn’t know what she was talking about. But in my experience, lies tend to catch up to you at some point. I decided to tell her the truth about the card.

  “Something happened, Mom,” I said awkwardly. She looked at me with concern as I pulled the Honus Wagner card out of my backpack. I told her how I found the card while cleaning out Miss Young’s attic, how I authenticated it, and how I figured out how much it was worth. I didn’t tell her about actually meeting Honus Wagner.

  When I was finished, she let out a long whistle. “A half a million dollars?” she said, sitting down with a thud, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive,” I replied. “Mom, we’re rich! We can get a new car! We can get out of this dump! I can go to college someday!”

  Mom didn’t look like one of those lottery winners they show on TV. She had a worried expression on her face, as if I had busted a neighbor’s window or something. She sat there for a long time thinking before rendering her verdict.

  “You have to give the card back to Miss Young, Joe,” she said seriously. “It’s not yours to keep. And this house is not a dump.”

  “Are you crazy?!” I couldn’t help but shout. “Mom, this is the solution to all our problems! And you want me to give it back? Miss Young doesn’t even know I have the card! She doesn’t even know it’s missing! She probably didn’t even know she ever had it in the first place!”

  “Joe, it’s the right thing to do, and you know it.”

  How stupid I was to tell her I found the card in Miss Young’s attic! I should have told her I found it in the street or something.

  I ran upstairs to my room and slammed the door behind me.

  Dad came over later that night. He and Mom had some paperwork they had to go over. Usually when Dad comes over we spend some time together, but I was mad and didn’t want to come out of my room.

  I heard Dad ask Mom why I was upstairs. I couldn’t make out Mom’s response, but she must have told him about the baseball card.

  Silently, I opened my bedroom door and crept to the edge of the stairs.

  “It’s wrong, Bill,” Mom said. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “Lots of things are wrong, Terry,” Dad said. “Usually it’s wrong and we’re the losers. This time we can come out the winners.”

  “We?” Mom asked. “What do you have to do with this?”

  “I gave him my baseball card collection, remember?” Dad said. “I’m the one who got him interested in collecting cards. I told him years ago that Wagner’s card was the rarest one of all. If it weren’t for me he would have thrown the card in the trash with the old lady’s other junk.”

  Mom and Dad were getting steamed, just like they used to before Dad moved out.

  “Look, Terry.” Dad was going into his comforting mode. “Let’s think this through together. The old lady will never know about the card. She told Joe to throw all the stuff out, didn’t she? She’s lived a full life. What’s she going to do with all that money now? She has no relatives to give it to. The government is going to get the money when she dies. It’s just common sense that we should sell the card. You’ve gotta admit you could do a few nice things with a half a million bucks.”

  I waited anxiously to hear Mom’s response. She took a long time, as if she was carefully searching for the words she wanted.

  “If we kept that card,” she said softly, “we’d feel bad about it for the rest of our lives.”

  “If we give it back we’ll feel bad about it for the rest of our lives!” Dad shouted.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I stormed down the stairs and shouted at the two of them.

  “It’s my card. I found it. Doesn’t anybody care what I want to do with it?”

  They stared at me.

  “Hey, Joey,” Dad said, embarrassed. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “Joseph.” Mom always called me Joseph when she was about to say something she knew I didn’t want to hear. “When you’re a grown-up, you can make important decisions yourself. But for now, we do that for you. And I’ve decided that card belongs to Miss Young.”

  Dad turned away disgustedly. I stormed back upstairs, shouting, “That’s not fair!” before slamming the door.

  “I just won’t give it to her,” I thought, “I’m gonna put the card somewhere Mom’ll never find it.”

  I took the card out of my knapsack. Then I turned off the light and waited.

  At ten o’clock, right on schedule, there was a tap on my window. Honus climbed in the room.

  “Ready for a little time travelin’ tonight, partner?” he asked.

  “You bet, Hans!”

  As he took off his street clothes and pulled on his uniform, Honus noticed my baseball card collection next to my bed. He picked it up and flipped the plastic pages.

  “All these cards worth a half a million bucks?” he asked.

  “No, only yours,” I explained. “When you said you didn’t want your name and face to be associated with a tobacco product, it drove up the price of the cards they’d already printed.”

  “Everybody chewed or smoked in my day,” Honus said as he turned a page.

  “I read somewhere that you didn’t object to smoking. You were just mad because they didn’t pay you to use your picture.”

  “That’s bull,” he said sharply. “It’s a disgustin’ habit, settin’ fire to leaves and suckin’ ’em down your throat. Didn’t want to be responsible for kids doin’ that. Besides, a kid shouldn’t have to buy somethin’ to get a picture of me. Should be free.”

  “Smoking causes all kinds of diseases, you know,” I informed him.

  “Didn’t take no genius to figure that out, I hope.”

  Honus stopped at one page and peered closely at a card. “So they finally let colored boys into the game, eh?”

  “In 1947. A guy named Jackie Robinson was the first. They’re called ‘African-Americans’ now.” I felt proud that I could tell him something he didn’t know.

  “African-Americans, huh? You know who was the greatest shortstop I ever saw?” Honus asked. “A guy named John Henry Lloyd.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He played in the Negro Leagues. They used to call him The Black Wagner. But I’ll tell you, I would have considered it an honor to be called The White Lloyd. That guy could suck grounders up like a magnet. It’s a crime the way they don’t let those boys play with us. The smartest pitcher I saw was another colored fella, a guy named Rube Foster.”

  “He made it to Cooperstown eventually,” I told Honus
.

  “Cooperstown?” Honus asked innocently. “What league is that in?”

  “Never mind.”

  “This Barry Bonds,” he said, pointing to a card. “Is he any good?”

  “One of the best. Makes over five million a year.”

  “Didn’t ask how much he makes. Asked if he was any good.”

  “Sure. He hit .311 in 1992. For your Pirates, in fact.”

  “.311?” Wagner snorted. “For my Pirates, he’d be a benchwarmer.”

  “It’s a different game now, Hans. They play indoors, on artificial turf. They use the DH.”

  “DH?”

  “Designated hitter,” I explained. “It’s a player who hits in the pitcher’s place but doesn’t play the field. They only have them in the American League.”

  “That ain’t baseball,” Honus grumbled. “In baseball, a man hits, fields, runs, and throws. If he can’t do those four things, he should get himself a desk job.”

  It was time to get down to business. I grabbed my backpack and lay down on my bed with the card in my hand, closing my eyes.

  “Think of 1909,” Honus said as he leaned over me, “’cause that’s where I gotta be by three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Feel anything happening, Stosh?”

  “Yeah,” I replied sleepily. “Powerful tingles. Hey Honus, do you think this was all a dream?”

  “I don’t know,” Honus said, “But if I miss the game, it’ll be a nightmare.”