Honus Wagner

Honus Wagner is one of those figures from early baseball history who genuinely gets more impressive the closer you look. A coal miner's son from western Pennsylvania who became arguably the greatest shortstop who ever lived — he hit .328 lifetime, won eight National League batting titles, and did it all with a stocky, bow-legged build that looked nothing like a prototype athlete. What I love about Wagner is that he played in the dead-ball era, when conditions were brutal and statistics were kept loosely, yet he still dominates any serious conversation about the all-time greats. He was one of the five charter inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, and his T206 tobacco card became the most famous and valuable sports card in history. There's something almost mythic about a guy who retired in 1917 and still casts that long a shadow over the game.

Name (English)

Honus Wagner

Name (Japanese)

ホーナス・ワグナー

Reading

ほーなす・わぐなー

Born

February 24, 1874 – December 6, 1955

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Dog

Origin

Chartiers, Pennsylvania, United States

Height

180 cm

Occupation

baseball player

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AF%E3%82%B0%E3%83%8A%E3%83%BC

Tags

• Pennsylvania
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.