Honoring Honus

Dear JD,

How are things going on the Farm?  The last note I got from you was that you were lonely there all by yourself, with the ladies all out on the road.  I’ve gotten FB messages from other “survivors” who say they miss the rest of us.  But it’s okay; I think if I’d had to do much more running around with the camera, I’d have collapsed from heart failure or something.

Glenn Beck held his third “Restoration” event in Dallas yesterday evening.  Now, if I’d signed up for a transfer to the Dallas offices, I could have seen it in person.  If you’ll recall, I went to his first “Restoration” event in Washington, D.C.  He called it Restoring Honor, but it was more like “Restoring God” or “Restoring Faith” as he admitted last night.  The view was better from GBTV, though, or what he’s soon going to rename Blaze TV.  I liked GBTV better, but whatever.

Remember how you taught me about Honus Wagner?  You and ES were talking about “The Flying Dutchman” and I asked you if he was a pirate.  You and ES laughed at me at my ignorance.  “No, not the kind of pirate, you’re thinking of,” you and ES explained.  “He was a Pittsburgh Pirate and a very good one at that.”

Johannes Peter “Honus” Wagner, born on Feb. 24, 1874 (about the same time as my great-grandmother), was one of the first five baseball players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Baseball historians declared him to be one of the greatest short-stop players ever.

But you said while he was a great player that’s not what made him famous.  You said that in those days, companies would sponsor baseball cards with famous players like Honus on them.   The company that sponsored Honus’ card was a cigarette company called “Sweetfield Cigarettes”.  At least, I think that was its name.  Or was it “Sweet Meadow?”  Anyway, if you had GBTV, you would have seen Glenn Beck honor Honus for having the courage to force American Tobacco Company to take his face off their card because, as a Christian, he didn’t believe in smoking. 

As a result, the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card is one of the rarest and most expensive baseball cards in the world, as only 57 copies are known to exist.  The card was designed and issued by the (ATC) from 1909 to 1911 as part of its T206 series. Wagner refused to allow production of his baseball card to continue. The ATC ended production of the Wagner card and a total of only 57 to 200 cards were ever distributed to the public. In 1933, the card was first listed at a price value of $50 in Jefferson Burdick’s The American Card Catalog, making it the most expensive baseball card in the world at the time.

Someone loaned Glenn Beck one of the cards to display during his Restoring Love event last night.  He even let some lucky kid hold the card during the performance (the kid had to return it, though).  Glenn said that the card is worth $2.8 million.  So you, see Glenn is worth the $10 a month [I believe] to watch his show.

Unless of course you have the card.  In which case, you don’t need to watch GBTV to see the card.  And you don’t need to worry about your retirement.