"A superb portrait, painted with thorough research on the canvas of one of baseball's
most fascinating eras.Honus Wagner is an excursion into baseball's storied family album. Wagner
was more than batting titles, legendary fielding, and daring baserunning. This book takes you behind
the numbers and introduces you to the man who turned on his generation to the national pastime."
Gene Carney

Honus Wagner, whose career in baseball (most of it with the Pittsburgh Pirates) stretched from 1895 to
1917, was the first American sports superstar of the twentieth century. One of the first five players to be
inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in its first year (1939), he was probably the best shortstop in
baseball's history. His great career and the dawn of baseball as a popular entertainment occurred
simultaneously, and he has become an icon of the early game; his 1909 baseball card, one of which
sold four years ago for $451,000, is a holy grail of American memorabilia. This first major biography
shows why Wagner was America's favorite image of sport during baseball's transition to the modern
era.