Anyone recommend this Honus Wagner Book?

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Posted By: Tony N.

I am looking to buy a good Wagner book to read. Did anyone read the book Honus Wagner: "The Life of Baseball's Flying Dutchman" by Alfred Hittner? Or is this book similar to the one by the DeValeries?

Also, what is a good book on Christy Mathewson and Shoeless Joe? Thanks, Tony.

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Posted By: Lobert Collector

I thought Hittner's book was the better written of the two and more informative as well. Not to take anyhing away from the Devaleria book. William Hageman's book is good also, but the best read of the bunch is "Honus Wagner on his Life and Baseball" Edited by William R. Cobb. This is basically an autobiography written in series for a couple of newspapers in 1924. (book copyright 2006). Cobbs book does not cover Wagner's early life like the others though. In any case I sure wish people with uneducated guesses disguised as "opinion" would read at least one of these books before talking about why the Wagner T206 was pulled.

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

LobertCollector is telling you correctly.

And as for Mathewson, try Ray Robinson's Matty: An American Hero... affordable copies on ABE.

I've not read Michael Hartley's book, Christy Mathewson.


A truly GREAT baseball book, realistically in the top 3 baseball novels, is The Celebrant: A Novel, by Eric Rolfe Greenberg. If you're interested in Mathewson and his times, this is a must read for you. I'd read the 'other' great baseball novels before I read The Celebrant, and when a couple of people told me how great it was I discounted that, knowing it couldn't compare to the novels popularly considered 'best'. I was mistaken. If I could only have 10 baseball books on that desert island, this would be one of the ten.

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Posted By: Connor Ford

"Shoeless" by David L. Fleitz is good and so is "The Glory of Their Times" by Lawrence Ritter. Both are must reads.