The past few years, our family has attended the National Sports Collector Convention. I love the history that I learn through the artifacts that are there. My oldest son and husband love the baseball cards, and everyone loves meeting a famous professional athlete.
One memory I have is seeing the famous Honus Wagner T206 card. It has sold at auction forever two million dollars. Amazing that a 1″ x 2″ piece of cardboard could be worth that much! Okay, I know it is history, but it still blows my mind. In the introduction of the book, some background is given in regards to this famous baseball card. I appreciate the character of Honus. He had the cards pulled from cigarette pacts, because he was concerned that children who were fans might be influenced negatively.
Baseball is the game I’m growing to love. I love watching my sons develop through the game and our daughter in softball. Another baseball lover, Jane Yolen, crafts a wonderful snapshot of the famous baseball player in ALL STAR!: Honus Wagner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever. Jim Burke uses his paintings to create a baseball game setting your mind attaches to.
Honus was born in Chartiers, Pennsylvania to German immigrants. He went to school through the eighth grade and then began working in the coal mines alongside his father and older brother. He worked loading two tons of coal for 79 cents per day. Honus commented that the work was hard but good exercise. The story continues sharing how Honus worked hard to get into baseball. And when his opportunity arrived, he showed everyone how great of a hitter and short stop he could be.
“Clearly he was a great baseball player…. And he did it all without drugs or fancy training programs or million-dollar incentives – just for the pure love of the game.”
Savorings for reading and in writing for All Star: Honus Wagner:
- Simile – “legs that looked like large parenthesis“
- Several dependent clauses – in different placed in the sentence
- Punctuation craft – quotation marks around titles, semi-colon, apostrophe uses
- Exploding the Moment – rounding the bases to win the game
- Vignettes – several 1 page short stories about Honus that supported his baseball talent and character